Thread by @conspirator0

Time for some fun with political vocabulary. We downloaded English-language tweets containing "neocon", "neoconservative", "neolib", or "neoliberal", resulting in 40747 tweets from 24603 accounts in the last 10 days.

cc: @ZellaQuixote

How are these labels used? Based on the fact that only 15 of the 40747 tweets contain one of the phrases below, people aren't self-identifying as neocon/neolib. Anecdotally, the majority of uses are pejorative, typically directed at folks deemed insufficiently ideologically pure.

Combined retweet network for neocon(servative)/neolib(eral). The accounts using only neocon(servative) are largely right-wing, while those using neo(liberal) or both are generally left-wing.

What other topics crop up in tweets containing neocon(servative) or neolib(eral)? These three figures give a broad overview - Brexit is a popular topic among tweets from accounts using neolib, while Trump, globalism, and Syria are more common among those using neocon.

Let's take a look at a sample of accounts from each group (those using only neocon, those using only neoliberal, and those using both). Sample size is the most recent 1000 tweets from 333 randomly selected accounts in each group. Those in the "both" group are the spammiest.

What media sources are linked by accounts in the three groups? The accounts using "neolib" largely link Western MSM. Those using "necocon" link a mix of MSM and right-wing conspiracy sites. The accounts in the "both" group are a hot mess. All three groups link RT.

Finally, here are the hashtags most frequently used by each group of accounts. Working out the interesting nuggets is left as an exercise for the reader.