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Today I uploaded my 2017 UTR datasets to @internetarchive. 35,896 #UniteTheRight tweets from August 5 to August 14 and 28,485 #Charlottesville tweets from August 12 to August 14 are now available for download here: archive.org/details/UTRdata
.@edsu and I published research in 2017: news.docnow.io/unitetheright-… This graph shows 16,492 #UniteTheRight tweets that were deleted after Aug 12.
52% of the accounts that got suspended were created on or after August 11. Sock puppets were created en masse to boost the event.
52% of the accounts that got suspended were created on or after August 11. Sock puppets were created en masse to boost the event.
The account polNewsForever was an obvious outlier in UTR graphs. This "news" account representing /pol/ boards from the chans was highly influential in UTR data and pushed narratives that leftists/antifa were responsible for violence.
Another account that was influential in UTR trends and suspended after A12, Spectre3rdRail, was identified in January by the SPLC as a white nationalist podcaster with a history of instigating harassment campaigns against journalists: splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019…
Spectre has continuously re-spawned on new accounts since UTR, seemingly effortlessly violating TOS & avoiding bans, and was still active on Twitter as recently as this month under user name TRS_CowboyJunky. Here's a graph of some of the handles he's used in the past 2 years.
I had serious reservations in sharing these datasets publicly given their incredibly offensive, racist content. But I think there are still stories to be told surrounding A12 and I hope releasing this data to @creativecommons will facilitate that. archive.org/details/UTRdata
If you're not outraged, you're still not paying attention. Rest in power Heather Heyer. 💜
