#TulsiMediaBlackout started trending some time around 1:40 AM PDT this morning (November 30th.) How'd that happen?
(Spoiler: not bots, but not quite organic either.)
cc: @ZellaQuixote
(Spoiler: not bots, but not quite organic either.)
cc: @ZellaQuixote
@ZellaQuixote Although #TulsiMediaBlackout has seen sporadic usage for a while, the activity resulting in this morning's trend began yesterday (November 29th) with a tweet from @studentsfortulsi calling on the #YangGang for backup. Several pro-Yang accounts subsequently heeded the call.
@ZellaQuixote Retweet network for #TulsiMediaBlackout. @GangUbi's involvement is interesting - this account only posted two #TulsiMediaBlackout tweets of its own but retweeted a whopping 266 others over the course of three hours this morning, fueling the trend.
@ZellaQuixote @GangUbi Next, we downloaded recent tweets from the accounts tweeting #TulsiMediaBlackout and used the hashtags to classify the accounts by political alignment/preferred candidate. The first several hours of traffic were driven almost entirely by pro-Yang rather than pro-Gabbard accounts.
