[Thread]1/ The hashtag "Scum Media" is trending in the UK as some people rally to defend #DominicCummings. With democracy constantly under attack, it's important to understand attacks on our media. I downloaded around 19000 tweets from 7030 accounts. Some findings 👉 #CumGate 
2/ The network graph shows those tweeting on the hashtag, coloured by different clusters who interact with each other. In this iteration, the size of node represents the inward traffic on Twitter (e.g. is it being retweeted a lot, or replied to a lot). This usually includes two
3/ groups of people - 1) anyone tweeting the hashtag and being retweeted (whether for or against) 2) and those being harassed using the hashtag. @PiersMorgan comes out for someone being targeted a lot with abuse. Morgan has been, perhaps surprisingly, very critical of Cummings
4/ Other media outlets or personalities that score highly include @mrjamesob, who has received abuse. But also he tweeted on the hashtag, which will have increased the node size. Others to get a lot of abuse include @bbclaurak @BethRigby @skynews @peston and many more
5/ Now who are the ones tweeting most on the hashtag? Well the screenshotted list literally shows which accounts tweeted and retweeted the hashtag the most. Top four are @sensaycommon2 @1hannahbelle @pam30301 @Marie24373752 Top spot of course goes to a pro Trump Qanon fan!
6/ If we analyse the Twitter biographies of the sample, we will see that the most common words are 'love, brexit, fan, eu'(EU is in the context of anti EU). So perhaps not surprising then that the Brexit crowd are mobilising to defend their saviour and deliverer,
7/ The hashtag has been around a while. Although @TrishaPhillipss was key in trying to get it to trend today you can see from this graph Trisha getting retweeted throughout the day before the hashtag got picked up. Incidentally, Trisha's display picture is telling.
8/ How many of the accounts are real? Hard to say, could be many real people with a few sockpuppets and useful idiots. I'd be curious to explore this blue cluster. These accounts are basically mass replying each other and then retweeting- which looks like the below tweet #CumGate
9/ Interestingly, Trump's name appeared 172 times in the bios - so around 172 pro Trump accounts. Amusingly, his name appeared more than Boris. Also add all the pro-Trump terms together (like MAGA) and at least 333 accounts tweeting on this are pro-Trump #CumGate
10/ Finally the most retweeted (anti media) accounts are @trishaphillipss (who has just blocked me after telling me all the accounts are real), this tanned chap @FoxxysTweets and @SocialM85897394 - a social media account with a terrible handle. Anyway, safe to say "Scum Media"
11/ was, according to the data, a hashtag by mostly pro-Brexit and pro-Trump accounts. The accounts harassed journalists and many of the keyplayers seem to have anonymous profiles. Classic Twitter. Hope you enjoyed, share if you enjoyed #cumgate #Domnishambles
