Investigations of an itinerant scholar, mostly trying to make sense of this crazy place called South Africa through data science and culture.
Jun 2 • 26 tweets • 8 min read
THREAD/ Here's a map of the main groups pushing #SouthAfrica's vote rigging "Big Lie" conspiracy on X. Note: not all users shown are pushing the conspiracy. Some, like @tshidi_lee are just doing their job and reporting on what politicians say. #SADecides2024 #SAElections2024
Let's look at the evolution of #SouthAfrica's "Big Lie" so far. Country's are at their most vulnerable during elections, and questioning elections integrity is an age-old tactic that's been used by Trump and Bolsonaro in recent years. #SADecides2024 #SAElections2024 #elections
Feb 6, 2022 • 16 tweets • 11 min read
THREAD: Here's a visualisation of the SECOND report from the @StateCaptureCom, focusing on Transnet and Denel. It was created by @thembani_p and myself 🧐🧐🧐 2/ You might also want to remind yourself about our visualisation of the first report in this thread:
THREAD: We're dealing with the 'fog of war' right now as the looting/insurrection continues. Here's a small attempt at some context based on 904k tweets as of Wednesday 14 July. #ShutdownSA
Four main communities are driving the conversation. Most of them are anti-looting and anti-insurrection. This network map visualises the communities involved on Twitter. Caveat: community membership is a statistical process; it does not 100% confirm ideological alignment.
Feb 21, 2020 • 7 tweets • 7 min read
1/ It’s a bit late, but here’s a quick look at SONA discussions on Twitter. This is based on ~424,000 tweets by ~114,000 Twitter users between last Monday 10th until this morning (Friday 21st). The vast majority of the tweets were generated during the time of the SONA though.
2/ Here’s the network of users discussing SONA. The EFF and RET communities group together. They increasingly sing from the same hymn book esp. wrt to Gordhan. Almost a quarter (23%) of all tweets came from this community. All together now folks: “Twitter isn’t real life”.