This is a very good thread. We have an astro-turf war on immigrants being whipped up by Americans and Brits.
https://twitter.com/SamDoak5/status/1785914670441693323
Wrote about the outsized effect of US and UK social media users on debates concerning migration in Ireland
Pulled 30 days of Twitter data using social media monitoring tool Talkwalker, was interested in discussion of unrest in Newtownmountkennedy.
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How international social media users are stoking Ireland’s migration debateSky News’ Data & Forensics Unit analysed recent posts concerning unrest and mentioning anti-migration hashtags, finding the majority originate outside of Ireland.https://news.sky.com/story/how-international-social-media-users-are-stoking-irelands-migration-debate-13127034
First I looked at the term Newtownmountkennedy. The distinctive name makes it easy to search.
Unsurprisingly, mentions spiked the day of the unrest on April 25, and peaked the following day.
More interesting is the geographical split.
American users were most represented in the data, accounting for 56.1% of all posts.
20.9% were from accounts based in Ireland, and 9.6% from UK users.
Of the five accounts that attracted most engagements on posts mentioning
Newtownmountkennedy, three were based outside of Ireland.
The fourth by engagement was Tommy
Robinson’s account.
To get a better view, I also looked at two hashtags frequently used in relation to anti-migration discourse in Ireland.
#.IrelandBelongsToThelrish also began to spike on April 25, usage increased until April 28.
Again, American accounts authored over half of all posts using this hashtag, 57%.
Irish users posted 24.7% of them, UK accounts 8.8%.
The four accounts that attracted the most engagement with this hashtag were Irish.
The fifth was Alex Jones.
The last term I looked at was the hashtag #IrelandlsFull.
Overall followed a very similar trend. Usage spiked on the day of the protest, peaking the day after.
Again, American users were responsible for most posts, 54.4%.
Irish accounts posted 28%, UK ones were responsible for 8.1%.
The top accounts by engagement were all Irish.
Together I think these figures help to illustrate the level of influence users outside of Ireland have on online conversations concerning migration in the country.
Importantly this doesn’t minimise the role of Irish figures, or the country’s internal politics
Follows a similar trend to data I looked at after the Dublin riots, though more skewed towards the US.
https://twitter.com/SamDoak5/status/1730617028120031278?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1730617028120031278|twgr^184fa03c838d7e183ec4a916440a70d858e30bd1|twcon^s1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthreadreaderapp.com%2Fthread%2F1785914670441693323.html
