{"id":22645,"date":"2016-07-14T11:00:46","date_gmt":"2016-07-14T10:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sotrender.com\/?p=22645"},"modified":"2024-04-16T14:40:04","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T12:40:04","slug":"brexit-on-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sotrender.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/brexit-on-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"Brexit on Twitter – The internet reacts to the UK leaving the EU"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday, June 23rd proved to be a historic day for Europe, and it lit social media up like dynamite.<\/p>\n

Brexit was a success: the UK decided to leave the European Union<\/a>. Unexpected and bewildering<\/a> to many Britons, and even more so for every watching from the outside, 52% of voters voted to leave the EU. 71.8% of the population turned out to vote, which is more than 30 million people. As for individual nations, England and Wales opted to leave, while Scotland and Northern Island voted to remain.<\/p>\n

This has created a proper storm in the UK. It caused Prime Minister David Cameron to resign<\/a>. Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence party, also stepped down<\/a> (a surprising move on his part, considering his advocacy for the Brexit movement). All this has created great unrest in the UK. And people are ready to do something about it.
\n<\/p>\n

Thankfully for us, \u2018doing something about it\u2019 means making tweets about it.<\/p>\n

Method to our Brexit Madness<\/strong><\/h2>\n

We at Sotrender decided to take a look at how people were acting and reacting to Brexit on Twitter. Such controversial events always incite interesting reactions, and we wanted to see if we might learn a bit from it. We analyzed the activities of approximately 2 million users between 11 AM and 11 PM GMT on June 24th 2016 to see how they were wording tweets, which hashtags they were using, and what the most popular tweets were.<\/p>\n

Popular Keywords\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n

What keywords were people using during the reactionary moments just after the Brexit decision? Let\u2019s have a look. This word cloud is based on 760 thousand basic tweets analyzed, searching for the most popular keywords, excluding hashtags:<\/p>\n

\"Sotrender<\/a>

If you look not-so-closely, you can see ‘fuck’ written under the ‘i’ of ‘brexit.’ No surprise there.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018Brexit\u2019 and \u2018vote\u2019 were the most used words, which is not surprising. People on Twitter were encouraging others to take part in the vote to a great extent. Even Donald Trump was sharing his opinion on the vote. Both ‘Donald’ and ‘Trump’ also managed to make it\u00a0into the wordcloud. While\u00a0generally being a controversial figure, he has also demonstrated his support for Brexit. He has claimed that the UK would be better off without the EU<\/a>. Furthermore, \u00a0he was conveniently in Scotland during the reveal of the decision, where he was able to prove\u00a0his ignorance once again. Thankfully, Lily Allen was on Twitter to help clarify his lack of knowledge.<\/p>\n

\"Sotrender<\/a><\/p>\n

Conversations also revolved around the final decision to leave and worrying about what happens now.<\/p>\n

Popular Hashtags<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Now let\u2019s have a look at the most commonly used hashtags. This wordcloud is based off the same 760 thousand tweets analyzed, but this time only looking at hashtags.<\/p>\n

\"Sotrender<\/a><\/p>\n

#brexit was the most used hashtag, followed along with #euref, #eurefresults, #news, and #uk. Accordingly, Political figures were also used as hashtags quite a few times. However, Trump managed to be the most used political figure hashtag. Despite the fact that he wasn’t involved in the referendum. And let\u2019s not forget the #euro2016 hashtag that was still used, as even brexit can\u2019t completely kill the popularity of the EURO cup.<\/p>\n

Below you can see the most used hashtags with ‘brexit’ in the tweet. Excluding #brexit, as that goes without saying at that point. You can see even from hashtag usage that #leave was more popular than #remain, even it is not even a 1, 000 tweet difference. And just cracking the list is #viral. You know, just in case brexit wasn’t viral enough.<\/p>\n

\"Sotrender<\/a><\/p>\n

Start your free trial and analyze your Facebook profile!<\/span>Learn more<\/a><\/h4><\/div><\/p>\n

Best Brexit Tweets<\/strong><\/h2>\n

People made a lot of good tweets in light of the Brexit voting results, with people wanting to voice their opinions and thoughts on the issue. But, like with all things, some tweets performed better than others. It\u2019s therefore interesting to see what kinds of tweets received the most attention over such a controversial topic. Coming out on top with the most favourited tweet is Donald Trump, in fittingly irrelevant fashion:<\/p>\n

\n

Crooked Hillary called it totally wrong on BREXIT – she went with Obama – and now she is saying we need her to lead. She would be a disaster<\/p>\n

\u2014 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 24 June 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Donald Trump\u2019s Twitter page didn\u2019t offer any insights into Brexit, naturally. But they did take the opportunity to bash Clinton and Obama, trying to gain some leverage against them for his campaign. And what\u2019s a Trump tweet without a blatant insult to finish it off?<\/p>\n

Joking aside, Brexit won’t make any difference.
\nThe rich will still be rich, the poor will still be poor, and we’ll still blame foreigners.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) 24 June 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n