Twitter trends

Analyzing Social Media Data in R

Vivek Vijayaraghavan

Data Science Coach

Lesson Overview

  • Understand twitter trends
  • Extract trending topics
  • Use trends for participation and engagement
Analyzing Social Media Data in R

What is a twitter trend?

  • Keywords, events, or topics that are currently popular
  • Discover hottest emerging topics of discussion
  • Some trends include a hashtag
  • Hashtags help search for trending conversations
  • Location trends identify topics in a specific location
Analyzing Social Media Data in R

Leveraging the power of twitter trends

  • Blend marketing messages with trending topic
  • Trends help increase tweet engagements
  • Travel portal tweets around "#TravelTuesday"
Analyzing Social Media Data in R

Extract worldwide trends

# Get overall current trending topics
trend_topics <- get_trends()
head(trend_topics$trend, 10)

 [1] "#madebygoogle"         "#????H??????"
 [3] "????"                "Jennifer Aniston"      
 [5] "#??????????"     "#FelizMartes"          
 [7] "#G????????"       "????"              
 [9] "????"                "??????"
  • More meaningful to extract trends around a specific region
Analyzing Social Media Data in R

Locations with current trends

# Extract locations of available twitter trends
trends_avail <- trends_available()
head(trends_avail)

name                        url                          parentid    country
<chr>                      <chr>                           <int>      <chr>
Worldwide     http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/place/1            
Winnipeg      http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/place/2972    23424775    Canada
Ottawa        http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/place/3369    23424775    Canada    
Quebec        http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/place/3444    23424775    Canada    
Montreal      http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/place/3534    23424775    Canada    
Toronto       http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/place/4118    23424775    Canada
Analyzing Social Media Data in R

Trending topics by country

# Get trending topics in the US
gt_US <- get_trends("United States")
Analyzing Social Media Data in R

Trending topics by country

View(gt_US)

Trending topics in the United States

  • Music video company can position promotions with "hashtagRockHall2020"
Analyzing Social Media Data in R

Trending topics by city

  • Find trends in a specific city
  • Attach tweets around relevant trend
# Get trending topics in New York
gt_city <- get_trends("New York")
Analyzing Social Media Data in R

Trending topics by city

head(gt_city)


trend                            url                        promoted_content
<chr>                           <chr>                             <lgl>
Lions            http://twitter.com/search?q=Lions                  NA    
Green Bay        http://twitter.com/search?q=%22Green+Bay%22        NA    
#DETvsGB         http://twitter.com/search?q=%23DETvsGB             NA    
LeBron           http://twitter.com/search?q=LeBron                 NA    
Aaron Rodgers    http://twitter.com/search?q=%22Aaron+Rodgers%22    NA    
#90DayFiance     http://twitter.com/search?q=%2390DayFiance         NA
  • Company promoting basketball merchandise could leverage this trend
Analyzing Social Media Data in R

Most tweeted trends

  • tweet_volume has count of tweets made on a trending topic
  • It is available for some trends only
  • Identify trends that are most tweeted
Analyzing Social Media Data in R

Most tweeted trends

# Aggregate trends and tweet volumes
library(dplyr)
trend_df <- gt_city %>%
              group_by(trend) %>%
              summarize(tweet_vol = mean(tweet_volume))
Analyzing Social Media Data in R

Most tweeted trends

head(trend_df)

trend                  tweet_vol
<chr>                    <dbl>
#90DayFiance             14375            
#acefamilyisoverparty    12760            
#ascendwithme            NA            
#bbcon2019               NA            
#bookbirthday            NA            
#DemDebate               18928
Analyzing Social Media Data in R

Most tweeted trends

# Sort data frame on descending order of tweet volumes
trend_df_sort <- arrange(trend_df, desc(tweet_vol))
Analyzing Social Media Data in R

Most tweeted trends

# View the most tweeted trends
head(trend_df_sort)

trend              tweet_vol
<chr>               <dbl>
LeBron              298302            
Lions               267945            
Columbus Day        135014            
John Bolton         118933            
#DETvsGB            67197            
#TuesdayThoughts    63259
  • Travel company can promote holiday packages around "Columbus Day"
Analyzing Social Media Data in R

Let's practice!

Analyzing Social Media Data in R

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