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[Thread]1/ It was interesting to see Stephen Kinnock trending after the whole Dominic Cummings scandal emerged. The reason being was largely some unhelpful 'whataboutism' - i.e. people saying he should be sacked if Cummings has to go. > Analysis of around 11700 tweets.
![[Thread]1/ It was interesting to see Stephen Kinnock trending after the whole Dominic Cummings scandal emerged. The reason being was largely some unhelpful 'whataboutism' - i.e. people saying he should be sacked if Cummings has to go. > Analysis of around 11700 tweets.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYsTaGhWsAAsCbC.jpg "[Thread]1/ It was interesting to see Stephen Kinnock trending after the whole Dominic Cummings scandal emerged. The reason being was largely some unhelpful 'whataboutism' - i.e. people saying he should be sacked if Cummings has to go. > Analysis of around 11700 tweets.")
2/ The graph shows around 11700 tweets of people mentioning either "Stephen Kinnock" or "stevenkinnock". I just want to briefly explain what it means. Pink community are those engaging in whataboutism. Green community are mostly those wondering why 'Kinnock is trending'.
3/ The blue community is mostly people discussing an unrelated Guardian article about Kinnock and China. An analysis of the pink community shows that their most common cohesive factor is being pro-Brexit. Around 17% of these 3555 pink accounts describe themselves as anti-EU or
4/ pro-Brexit. The green community's most common biographical descriptor is 'socialist'. It generally seems pro-EU and also Labour. As with the other group, "love" is one of the most popular words in the bio. (This I always find perplexing).
5/ One of the most retweeted "anti-Kinnock" tweets was by @rodbishop15 . However, one of the second most retweeted tweets was a "why isn't Cummings trending but Kinnock trending tweet" by @HLM123456 - ironically perhaps, contributing to Kinnock trending
6/ Of course the odd thing is, almost 50% of the tweets about Kinnock actually mentioning Cummings. Considering Cummings is the news story, and is being mentioned across the media, people are right to ask why his whole name is not trending, whereas Kinnock's is. Some have
7/ suggested Cummings name maybe triggered porn filters. Don't know if that's true but would be quite funny. Either way, Kinnock, Laura Kuenssberg, Durham and other connected terms have been trending. Saved by a pornstar name eh...
8/ Although we can speculate why his whole name isn't trending. It's interesting that a largely pro-Brexit and right wing group have sought to use whataboutism around Kinnock at this juncture. What the data shows is that those doing so are largely doing so on partisan lines. Fin
