INTRODUCTION

This visualization explores the validity of the rumors that spread in London during the UK riots. Reliable information was difficult to find on the internet in real time, and this project is based on tweet analysis to see how information spread, and how this rumors propagated before eventually dying. As the creators said:

Rare individuals requested sources, countered hearsay, sought the truth. The rise and fall of rumours on Twitter is a striking display of social forces in action.

When we open the website, we are presented with a choice of rumor to visualize.. This is not a flexible tool to analyze tweets but a visualization very specific to these particular events, and therefore tailored just for them.

Try the visualization for yourself on the guardian website (link on the right) or watch this video

Links

visualization web page

behind the scenes

What When Who

Riots in London

Summer 2011

The Guardian

2010 - present

INTRODUCTION

What is this

about

See this in

action

Click on a rumor, for instance on "Rioters attack London zoo and release animals". We can see a timeline showing the rate of tweets per hour, and just below a visualization corresponding to the current time selected.

The bubble are tweets, their color depend on wether they support (green), oppose (red) or simply comment (yellow) on the rumor. Their size is proportional to the number of followers (how influential it is).

The big bubbles in the background that contain smaller bubble are grouping tweets by similarity, combining together RT (retweets) and replies, where the actual content is the same.

We can PLAY the animation (temporally) and see how a tweet spreads (causes RT etc..) and other tweets appear.. usually supporting the rumor at the beginning. Then some red starts to appear and usually the rumor in the end is proven to be just that: a rumor.

On the left we can see some explanation (events) of what is going on, the presentation is very curated and well though so it's easy to keep track of what is going on.