What people are sharing on Trump’s facebook site…

On 21. Dezember 2016 by rkuebler

Ever wondered what people discuss and share on president elect Donald Trump’s official facebook site? We used facebook’s Graph Api to extract all comments people left under his posts from January 2014 to the week he got elected in November 2016. In total we harvested more than 10 million comments.

With the help of R’s stringi packet and the wonderful str_extract we were able to  filter out all links posted in comments.

The share of links is surprisingly small. In total we identified 390105 comments, which included some sort of link.

Using again str_extract we extracted now from the URLs the domain part and used R’s table function to get the frequency for each domain. So, what’s your guess? Which site was number1? I bet my money of course on Breitbart. However, the redneck site turns out to be overtaken by all social media efforts. Breitbart is “only” number 3 of the most shared sites. The highly discussed alt-right platform needs to share the podium with Facebook (2) and Youtube (1). In addition the gap between the two social media sites and Breitbart is remarkably large, with Breitbart receiving approx. 20x less shares than facebook or youtube.  Gofundme a crowdfunding site for person based campaigns is taking the wooden medal. Only then traditional media comes in with the Washingtonpost taking place 5, followed by all sorts of other traditional media outlets like CNN, Fox, and others. Huffingtonpost and Politico both more associated with the democratic and liberal voters take places 9 and 10 highlighting the intense debate between Trump and Clinton supporters.

Table1: Top 10 Shared Sites in Comments on Donald Trump’s facebook site

# Domain Times_Shared
1 Youtube 79581
2 facebook 73614
3 Breitbart 4539
4 gofundme 4108
5 WashingtonPost 3607
6 CNN 2803
7 NY Times 2718
8 foxnews 2308
9 huffingtonpost 2176
10 politico 1676

Although this gives us some ideas about what kind of content is shared, it would be interesting to get a deeper idea of what exact content is shared. No problem, we can use R’s wonderful dplyr package to use filter and grepl to extract all comments, which contain a URL with one of the Top10 domains.

Table2: Top 10 Shared Youtube Videos in Comments on Donald Trump’s facebook site


# Link Frequency
1 https://youtu.be/5IuJGHuIkzY 1021
2 https://youtu.be/hDc8PVCvfKs 389
3 https://youtu.be/WKYmiWiNqOw 249
4 https://youtu.be/kypl1MYuKDY 229
5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5BtQgTGOI4 196
6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hr37eE0nO8 183
7 https://youtu.be/EEQvsK5w-jY 180
8 https://youtu.be/jUDTcxIqqM0 178
9 https://youtu.be/GyLkg3uDe1c 166
10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP6S3KE2DaI 157

Ever wondered what these videos are about? Well places 1-3 are taken by some weird documentation trying to proove how Hillary is rigging the elections.

Number 4 is another intriguing documentary about baby eating Hillary with more than 15 million views since its upload in November 2015.

But don’t worry. Supporters are not fixed on Hillary Clinton. Obama, McCain, Muslims and Mexicans, the youtube videos provide every sort of stereotype and rumor about anything alt-right people don’t like…

It seems like Youtube is the weapon of choice for Trump supporters. But how is it with facebook? What are the Top10 facebook pages and groups, which were shared in the comments? Well, you can be the most powerful man in history, the most successful leader of all, the big and the lebowski, the greatest and so on… Some Cypriotic kids will still come and spam your site with some advertising for their RunInColour movement in Cyprus.

Unfortunately the second most shared group is no longer available. We can thus only speculate about the content.  Number 4 is about a documentary’s website that related Trump with America’s growing Neo Nazi movement. His own campaign only secures places 6 to 10with content from the official facebook site and some unofficial supporter sites.

Table3: Top 10 Shared facebook groups/sites in Comments on Donald Trump’s facebook site

# Link Frequency
1 https://www.facebook.com/RuninColour/ 496
2 https://www.facebook.com/groups/508373062658237/ 200
3 https://m.facebook.com/NicoleGattiOficial 158
4 https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwatchingthewheelsdad.net%2F2015%2F08%2F24%2Fdonald-trump-is-the-new-face-of-white-supremacy-says-hate-crime-expert%2F&h=cAQHDSJSV 146
5 https://www.facebook.com/G.honte/ 144
6 https://www.facebook.com/groups/DonaldTrumpCampaign/ 127
7 https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump?fref=nf 126
8 https://www.facebook.com/MarchForAmerica2016/ 120
9 https://www.facebook.com/gamersboulevard/ 112
10 https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump2016Support/ 110

So it turns out that facebook is more for the Anti-Trumps. Obviously this won’t be the case for Breitbart content. Below we share the top 10 of articles shared from Breitbart.

Table4: Top 10 Shared Breitbart stories in Comments on Donald Trump’s facebook site 


# Link Frequency
1 http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/26/anti-trump-network-fox-news-money-flows-open-borders-group/ 97
2 http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/11/11/watch-anti-migrant-video-going-viral-across-europe/ 69
3 http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/10/19/poll-won-third-presidential-debate/ 47
4 http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/10/18/flashback-jeb-bush-admitted-leaky-immigration-led-911/ 45
5 http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/28/trump-pushes-single-payer-healthcare-tax-increase-on-wealthy/ 38
6 http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/01/26/2868743/ 37
7 http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/16/carly-fiorina-hp-sold-millions-dollars-products-iran/ 35
8 http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/24/is-donald-trump-conservative-heres-the-rundown/ 33
9 http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/12/02/trump-100-vindicated-cbs-reports-swarms-on-roofs-celebrating-911/ 30
10 http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/28/trump-campaign-manager-exposes-that-fox-news-executive-in-charge-of-debates-has-daughter-working-for-marco-rubio/ 28

It turns out that Trumps’ supporters’ anger is not only focused on Hillary and the Democrats but anything that dares to oppose to Trump. Striking to see however, that all top10 articles have been directly shared less than a 100 times. Given that Breitbart enjoyed more than 4000 shared links, this indicates the high heterogeneity within topic preferences across Trump supporters.

So what are the top stories in other media? Check belows table to find the respective links and stories. Hope you enjoyed this. Digging through this gold mine of data still feels like flying with Kirk’s earliest version of the Enterprise discovering each day new species and insights.

Table5: Top 10 Washington Post articles shared in Comments on Donald Trump’s facebook site

# Link Frequency
1 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-recorded-having-extremely-lewd-conversation-about-women-in-2005/2016/10/07/3b9ce776-8cb4-11e6-bf8a-3d26847eeed4_story.html 193
2 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-mexicans-crossed-our-border-to-feed-our-hungry/2015/08/28/347342e4-4cee-11e5-84df-923b3ef1a64b_story.html 88
3 http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/20/what-donald-trump-was-up-to-while-john-mccain-was-suffering-as-a-prisoner-of-war/ 64
4 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/11/22/donald-trumps-outrageous-claim-that-thousands-of-new-jersey-muslims-celebrated-the-911-attacks/ 56
5 http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/20/what-donald-trump-was-up-to-while-john-mccain-was-suffering-as-a-prisoner-of-war/?tid=sm_fb 44
6 https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/11/23/donald-trump-is-constantly-lying/ 34
7 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/09/18/northern-new-jersey-draws-probers-eyes/40f82ea4-e015-4d6e-a87e-93aa433fafdc/ 33
8 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-recorded-having-extremely-lewd-conversation-about-women-in-2005/2016/10/07/3b9ce776-8cb4-11e6-bf8a-3d26847eeed4_story.html?postshare=3561475870579757&tid=ss_tw 26
9 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-recorded-having-extremely-lewd-conversation-about-women-in-2005/2016/10/07/3b9ce776-8cb4-11e6-bf8a-3d26847eeed4_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_trumptape-404pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory 25
10 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/13/michelle-obama-just-put-a-huge-and-emotional-exclamation-point-on-trumps-hot-mic-tape/ 24

 

Table6: Top 10 CNN stories shared in Comments on Donald Trump’s facebook site


# Link Frequency
1 http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2015/10/13/busted-cnn-uses-jeb-bush-staffer-planted-in-audience-to-frame-donald-trump-narrativehit-job/ 108
2 http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/07/politics/donald-trump-women-vulgar/index.html 52
3 http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/08/politics/trump-on-howard-stern/index.html 37
4 http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/27/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-debate-poll/ 36
5 http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/24/news/donald-trump-university-lawsuit/ 35
6 http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/31/news/companies/donald-trump-bankruptcy/ 32
7 http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/29/politics/trump-university-fraud-claims/ 28
8 http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/25/politics/trump-obamacare-employees/index.html 27
9 http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/09/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-conspiracy/index.html 22
10 http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/28/politics/fbi-reviewing-new-emails-in-clinton-probe-director-tells-senate-judiciary-committee/index.html 21

Table7: Top 10 New York Times articles shared in Comments on Donald Trump’s facebook site


# Link Frequencies
1 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/09/us/elections/fact-check-debate.html 61
2 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-taxes.html?_r=0 47
3 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donald-trump-twitter-insults.html 37
4 http://www.nytimes.com/…/do-illegal-immigrants-actually…), 36
5 https://www.facebook.com/nytimes/videos/10150926533244999/ 35
6 http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/29/opinion/selling-off-apache-holy-land.html?referrer= 27
7 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/opinion/campaign-stops/all-politicians-lie-some-lie-more-than-others.html 26
8 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/29/us/politics/at-least-110-republican-leaders-wont-vote-for-donald-trump-heres-when-they-reached-their-breaking-point.html?_r=0 26
9 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-taxes.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 23
10 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donald-trump-twitter-insults.html?_r=0 23

 

Table8: Top 10 foxnews stories shared in Comments on Donald Trump’s facebook site


# Link Frequencies
1 http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/10/22/calibration-error-changes-gop-votes-to-dem-in-illinois-county.html 152
2 http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/10/28/fbi-reopens-investigation-into-clinton-email-use.html 72
3 http://nation.foxnews.com/poll/2015/12/02/if-election-were-held-today-who-would-vote-for/ 66
4 http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/10/05/doj-abruptly-drops-case-against-gun-runner-who-threatened-to-reveal-clintons-libya-dealings.html 53
5 http://nation.foxnews.com/poll/index.html 46
6 http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/07/03/man-arrested-in-connection-with-san-francisco-killing-had-been-deported-several/ 32
7 http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/10/22/trump-will-win-election-professor-long-track-record-predicts 28
8 http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/10/21/dead-people-registering-reporter-lays-out-examples-voter-fraud-swing-states 22
9 http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/10/24/clinton-attack-featuring-miss-universe-was-months-in-making-email-shows.html 22
10 http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/10/08/mr-trump-its-time-for-some-debate-judo-heres-how-to-bring-it-to-st-louis.html 20


I found it also very interesting that wikipedia managed to get shared more than 1600 times in the comments, bringing wikipedia to place 15 within the domains ranking. Curious about what Trumpists are educating themselves? Here we go:

Table9: Top 10 Wikipedia entries shared in Comments on Donald Trump’s facebook site


# Link Frequencies
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenya_%28http:/en.wikipedia..org/wiki/Kenya%29 42
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump 25
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States) 23
4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivana_Trump 16
5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_affairs_of_Donald_Trump 16
6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_sexual_misconduct_allegations 15
7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Carson. 12
8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mullah_Krekar 12
9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural-born-citizen_clause 12
10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_primaries_in_the_United_States 12


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