We observe that in the wake of a major political event, the conversation on Twitter forms a structure where Legacy media and prominent politicians are central in the network, while memes and commentary gain popularity and prominence in more political partisan sub-communities but do not prompt further conversation. We suggest that with future research, patterns may emerge following breaking news events that do replicate the structure of this network, both in terms of the distribution of political information on Twitter and its partisan skewing.
The imagery and textual rhetoric of our findings show that American do not have a unified national narrative of the events. Furthermore, the imagery and textual rhetoric imply that the framing of this event is influenced by recent political events, namely, BLM protests. Historians frequently argue that political movements build upon and against each other – this seems like evidence of this phenomenon. A deliberate search of historical imagery in the context of modern partisan conversations could be revealing in terms of the ways in which we frame our understanding of not just partisan politics, but the historical implications of our actions in the modern-day.
A Final Thought
Twitter has proved to be a fascinating way to engage with the Capitol Riots. Legacy media’s influence, our partisan political climate, and echo chambers can all be observed within our Twitter data. One may ask: “But is this Twitter data actually real? Is it representative of actual behavior?” This will always be a reasonable challenge to this style of research – and one should always be cognizant of a method’s strengths and weaknesses. However, we should not be quick to discount the activities on social media platforms. If anything, the events of the Capitol Riots itself demonstrates that the line between online discourse/intention and real offline consequences is blurred.
