txwater retweets

Let’s find out the retweet relationships for txwater twitter users.

Note, post updated on July 29, 2020.

Let’s find out the retweet relationships for #txwater twitter users. I’m going to use the R recipes by Bob Rudis in 21 Recipes for Mining Twitter Data with rtweet.

Extract the origin

library(rtweet)
library(tidyverse)
token <- readRDS(Sys.getenv("TWITTER_PAT")) ## see https://docs.ropensci.org/rtweet/articles/auth.html
txwater <- search_tweets("#txwater", 
                         n = 1000, 
                         token = token)
output <- filter(txwater, 
                 retweet_count > 0) %>% 
  select(text, 
         mentions_screen_name, 
         retweet_count) %>% 
  mutate(text = substr(text, 1, 30)) %>% 
  unnest()
as_tibble(output)

# A tibble: 378 x 3
   text                     mentions_screen_n~ retweet_count
   <chr>                    <chr>                      <int>
 1 "We appreciate the oppo~ TexasPlusWater                 2
 2 "We appreciate the oppo~ txawwa                         2
 3 "We appreciate the oppo~ TexasWCA                       2
 4 "Houston Officials Are ~ <NA>                           2
 5 "This issue of @MuniWat~ TexasWCA                       5
 6 "This issue of @MuniWat~ MuniWaterLeader                5
 7 "This issue of @MuniWat~ NTMWD                          5
 8 "This issue of @MuniWat~ MySAWS                         5
 9 "The Texas Parks and Wi~ <NA>                           2
10 "Frankly the change in ~ PLFTX                          1
# ... with 368 more rows

Plot txwater retweet degree distribution

library(igraph)
library(hrbrthemes)
rt_g <- filter(txwater, retweet_count > 0) %>% 
  select(screen_name, mentions_screen_name) %>%
  unnest(mentions_screen_name) %>% 
  filter(!is.na(mentions_screen_name)) %>% 
  graph_from_data_frame()
ggplot(data_frame(y=degree_distribution(rt_g), x=1:length(y))) +
  geom_segment(aes(x, y, xend=x, yend=0), color="slateblue") +
  scale_y_continuous(expand=c(0,0), trans="sqrt") +
  labs(x="Degree", y="Density (sqrt scale)", title="#txwater Retweet Degree Distribution") +
  theme_ipsum_rc(grid="Y", axis="x")

Plot retweet relationships

library(ggraph)
# Label nodes
V(rt_g)$node_label <- unname(names(V(rt_g)))
# Size of node
V(rt_g)$node_size <- unname(ifelse(degree(rt_g)[V(rt_g)] > 1, degree(rt_g), 1)) 
# Adjust angle of label based on position
nIds <- length(V(rt_g))
V(rt_g)$Id <- seq(1:nIds)
V(rt_g)$label_angle <- 90 - 360 *  V(rt_g)$Id / nIds
V(rt_g)$hjust <- ifelse(V(rt_g)$label_angle < -90, 1, 0)
# Flip text depending on what side of the plot it is on
V(rt_g)$angle <- ifelse(V(rt_g)$label_angle < -90, V(rt_g)$label_angle+180, V(rt_g)$label_angle)
p <- ggraph(rt_g, layout = 'linear', circular = TRUE) + 
  geom_edge_arc(aes(alpha=..index..)) +
  geom_node_point(aes(x = x*1.07, y=y*1.07, size=node_size,  alpha=0.2)) +
  geom_node_text(aes(x=x*1.15, y=y*1.15,label=node_label, angle=angle, hjust=hjust),
                  color="dodgerblue", size=2.7, family=font_rc) +
  coord_fixed() +
  labs(title="#txwater Relationships", subtitle="Darkers edges == more retweets. Node size == larger degree") +
  theme_graph(base_family=font_rc) +
  theme(legend.position="none") +
  expand_limits(x = c(-1.3, 1.3), y = c(-1.3, 1.3))
p

The rtweet search_tweets() function returns approximately 8 days worth of retweets. Depending on when this script was run, the relationships might change. I was suprised to see only a handful of state agencies are well engaged in this hashtag. The next step is to take look at relationships between users and text sentiment analysis. But that is it for this post.