PRESENTLY UNTITLED: Data Mapping of 2016 US Presidential Election Twitter Activity

PRESENTLY UNTITLED: Data Mapping of 2016 US Presidential Election Twitter Activity

Jiayi Young and Shih-Wen Young / USA
University of California, Davis
jdyoung@ucdavis.edu, http://jiayiyoung.net/

This project, with its multiple phases, transforms the 2016 United States Presidential Election Twitter data into a large-scale installation to probe the question of how social media assumes form and transforms the shaping of the future of a nation. The installation recounts Twitter hashtag activity on the topic from February 2016 through the election date of November 8, 2016. By identifying major Twitter influencers in this election period, uncovering the propagation patterns within the data, and differentiating human tweets from AI tweets, the installation exposes the inner mechanisms of a world where true human tweets and tweets generated by Twitter Bots mutually influence each other and propagate inseparably as a combined voice.

The installation allows the examination of the machine world infiltration that shifted the generative entropic propagation of social media influence on this US election, and provides a physical space for contemplating the significant challenges social media pose in our understanding of the social fabric and the radical transformation of the ways in which we now relate to each other.

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