There’s no better way to see Tweets about the Middle East than by following NPR Senior Strategist Andy Carvin. He’s curating, verifying when possible and reporting on Tweets from and about the contentious region day and night.
How diverse are the Tweets Carvin is curating? We used the handy web app Needlebase to scrape, analyze and map the Twitter community Carvin is bringing into the streams of his own community of followers and found some interesting data points. He’s retweeted 186 distinct Twitter accounts over the last four days alone.
- 56% of the accounts Carvin has shared content from have listed recognizable locations on their Twitter profiles. 44% have undisclosed or unclear locations, no doubt in some cases for reasons of personal safety.
- A healthy 40% of those who have listed locations are located in the Middle East!
- Only 15% of the people Retweeted are from the United States.
- Eight are from Libya, though several of those are satirical accounts.
Many more levels and types of analysis are possible and of course locations aren’t verified. But for now it’s nice to know that the people watching Andy Carvin’s Tweet stream (I sure am) are getting a diverse stream of messages with a solid percentage of those sources coming from the region in question.
Thanks for all you do, Andy!
Below: As Carvin adds value on Twitter, his own community grows.
