Trend Topic Analysis with R

Twitter is one of the most popular social media applications in recent years. With the R program, it is possible to analyze many data from Twitter. Two of these analyzes are sentiment and polarity analysis.

These analyzes were applied to one of the trend topics on Twitter. For this purpose, the first trend topics in the world were found with "getTrend ()" function. As a results of this research, the most popular trend topic is #gretathunberg.

Afterwards, tweets were cleaned and sentiment and polarity analysis were performed.

First, polarity analysis was performed. As a results of this analysis, the majority of tweets related to #gretathumberg are positive.

Figure 1: polarity analysis

Secondly, sentiment analysis was performed. According to this analysis, anticipation and trust are the most dominant feelings among tweets.

Figure 2: Sentiment analysis (second column is anticipation.)

Finally, the most popular devices, which are used to post on twitter, were analyzed. Twitter web app and twitter android are the most used software.

Figure 3: Most used software and devices

Terrorism Dilemma

Terrorism has been one of the most remarkable issues in recent years. Many scholars argue about terrorism. However, the lack of a definition of terrorism complicates the issue.

The most acceptable definition of terror in the world is the CIA's definition of terror. This study uses the CIA's definition of terrorism. According to Central Intelligence Agency (2007), terrorism means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

This definition is quite clear. Based on this definition, the YPG in Syria is a terrorist organization. However, many Western countries and the United States do not recognize YPG as terrorists. But this organization has caused the deaths of many innocent people in Turkey. Nevertheless, the media of many countries continue to have positive news about this organization. In addition, there are also positive news about the terrorist organization on Twitter.

For this purpose, sentiment and polarity analysis related with YPG in CNN, The New York Times and Twitter was performed.

                       

      

                                      Figure 1: Polarity result of CNN

Firstly, CNN's latest news about ypg is examined. The analysis revealed that the CNN's news was very positive about YPG. The most commonly used sentiment in the news about YPG is trust.

                               

                                          Figure 2: Sentiment result of CNN

            Secondly, the last news of the new york times about ypg was analyzed. Similar results were obtained with CNN. The new york times ypg news is also very positive. The most commonly used sentiment in the New York Times’ news about YPG is trust.

                                                Figure 3: Polarity result of New York Times

                                               Figure 4: Sentiment result of New York Times

Finally, the last 100 tweets about YPG on Twitter were analyzed. Twitter also has positive tweets about YPG, like CNN and New York Time. The most commonly used sentiment in twitter about YPG is fear. Tweets about ISIS raise the fear rate. That’s why fear was the most common sentiment in this anaysis.

                                      Figure 5: Polarity result of Tweets

                                      Figure 6: Sentiment result of Tweets

As seen above, there are positive views on YPG, which many countries recognize as terrorist organizations, in the media and social media. 

Cryptocurrency(1)

           In recent years, cryptocurrencies have become quite popular in the world. However, this issue of cryptocurrency reliability is highly controversial.

            In addition cryptocurrency is used in many illegal trade on the deep web. These cryptocurrencies are used for illegal slave trade and drug.

            In addition to all these problems, one of the most important problems is why the cryptocurrency rises and falls. Many scholars have different opinions on this issue. However, the common view is that the ups and downs in bitcoin or cryptocurrencies do not depend on any physical factors.

            However, I think that this idea is not correct. I think that real economic activities play an important role in the rise and fall of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. I prepared a data set to test my idea. This data set includes data such as ripple and bitcoin. In addition, this data set includes data such as oil, dollar and gold.

           This data set covers June 2014 to August 2019. The values in this dataset were first translated into Turkish Lira and then normalized in R program. My results were different from the literature.

           Firstly, correlation analysis was performed. According to the results of the correlation analysis, there is a strong correlation between Bitcoin and USD and gold. In addition, there is also a correlation between oil and bitcoin. But this correlation is not strong like USD and gold.

           In addition to correlation analysis, linear regression analysis was performed. The results of linear regression analysis confirmed the results of correlation analysis. In linear regression analysis, USD was chosen as the dependent variable. Bitcoin was chosen as an independent variable.

           Linear regression analysis also shows that there is a significant relationship between Bitcoin and USD.

Protests in Hong Kong

Hong Kong is definitely different from other Chinese cities. Hong Kong was a British colony for more than 150 years - part of it, Hong Kong island, was ceded to the UK after a war in 1842. 

The territory was also popular with migrants and dissidents fleeing instability, poverty or persecution in mainland China.

Then, in the early 1980s, as the deadline for the 99-year-lease approached, Britain and China began talks on the future of Hong Kong - with the communist government in China arguing that all of Hong Kong should be returned to Chinese rule.

The two sides reached a deal in 1984 that would see Hong Kong return to China in 1997, under the principle of "one country, two systems".

As a result, Hong Kong has its own legal system and borders, and rights including freedom of assembly and free speech are protected.

However, the country is currently on the agenda with great uprisings. Protests have continued in Hong Kong since April. The reason for these protests is the act adopted by the Hong Kong parliament. This act would have allowed extradition from Hong Kong to mainland China. 

The adoption of this law attracted the reaction of many people, especially young people. This reaction quickly turned into protests.

Western media soon began to follow the protests closely. Almost every day, many biased news about protests are shared. For this reason, CNN's news from May to August was examined.

First, the most used words were examined. The results of this research are as follows;

 [1] "after"          "also"           "and"            "are"            "arrested"       "been"           "bill"           "but"            "china"          "city"           "demonstrations"
[12] "extradition"    "for"            "from"           "had"            "has"            "have"           "hong"           "including"      "kong"           "last"           "long"       
[23] "monday"         "more"           "night"          "not"            "one"            "party"          "people"         "police"         "political"      "protest"        "protesters" 
[34] "protests"       "said"           "since"          "sunday"         "than"           "that"           "the"            "their"          "they"           "two"            "was"         
[45] "were"           "which"          "will"           "with"           "yuen"

Then, correlation analysis of some of the most commonly used words was examined. The first of the examined words is the China. The correlation analysis of the "China" word is as follows;

   mainland         mob         unlawful       station     between 
           0.98        0.98               0.98             0.97        0.96             
         movement      unrest                    accusations
               0.80        0.79                           0.76
   

As can be seen, one of the words with the highest correlation with China is unlawful. Then the correlation analysis of the word "police" was examined. The correlation analysis of the "police" word is as follows;

consecutive       march         weeks        people     kok          mong       
1.00                    1.00          1.00          0.96          0.92          0.92                 
demonstrators   extradition       support
          0.79          0.79                  0.79
       island         
         0.78       
As it is seen, the words that have the highest correlation with the word police are people, mong kok (one of the areas where protests continue) and arrest. Finally, the most commonly used words are shown in a graph.

The relationship between Twitter and ISIS

In recent years, great development has been seen in technology. One of the most important of these technologies is social media.

The development of social media has played an important role in many social protests in recent years in the world. The best example of such social protests is the Arab Spring period.

During the Arab Spring, social media played an important role in helping people get news and organize. However, this development of social media is not only used by innocent people. Especially in recent years, terrorist organizations also benefit from the development of social media.

The most active terrorist organization on social media is ISIS. In particular, ISIS was using Twitter very actively. %90 of ISIS social media was conducted via twitter. ISIS sympathizers posted 200000 tweets per day.

Therefore, in this study, tweets of ISIS sympathizers between 2015-2016 were examined. The results of the research are as follows;

Most active 10 twitter users about ISIS
username,                         sum(weight)
Uncle_SamCoco,             1610
mobi_ayubi,                     1071
WarReporter1,                 706
warrnews,                         657
melvynlion,                      640
RamiAlLolah,                  606
MaghrabiArabi,               450
_IshfaqAhmad,                430
AsimAbuMerjem,           289
NaseemAhmed50,           251

The research was first started to analyze one of the most active users. This user is war breaking news. This user's most commonly used words are as follows;

[1] "after"       "against"     "aleppo"      "alqassam"    "amp"         "and"         "are"         "army"        "assad"       "attack"      "border"   
[12] "breaking"    "captured"    "city"        "civilians"   "claims"      "clashes"     "damascus"    "destroyed"   "dozens"      "during"      "fallujah" 
[23] "fight"       "fighters"    "for"         "forces"      "from"        "fsa"         "gaza"        "hamas"       "have"        "homs"        "huge"     
[34] "injured"     "iranian"     "iraq"        "iraqi"       "isis"        "israel"      "israeli"     "killed"      "least"       "militant"    "militants"
[45] "military"    "more"        "mosul"       "mujahid"     "near"        "new"         "news"        "nidalgazaui" "north"       "northern"    "not"     
[56] "now"         "offensive"   "one"         "over"        "palmyra"     "people"      "province"    "rebels"      "regime"      "reports"     "russia"   
[67] "russian"     "saa"         "saudi"       "sham"        "shiite"      "shot"        "soldiers"    "south"       "southern"    "suicide"     "syria"   
[78] "syrian"      "that"        "the"         "their"       "they"        "this"        "today"       "troops"      "turkey"      "turkish"     "video"   
[89] "war"         "warnews"     "was"         "were"        "who"         "will"        "with"        "ypg"

In addition to the war breaking news, the tweets of the two users were analyzed also. The first user was Fahad al-Kuwaiti.

Fahad mostly used words such as state, mujahideen and Islamic. After Fahad, the tweets of Flames of Haqq were examined.

These are the most popular words used by Flames of Haqq. In addition, the detailed list of words used by Haqq is as follows.

[1] "ahmad"        "alasma"       "allah"        "amp"          "and"          "are"          "cerantonio"   "follow"       "for"          "from"     
[11] "isis"         "jibril"       "johnsonsbot"  "just"         "keep"         "killed"       "musa"         "mustaklash"   "nby"          "one"       
[21] "our"          "palmyra"      "please"       "rer"          "sparksofirha" "str"          "that"         "the"          "this"         "today"     
[31] "ulhusna"      "video"        "warreporter"  "who"          "with"         "wwayf"        "you"          "your"

As seen in all three examples, the most commonly used words are words such as kill or killed, video, state and war. ISIS sympathizers positively propagate ISIS with these words. As a result, ISIS sympathizers make positive propaganda through twitter. The authorities should take action on this matter.

GOOD AND BAD TERRORIST

Nowadays, the world is haunted by a ghost, the ghost of terrorism. In particular, this ghost has frightened most of the people in the world after the twin towers attack in the United States on September 11, 2001.

In recent years, terrorism has been one of the most important threats in the world. This terrible threat threatens all countries in the world.

All countries must fight together against this big threat. Unfortunately, because of the lack of a common definition of terrorism, the definition of terrorism varies from country to country. This difference in definition affects all countries' war against terrorism.

The most acceptable definition of terror in the world is the CIA's definition of terror. This study uses the CIA's definition of terrorism. According to Central Intelligence Agency (2007), terrorism means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

This definition is quite clear. Based on this definition, the YPG in Syria is a terrorist organization. However, many Western countries and the United States do not recognize YPG as terrorists. But this organization has caused the deaths of many innocent people in Turkey. Nevertheless, the media of many countries continue to have positive news about this organization.

                                          Pic: 2018 YPG suicide attack in Turkey

In this study, CNN and Reuters' news about YPG between 2015-2018 were analyzed. First, CNN news was examined. In the beginning, the number of words were used in CNN about YPG was examined. The result of this examination is as follows;

             Secondly, the schema of the most used words was prepared. According to this scheme, some of the most used words are positive words such as women, life and freedom.

              Finally, sentiment analysis was performed. As a result of this analysis, it was found that the majority of the words used about YPG were positive.

            Secondly, Reuters news about YPG were examined. As a result of the analysis of the Reuters news also showed a positive attitude toward YPG like CNN. Some of the most used words in reuters are positive words such as women, equality and freedom.

           Sentiment analysis was performed also for reuters and based on the result of this analysis, it was found that the majority of the words used in reuters about YPG were positive.

            As can be seen, there are two types of terrorists. The first is bad and dangerous terrorist and the second one is good and beneficial terrorist. However, it should not be forgotten that they are both terrorists and somewhere in the world innocent people dies everyday because of these terrorist organizations.

Is there any relationship between terrorism and poverty?

For a long time, international relations scholars have been discussing the causes of terrorism. One of the idea raised as a result of these discussions is poverty.

According to scholars such as Krueger and Maleckova (2003), there is a connection between poverty and terrorism. They support that there is a positive correlation between poverty and terrorism. According to Krueger and Maleckova (2003), if poverty is decreased, terrorism also will be decreased.

As a result of these researches, it was decided to investigate this subject in more detail. A data set was prepared in this direction. This data set included global hunger index, number of terrorist attacks, poverty and inequality numbers.

We got the global hunger index data from unicef, poverty and inequality from World bank and number of terrorist attacks from START.

There are 3 variables in this research. These variables are number of terrorist attacks in the World, global hunger index and poverty less than 1.90 usd.

 Firstly, correlation analysis between these three variables was performed. Based on this correlation analysis, no correlation was found between poverty and terror which is the purpose of the research.

            As can be seen in the table, there is no correlation between terrorism and hunger and poverty. After the correlation analysis, linear regression analysis was performed.

Dependent variable:
	Attack
Hunger	4.413
	(3.859)
Constant	30.843
	(94.052)
Observations	69
R2	0.019
Adjusted R2	0.005
Residual Std. Error	371.463 (df = 67)
F Statistic	1.308 (df = 1; 67)
Note:	*p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

             
                  As could be seen, there is no significant relation between our variables. Linear regression analysis also confirmed the correlation analysis. As can be seen, there is no correlation between terrorism and poverty and hunger. This result is different from many sources in the literature.


REFERENCE:

Krueger, A., & Malečková, J. (2003). Education, Poverty and Terrorism: Is There a Causal Connection? The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 17(4), 119-144. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3216934