Social media — especially the immediate, back-and-forth conversations of Twitter — can reflect the issues most on peoples' minds. For Fresno, that included the Golden Globes, the president, and college football’s biggest game.
Hoodline sifted through a week’s worth of the city’s loud and chaotic stream of tweets to figure out what really has you talking (or rather, typing).
But first, the numbers. Twitter users whose profiles place them in Fresno generated 200,623 tweets and retweets between Jan. 7 and Jan. 13. Daily tweets ranged from a high of 30,385 on Jan. 10 down to 26,089 on Jan. 12.
Part of the chatter was locals taking part in national trending conversations, based on Twitter’s list of trending terms and tags for the week. Two of those in particular drew the attention of Fresno’s tweeters: #GoldenGlobes and #NationalChampionship.
Fresno's Christopher Gabriel, @CGProgram, covered the NCAA national championship game between Alabama and Clemson, including interviews and game commentary. Before the kickoff he tweeted:
I asked Tua Tagovailoa about what's expected of players at Alabama: "Standard over feelings. You've got to do everything the way it's supposed to be done. Trust the process is what Coach Saban always says. Trust the process." @940ESPN #RollTide #NationalChampionship #CFBPlayoff
— Christopher Gabriel (@CGProgram) January 7, 2019
And Fresno-based reporter BoNhia Lee has this reaction to Oprah's awards ceremony speech:
Yass Oprah! Yass! #GoldenGlobes
— BoNhia Lee (@bonhialee) January 8, 2018
The city also saw dozens of hashtags arise locally during the week. Most of them didn’t gain much traction (that’s typical), but two that did were #GoDogs (406 local tweets), #ValleyTough (113 local tweets) and #EverythingWeGot (42 local tweets).
Coming off December's 31-20 Las Vegas Bowl win over Arizona State, @FresnoStateFB shared some good news for the Mountain West powerhouse:
The end of season polls are in, the 12-2 'Dogs finish ranked 1⃣8⃣ in both the @AP_Top25 and Amway @usatodaysports Coaches Poll! #GoDogs pic.twitter.com/ypomNYfZvF
— Fresno State Football (@FresnoStateFB) January 8, 2019
It was a mixed week for the Bulldogs’ men’s basketball team (and #ValleyTough), with Fresno State winning on the road at Utah State and dropping one at home to No. 10 Nevada.
Most of the city’s Twitter conversations happen without hashtags, so Hoodline also applied our analytical tools to the text of all 200,000 tweets to surface more of what was on your mind. The word cloud shows the relative frequency of the top 50 terms from tweets originating in Fresno during the week. No. 1 was “love,” appearing 4,767 times. Other top words included “Trump,” appearing 2,702 times, and “border,” with 1,084 instance.
To take the temperature on social media each week, we collect all tweets from Fresno-based Twitter users and those tweets tagged with locations in the city, then apply our own complex analytical tools to refine the flood of tweets into a coherent analysis of the city’s week on social media.
There’s a lot of data behind our story, but it doesn’t include absolutely everything. We have, for example, cooked up ways to screen out offensive tweets, and we’ve taken steps to reduce the noise from bots and fake accounts.
Want more of Hoodline’s coverage of Fresno news and neighborhoods?
- What does $1,300 rent you in Fresno, today?
- The very best movies screening in Fresno this week
- Dessert destinations: The 3 best spots to score custom cakes in Fresno
