The president spoke and this is what they said

Tunisia was December, Egypt was January, Bahrain was February, Libya was March, Syria and Yemen were April and the world wondered about the U.S. Finally, Obama spoke. The White House called it "Remarks by the President on the Middle East and North Africa." The buzz was about "Arab spring."

In the air

On May 19, 2011 President Obama spoke about North Africa and the Middle East. He needed to enunicate the position of his administration on the revolts against tyranny and the aspirations for democracy of these people.

On that day Twitter messages including "Obama" numbered 174,815. It was a big day by almost any standard. And this is what they said.

The analysis is divided into the twelve hours before he spoke, two hours surrounding his talk, and the hours until midnight. There were 51,163 messages before the speech, 33,786 during the two hours, and 89,866 in the afternoon and evening. First I will use figures to summarize the messages and then turn to some counts.

Before: The figure, called a word cloud, displays the words used in the messages with the words used most frequently larger and the words used less frequently smaller. Speech is the dominant word with speech and variations MEspeech and MESpeech and mespeech and Speech. It is anticipation of the event embodied in language. Middle east and mideast follow closely. Arab is the people. Israel seems irrelevant to the Arab revolt against tyranny, but it follows closely after Arab. And among the smaller words are the names of the nations wracked by rebellion.

During: It was a speech about North Africa and the Middle East. He did say 1967 borders, and that dominated the response. Israel, then speech, then borders, then Middle East. The countries of North Africa and the Middle East faded into the background. Israel was the foreground.

After: In the next 89,866 messages Israel dominated even more than before. Netanyahu, who was to meet with the president the next day, came into the messaging as they speculated about what he would say about 1967 borders. And tcot, which is the hashtag for top conservative on Twitter, came more prominently to the fore. tcot-ers do not like anyone slapping Israel around. Never mind those other countries that were the principal focus of the speech.

The word on Twitter was Israel.

The table converts size into numbers.

The number of messages before, during and after is the first row and frames the assessment of the other numbers in the table. Speech is the most frequently used word in the messages. It was a larger proportion of the messages before and during, and a lesser proportion in the after hours.

Arab spring is not mentioned frequently in these Twitter messages. At 2,387 it does appear more often than Tunisia and Yemen, but that is about all it 'beats.' However, it is interesting because it is so much more a part of the anticipation than it is in the messaging about the speech or afterward.

Somehow it seems appropriate that there were more Twitter messages mentioning Bahrain than any of the other countries. Over 80 percent of the people of Bahrain are online, which is far more than in any of the other countries. But what is striking, and confirms the analysis of the word clouds, is how infrequently the nations that were the point of the speech show up in the messaging. Even Middle East only appears 12 thousand times.

Finally, there is Israel. Speech is the most frequent word then Israel appears more often than any of the other countries/words with 37,818 mentions. It is also striking how little it was part of the anticipation and how much it was a part of the discussion afterward. Israel was in 6.5% of the before messages, in 23.2% of the during messages and in 29.6% of the after messages. That is compared with all of the individual countries of North Africa and the Middle East appearing in 16.4% of the before messages, 14.2% of the during messages and 12.0% of the after messages.

This is 'the air' -- the global universe of Twitter messaging. Obama spoke and there were a very large number of reactions.

Reactions have consequences -- the president spoke on Thursday. In the Twitter-verse the focus was on Israel and his statement about 1967 borders. Since people often deprecate the importance of social media in general and Twitter in particular that speech and the reaction provide an opportunity to reconsider those claims.

The president spoke on Thursday. Then he spoke again on Sunday, and this is what he said.

I know that stating these principles -- on the issues of territory and security -- generated some controversy over the past few days.  (Laughter.)  I wasn’t surprised.  I know very well that the easy thing to do, particularly for a President preparing for reelection, is to avoid any controversy.  I don’t need Rahm to tell me that.  Don’t need Axelrod to tell me that.  But I said to Prime Minister Netanyahu, I believe that the current situation in the Middle East does not allow for procrastination.  I also believe that real friends talk openly and honestly with one another.  (Applause.)  So I want to share with you some of what I said to the Prime Minister.

He spoke to AIPAC the largest and most influential of the voices for Israel in the U.S. And this is how he responded to the reactions to his talk.

Now, that is what I said.  And it was my reference to the 1967 lines -- with mutually agreed swaps -- that received the lion’s share of the attention, including just now.  And since my position has been misrepresented several times, let me reaffirm what “1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps” means.

Misrepresentation is something of a constant on Twitter, as is correct representation, but misrepresentation had been a flood, and he thought he needed to staunch the flood.

It would be silly to assert that the misrepresentations in the social media was the cause of his effort to set things straight. But it would be equally silly to not detect the new voice in the public domain. People did not have to wait for Fox news to express their horror at what they understood the president to have said. And a few hundred thousand messages is enough more than "several times" to lead any politician to consider the need to set things straight.

The ground

On the ground revolts are in process. In Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen the people are attempting to depose tryants who have run their countries for decades. In some cases they have been assisted by other nations and in others they fight alone. But they are engaged in the action Obama's speech was designed to address; a speech intended to lend support to their efforts.

To determine the reaction to the Obama speech I captured Twitter messages that contained #bahrain, #libya, #syria, and #yemen. The messages used in this analayis were captured for an extended period: 12 hours before, 24 hours for reaction as the address was being delivered and after, and finally another 9 hours. These are Twitter messages collected over a 45 hour period to be confident that I would not miss reactions that were delayed in time. I also searched for "arab spring" during the same time period. Notwithstanding one computer error that lost the last 9 hours of the search for #syria, the total number of messages captured was 101,557.

Arab spring is a reminder that there is global Twitter communication. I found 7,525 Twitter messages during the 45 hours that included the phrase Arab spring.

Half of the Twitter messages were posted before the speech. Forty percent were posted during the speech, and under 10% were published after the speech. This is the same pattern found in the messages when I searched for arab spring in messages containing Obama's name. And the percentage of the messages that contained both arab spring and Obama changes significantly over the three time slots. Before there is anticipation. During Obama fades as other ideas come to the fore. And in the aftermath -- the last 9 hours -- there are both few mentions of arab spring and the percentage of those that mention Obama drops to 22%. One might conclude that Obama was not a big hit among arab spring people.

The same information is available for the collections for the four countries. I will add one more bit of information which is the number of messages that mention arab spring.

It is hard to see that the Obama speech entered into the messaging in any significant way. The percentages of posted messages that include his name are tiny. They are so small that it hardly seems to the point to try to differentiate them. The conclusion one must draw is that they were busy with things other than Obama's speech. The same is true, but more so, for arab spring. Arab spring is a no show in the messaging going on in North Africa and the Middle East.

These are the people on the ground. Their lives are on the line in the fight against tyranny. They seem to be too busy at this point for involvement in the global discussion of their plight though, I suppose, they would be grateful for any assistance it might produce.

Conclusion

Notwithstanding the Arab spring move the social world and the communication that creates it is a loosely connected system. The people to whom Arab spring points are only loosely connected [Boynton]. And the audience chooses you as much as you choose them. And when the moment is past they are lost.

© G. R. Boynton, 2011