Twitter Twitter on the Wall

The US Elections have been a trending topic for almost a year now. With both candidates being controversial, the news and social media has been rife with stories, facts and opinions of all sorts, and with the elections finally around the corner, people are taking to social media to show their support for the candidates.

We have Hillary Clinton on one side, representing the Democrats or the Left and on the other hand we have Donald Trump representing the Republicans or the Right. In the US, the two dominant parties: the Democrats and the Republicans are known as the Left and the Right respectively, as they have contrasting ideologies. That is why in most posters, one can see Hillary Clinton being shown on the left and Donald Trump on the right.

News channels and other organizations have been constantly conducting polls to analyze which candidate is more likely to win. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/us-election-2016-polls-and-odds-tracker-latest-forecast-in-race1/

As the people have been expressive in their support for the candidates on social media, there have been instances of  visualizations using Twitter data to show the popularity of candidates.

The idea is to use twitter data to indicate which candidate is more popular or garnering more support on Twitter and create an abstraction in the form of animations on the LED wall outside Carnegie Library. 

The US Elections have been nothing short of a War, with each party/candidate and it's supporters trying it's best to overcome the other. The idea is inspired by a mix of different concepts.

1. In the olden days, catapults used to be a critical piece of arsenal, with each army hurling stones and fire at the other to cause maximum damage especially to break down walls and forts.

2. The extremely popular game Angry Birds, uses this concept of catapults to hurl birds at the constructions of the pigs to take them down.

3. Twitter is named after the concept of birds tweeting.

4. People take to twitter to express their support for candidates.

5. The famous fable, Snow White has this concept of a Magical Mirror which can answer questions. In the story, we have the evil queen asking the Mirror, "Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Who in this land is fairest of all?"

The concept of "Twitter Twitter on the Wall" is an amalgamation of all these ideas into one. Using the twitter4j Java library on Processing, tweets are being queried for with definitive hashtags such as "Elections 2016" at frequent intervals. The string returned is being parsed for phrases like "VoteForHillary" or "VoteForTrump". Each time, there is a tweet in favor of Hillary, a sweep animation of LED lights is initiated from left to right, indicating a hurl of "Angry Birds" in the form of a tweet from the side of the Democrats towards the Republicans and vice versa. Thus, if one looks at the LED light wall, one can get an indication of the candidate having the upper hand, at least in the context of popularity in Twitter. And thus, extending the metaphor of the Magic Mirror to the LED Wall, one can almost inquire the probable winner of the Elections, "Twitter Twitter on the Wall..."

Other sources:

Caricature: http://thumbs1.picclick.com/d/l400/pict/272347750048_/Clinton-Trump-Caricature-225-Button-Set-2016-campaign-theme.jpg