Caitlyn Jenner and the power of social media

Image Credit: http://www.vanityfair.com/

In 1848, a Mormon man named Samuel Brennan took to the streets of San Francisco and screamed “Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!” This announcement created a ripple effect that caused mass hysteria and resulted in 300,000 people from all parts of the globe rushing to California to sift through the American River for Gold. This was the most widely reported incident of the 19th century, and the results of the exodus of the gold seekers quite literally created the state of California.

On April 24th, 2015 the former Olympian and reality TV star Bruce Jenner announced that he was undergoing gender reassignment and that he would prefer to go under the name Caitlyn Jenner from thence. Caitlyn’s newly created Twitter account reached a million followers in 4 hours, a Twitter record, beating Barack Obama’s fortnight old record of 5 hours. Jenner’s announcement was a social landmark for obvious reasons, a celebrity talking about a subject so personal, and taboo in some societies, encouraged the hope that the times are changing. To a data analyst however, this was just the beginning of the rabbit hole. The mentions of the name ‘Caitlyn Jenner’ shows there have been 475,000 tweets, and rising, mentioning her name in the last 24 hours, with an overall sentiment score of 86 (out of 100), which is highly positive. Compare this to another popular subject from the past two days, the HBO produced fantasy epic Game of Thrones, which has been mentioned in 114,000 tweets, and you get an idea of the scale. And while automated sentiment detection isn’t 100%, it is generally indicative of overall trend — sentiment on this subject being so high (86) would suggest that there is significant level of support for Jenner and her new identity, support which can be seen in the many tweets flowing through, including many from well-known celebrities. Alongside the public announcement and the new Twitter handle, Caitlyn also took part in a photo shoot for Vanity Fair which is, by all reliable markers, the biggest topic of discussion on the internet right now. Well, here’s a toast to the power of social media and breaking the internet!

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