Big Data analysis of the #Bringbackourgirls cyber-campaign

Authors

  • Maria Teresa García Català Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.28939/iam.debats.134-2.5

Keywords:

hashtag, #Bringbackourgirls, Boko Haram, Chibok, Jihadism, Africa.

Abstract

We used a web tool to extract Twitter API data to analyse the #Bringbackourgirls cam-paign, which focused on the
kidnapping of 276 girls in the Northern Nigerian town of Chibok on the 14th of April 2014. The kidnappings were carried
out by a bloody Jihadist group led by Boko Haram. The data on the hashtag spanned the period between the 19th of May 2014 and the 16th of May 2019. The data obtained was in aggregate form thus render-ing users and readers anonymous. It contained information on the number and content of the comments made by users, the chronology of those comments, general geographic data, and the ranking of users making comments. It also contained anonymous information on numbers of ‘followers’, the impact of posts, and the number of ‘re-tweets’ and ‘likes’ given by those accessing hashtags, data on keywords, and so forth. The information from the ‘Big Data’ furnished by the Twitter API was then ordered and analysed.
as a prelude to the qualitative study, for which the research team gleaned additional information on the cyber-campaign

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Author Biography

Maria Teresa García Català, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Maria Teresa García Català (2020) és graduada en Multimèdia per la UOC i l’any 2016 va cursar el màster en Aplicacions Multimèdia a la UOC. Entre els seus interessos d’investigació actuals es troba l’anàlisi de big data.

References

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Celso, A. N. (2015). The Islamic State and Boko Haram: Fifth Wave Jihadist Terror Groups. Orbis, 59, 249-268. DOI: https://10.1016/doi.org/j.orbis.2015.02.010

La, Hien y Pickett, S. (2019). Framing Boko Haram’s Female Suïcide Bombers in Mass Media: An Analysis of News

Articles post Chibok abduction. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 12(3), 512-532. DOI: https://10.1016/doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2019.1599530

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Published

2020-11-30

How to Cite

García Català, M. T. (2020) “Big Data analysis of the #Bringbackourgirls cyber-campaign”, Debats. Journal on culture, power and society, 134(2), pp. 61–70. doi: 10.28939/iam.debats.134-2.5.

Issue

Vol. 134 No. 2 (2020)

Section

SPECIAL ISSUE

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