_MSSA_2024_DezNat.knit

background-color: #272822

<h1 style="color:white; text-align:center">Trends and Boundaries in Mormon Twitter's Reactionary #DezNat hashtag</h1>

<h3 style="color:white">Spencer P. Greenhalgh, PhD<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;School of Information Science, University of Kentucky
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
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<a style="color: rgb(249, 38, 114)" href="mailto:spencer.greenhalgh@uky.edu">spencer.greenhalgh@uky.edu</a>
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
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<a style="color: rgb(249, 38, 114)" href="https://sciences.social/@spgreenhalgh">@spgreenhalgh@sciences.social</a></h2>
<h3 style="color:white">Amy L. Chapman, PhD<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
<svg width = 25 style="fill: rgb(249, 38, 114)"  xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512"><path d="M48 64C21.5 64 0 85.5 0 112c0 15.1 7.1 29.3 19.2 38.4L236.8 313.6c11.4 8.5 27 8.5 38.4 0L492.8 150.4c12.1-9.1 19.2-23.3 19.2-38.4c0-26.5-21.5-48-48-48H48zM0 176V384c0 35.3 28.7 64 64 64H448c35.3 0 64-28.7 64-64V176L294.4 339.2c-22.8 17.1-54 17.1-76.8 0L0 176z"/></svg> 
<a style="color: rgb(249, 38, 114)" href="mailto:a.b.chapman@gmail.com">a.b.chapman@gmail.com</a>
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
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<a style="color: rgb(249, 38, 114)" href="https://twitter.com/chapmaab">@chapmaab</a></h2>
</h3>

<p style="color:white"> slides: <a style="color: rgb(249, 38, 114)" href="https://spencergreenhalgh.com/_mssa_2024_DezNat.html">https://spencergreenhalgh.com/_mssa_2024_DezNat.html</a></p>

???

Good morning! My name is Spencer Greenhalgh, and I'm an associate professor of information communication technology at the University of Kentucky. I'm presenting today on some ongoing work I'm going with Dr. Amy Chapman, who's affiliated with Arizona State. Our contact information is up here, and you can also pull up this URL if you'd like to follow the slides on your own.

---

background-color: gray

# background

???

I want to start this presentation with a question that will provide some framing for how we've been thinking about this.

---

# how do we define communities—especially when they're online?

---

# "The notion of 'community' has often had a tension between concrete social relationships and imagined sets of people perceived to be similar..."

Gruzd, A., Wellman, B., & Takhteyev, Y. (2011). Imagining Twitter as an imagined community. *American Behavioral Scientist*, *55*(10), 1294-1318. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764211409378

???

Gruzd and colleagues note that the word "community" has strong enough connotations that we all feel like we know what a community is, but things quickly get complicated when we try to formally define community.

---

# "Ninety-four definitions are classified by content and subjected to qualitative and quantitative analysis."

Hillery, Jr., G. A. (1955). Definitions of community: Areas of agreement. *Rural sociology*, *20*(2), 111-123.

???

And they actually point to some work done fifty years earlier, where a sociologist examined nearly a hundred different definitions of community to try to see what they had in common and where they differed.

---

# "Seventy, or almost three-fourths, mention area and social interaction as necessary elements of community."

Hillery, Jr., G. A. (1955). Definitions of commnity: Areas of agreement. *Rural sociology*, *20*(2), 111-123.

???

Hillery found that "[geographical] area" and "social interaction" were common elements of these definitions, but it doesn't take long for us to problematize those assumptions. There are people at this conference—probably people in this room—with whom I've never really interacted, but it would still be reasonable for us to feel a sense of shared community.

Likewise, geographic proximity might have been more salient in the 1950s, but has become less so over time. To take one example, Jana and I live fairly close to each other, but we've actually only ever interacted either online or in physical spaces far away from home with a sense of shared community.

---

# "A bigger challenge has come with the rise of the Internet because it has enabled people to interact communally without ever meeting. Are Internet-based relations community?"

Gruzd, A., Wellman, B., & Takhteyev, Y. (2011). Imagining Twitter as an imagined community. *American Behavioral Scientist*, *55*(10), 1294-1318. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764211409378

???

Coming back to Gruzd, Wellman, and Takhteyev, the internet in particular raises really important questions about what qualifies as community, and their paper is specifically about trying to explore whether "community" can exist on Twitter, the platform now known as "X," I guess.

---

# "we face vexatious issues over which people are in and which are out of the group, how far they are in or out, and when they are in or out."

Gee, J. P. (2004). *Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling*. Routledge.

???

A few years earlier, though, education scholar James Paul Gee had already recognized the way that digital technologies were challenging our assumptions about community. In particular, he felt that trying to establish clear boundaries between who belongs to a group and who doesn't is already difficult, and the internet only made things harder.

---

# "What I want to suggest instead is that (at least sometimes) we start with 'spaces' and not groups."

Gee, J. P. (2004). *Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling*. Routledge.

???

In response, Gee suggested that "spaces," rather than groups or communities, were perhaps more compelling conceptual frameworks in that they draw attention to shared social activity without making definitive claims about membership in a group or relationships between participants.

---

# #DezNat

???

In our previous work, Amy and I have found Gee's concept of the affinity space useful for examining the #DezNat movement present in Mormon Twitter (and other online and offline spaces).

---

???

DezNat (which is short for either "Deseret Nation" or "Deseret Nationalism," depending on who you believe) claims to be focused on defending orthodoxy within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and in responding to the church's internal and external critics with their online posts. However, as this image taken from a #DezNat tweet demonstrates, that's not the whole picture. Yes, this meme is about defending Latter-day Saint truth claims (in particular, that Brigham Young was Joseph Smith's rightful successor), but it also uses the aesthetics of the online far-right, including dressing up Brigham Young as the white nationalist frog meme Groyper.

---

# "In this way, DezNat raises important questions about the boundaries of identity and practice in the contemporary—and future—Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."

Greenhalgh, S. P., & Chapman, A. L. (2023). "Come for the memes, stay for defending the faith": Far-right and anti-feminist red pill influences in the #DezNat Twitter hashtag. *Journal of the Mormon Social Science Association*, *2*(1), 1-34. https://doi.org/10.54587/JMSSA.0201

???

As we've previously written, this overlap of interests within a single online space raises questions about boundaries. We've taken Gee's conceptual framework, which is not interested in boundaries, and used it to draw attention to areas of overlap within the #DezNat space, most notably between Latter-day Saint apologetics and far-right and anti-feminist discourses.

---

background-color: gray

# the present study

???

That said, our previous work was focused on a relatively small collection of 1,400 tweets composed in and around the April 2019 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We have a lot more data on the #DezNat movement, and we wanted to zoom out and see what we could find from a broader perspective.

---

# collected all `#DezNat`-tagged tweets between <br><br> 2019-02-01 09:38:18 <br><br> and <br><br> 2022-12-12 04:56:42

???

We actually had access to all of the #DezNat-tagged tweets published between the beginning of February 2019 and mid-December 2022.

---

???

Our start date, February 2019, was about 6 months after the movement began on Twitter, so we missed a bit, but we still have a lot of its history up through...

---

# "Twitter is now pitching academics and enterprises on API access... that will run a mere $42,000 per month."

Masnick, M. (2023, March 13). It's one API, Michael. What could it cost? $42,000 per month? *Techdirt*. https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/13/its-one-api-michael-what-could-it-cost-42000-per-month/

???

December 2022, which is around the time Twitter's new leadership started restricting access to the API, a technical interface that researchers like me have typically used to collect and study Twitter data. I probably could have squeezed another couple of months of data out of the system, but the end was near, I couldn't afford the new rates (which were a lot more expensive than "free") and I just didn't have the patience for it anymore.

---

# ❌🤖❌

???

One last methodological note: Before calculating any of the numbers that I'm about to show you, we removed all of the activity associated with the "DezNat retweet bot," a prolific automated account that kind of skews things if we leave it in.

---

background-color: gray

# high-level overview

???

So, with that in mind, let's look at some of the basics of what we see trying to follow this not-quite-four-year history.

---

# 211675 total tweets

# 18727 total users

???

First, over this time period, we have evidence of about 212,000 tweets using the DezNat hashtag composed by nearly 19,000 different users. These are pretty impressive numbers, but taking a closer look gives us some important nuance.

---

# 18727 total users

# 5137 users composed *original* posts

# 15894 users retweeted posts

# 13590 users *only* retweeted posts

???

For example, of those nearly 19,000 accounts, only 5,000 of them took the time to actually write out their own tweets and append the #DezNat hashtag. Nearly 16,000 accounts were involved with retweeting those posts, of which almost 14,000 only ever retweeted. That is, they never contributed something of their own, they only amplified what other people were adding to the conversation. Most DezNat "participants" were clearly on the periphery of the movement, and...

---

# "we face vexatious issues over which people are in and which are out of the group, how far they are in or out, and when they are in or out."

Gee, J. P. (2004). *Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling*. Routledge.

???

... this brings us back to Gee. The reason that we are looking at a shared space here is because it's hard to tell how many of these 19,000 Twitter accounts had a strong connection to the hashtag and all of its controversy. It's hard to tell where the boundaries of any DezNat community are. This is further exaggerated if we look at the users who *did* actively contribute to the hashtag.

---

``` r
df %>% filter(tweet_status == "original tweet") %>%
  group_by(from_user) %>% 
  summarize(n_tweets = n()) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = n_tweets)) + 
  geom_histogram(binwidth = 200)
```

![](_MSSA_2024_DezNat_files/figure-html/unnamed-chunk-2-1.png)

???

This histogram shows us the distribution of DezNat users in terms of the number of active contributions to the hashtag, and we can see that this group follows the same kind of "long-tail" pattern that we see in a lot of online communities, where you have a few really active users and most people are out on the edges.

---

``` r
df %>% filter(tweet_status == "original tweet") %>%
  group_by(from_user) %>% 
  summarize(n_tweets = n()) %>%
  select(n_tweets) %>%
  summary()
```

```
##     n_tweets     
##  Min.   :   1.0  
##  1st Qu.:   1.0  
##  Median :   2.0  
##  Mean   :  22.3  
##  3rd Qu.:   7.0  
##  Max.   :5174.0
```

???

In fact, if we break this down with summary statistics, our median user only contributed two tweets, and our third quartile user only 7, with a handful of power users really skewing the statistics here.

---

background-color: gray

# timeline

???

More helpful than some of these summary statistics is a look at #DezNat activity over time.

---

``` r
df %>% group_by(month) %>%
  summarize(tweets = n()) %>% arrange(month) %>%
  ggplot(mapping = aes(x = month, y = tweets)) +
  geom_line() + geom_smooth(col="red")
```

![](_MSSA_2024_DezNat_files/figure-html/unnamed-chunk-4-1.png)
???

This is a month-by-month timeline, where we can see some up and down patterns, both over the entire history of #DezNat and between months. I'll circle back to this in a bit, but you may be interested in puzzling out a regular pattern of certain months that see high activity. I want to observe first, though, that DezNat seems to have peaked in 2020 and seen gradual decline since then.

This decline is all the more striking if we look at some of the power users within DezNat:

---

``` r
df %>%  filter(account_source %in% top_5$account_source) %>%
  group_by(month,account_source) %>% summarize(n = n()) %>%
  ggplot(mapping = aes(x = month, y = n, group = account_source, color = account_source)) +
  geom_line() + theme(legend.position="none")
```

![](_MSSA_2024_DezNat_files/figure-html/unnamed-chunk-6-1.png)

???

This is a month-by-month summary of the top five users of the hashtag in terms of those who 1) tweet and 2) are retweeted the most, which seemed to us to be a reasonable indication of influence. One thing that stands out is the huge peak of one user in mid-2020, which I'll also turn to, but also, if you look very closely, you'll see that of those five colors, three disappear sometime in mid-2021. These power users stop using the #DezNat hashtag, which certainly contributes to the hashtag's decline during that year. Why?

---

### Stack, P. F. (2021, January 31). Unholy war: Is #DezNat an online platform for defending the LDS Church or a launching pad for extremists? *The Salt Lake Tribune*. Retrieved from https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/01/31/unholy-war-deznat-troops/

### Stack, P. F. (2021, June 18). Some #DezNat troops, fearful of being publicly outed, are retreating from digital LDS war. *The Salt Lake Tribune*. https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/06/18/some-deznat-troops/

### Stack, P. F. (2021, July 21). Assistant Alaskan A.G. under investigation for allegedly posting bigoted #DezNat tweets. *The Salt Lake Tribune*. https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/07/21/assistant-alaskan-ag/

???

Well, the #DezNat movement starts getting more scrutiny in 2021. It makes the front page of the Salt Lake Tribune in January of that year; in June, the Tribune is reporting that the anonymous founder of the movement has been publicly identified (or "doxxed"), which leads him to delete his Twitter account, and just over a month later, another one of these power users turns out to be the assistant attorney general of Alaska, and his tweets end up costing him his job. That said...

---

``` r
df %>% group_by(month) %>%
  summarize(tweets = n()) %>% arrange(month) %>%
  ggplot(mapping = aes(x = month, y = tweets)) +
  geom_line() + geom_smooth(col="red")
```

![](_MSSA_2024_DezNat_files/figure-html/unnamed-chunk-7-1.png)

???

This was only one of the mysteries from our earlier chart. If scrutiny of the DezNat movement may have led to a decline of the movement (at least in one of its forms), what explains these peaks during certain months?

---

``` r
df %>% group_by(date) %>%
  summarize(tweets = n()) %>% arrange(date) %>%
  ggplot(mapping = aes(x = date, y = tweets)) +
  geom_line()
```

![](_MSSA_2024_DezNat_files/figure-html/unnamed-chunk-8-1.png)
???

In fact, if we switch from a month-to-month summary to a day-to-day summary, we can see that it's not actually certain months: It's certain days, or maybe certain weekends, and if we look at the specific days that see the most #DezNat activity, we can confirm that

---

``` r
top_dates %>% kable("html")
```

???

... many of these line up perfectly with the Saturdays and Sundays of semi-annual Latter-day Saint General Conferences.

---

# "The four days that corresponded with the general sessions of conference (April 4, April 5, October 3, and October 4) exhibited tweeting 288–545 percent more often than the average"

Kimmons, R., McGuire, K., Stauffer, M., Jones, J. E., Gregson, M., & Austin, M. (2017). Religious identity, expression, and civility in social media: Results of data mining Latter-day Saint Twitter accounts. *Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion*, *56*(3), 637-657. https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12358

???

This may not be terribly surprising, considering that Royce Kimmons and colleagues have done some work suggesting that General Conferences are peaks of Mormon activity on Twitter. Once again, this calls attention to the fuzzy boundaries of spaces like the #DezNat hashtag—how much of its influence during these weekends should be understood as endorsement of its political views, and how much of it is retweeting of their religious posts by other Mormons who don't have all the context in front of them?

---

``` r
top_dates %>% kable("html")
```

???

Not all of these dates are associated with General Conference, though. Where do the other peak dates come from? This September 17th is associated with 
---

``` r
df %>% mutate(date = date(time)) %>% filter(date == top_dates$date[2]) %>% 
  group_by(text) %>%summarize(retweets = n()) %>%
  mutate(text = str_replace(text,"RT @[0-9A-z]*:","")) %>%
  arrange(desc(retweets)) %>% head(3) %>% knitr::kable("html")
```

<table>
 <thead>
  <tr>
   <th style="text-align:left;"> text </th>
   <th style="text-align:right;"> retweets </th>
  </tr>
 </thead>
<tbody>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> #BYUdevo takeaway;

Your social truth is crap and contradicts divine truth. Seek divine truth and claim the blessings.

#VitaminPills #DezNat </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 50 </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> Underrated quote:

&quot;Some things are simply true.  The arbiter of truth is God—not your favorite social media news feed, not Google, and certainly not those who are disaffected from the Church.&quot; - @NelsonRussellM #DezNat </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 23 </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> #DezNat wins again.

Do you want to know our secret?

FOLLOW. THE. PROPHET. </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 20 </td>
  </tr>
</tbody>
</table>

???

... an address by church president Russell Nelson at BYU, which DezNat livetweeted and seems to have gotten a lot of mileage out of.

---

``` r
top_dates %>% kable("html")
```

???

Our next outlier is March 4th of 2020, which is the day...

---

``` r
df %>% mutate(date = date(time)) %>% filter(date == top_dates$date[5]) %>% 
  group_by(text) %>% summarize(retweets = n()) %>%
  mutate(text = str_replace(text,"RT @[0-9A-z]*:","")) %>%
  arrange(desc(retweets)) %>% head(3) %>% knitr::kable("html")
```

<table>
 <thead>
  <tr>
   <th style="text-align:left;"> text </th>
   <th style="text-align:right;"> retweets </th>
  </tr>
 </thead>
<tbody>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> The time to stand up and defend the Family is now!
“Disciples of the Lord are defenders of traditional marriage. We cannot yield. History is not our judge. A secular society is not our judge. God is our judge!” - Russell M Nelson
#DezNat #BYU #StandForTheFamily #HonorCode https://t.co/azCgsBcSLv </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 74 </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> Statement on the honor code change at @BYU. Same sex romantic behavior is not compatible with the honor code.  #deznat https://t.co/QMVpaI4754 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 28 </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> @BYU The true CES Letter.

#DezNat </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 20 </td>
  </tr>
</tbody>
</table>

???

... that the Church reversed/overruled a short-lived policy allowing BYU students to date people of the same sex, and #DezNat loved that.

---

``` r
top_dates %>% kable("html")
```

???

... and that leaves only one mystery date left, which is June 30th, 2020.

---

``` r
df %>% filter(account_source %in% top_5$account_source) %>%
  group_by(month,account_source) %>% summarize(n = n()) %>%
  ggplot(mapping = aes(x = month, y = n, group = account_source, color = account_source)) +
  geom_line() + theme(legend.position="none")
```

![](_MSSA_2024_DezNat_files/figure-html/unnamed-chunk-16-1.png)

???

This is actually the date associated with this pink peak here, and it is the single day with the most DezNat tweets and retweets over the course of the almost four years that we have looked at. Every other peak that we have looked at was at least somewhat related to Latter-day Saint religion, but if we zoom in on this one...

---

``` r
df %>% mutate(date = date(time)) %>% filter(date == top_dates$date[8]) %>% 
  group_by(text) %>% summarize(retweets = n()) %>%
  mutate(text = str_replace(text,"RT @[0-9A-z]*:","")) %>%
  arrange(desc(retweets)) %>% head(3) %>% knitr::kable("html")
```

<table>
 <thead>
  <tr>
   <th style="text-align:left;"> text </th>
   <th style="text-align:right;"> retweets </th>
  </tr>
 </thead>
<tbody>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> Zoomed in and slowed down video clearly shows rioters pull a gun and shoot into the truck before it attempts to escape. Is this what #BlackLivesMatter is about? #DezNat https://t.co/zN3DT3tHpy </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 4324 </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> Video shows vehicle being surrounded by #BlackLivesMatter rioters in Provo Utah and shows protester/rioters shoot into the car multiple times as driver attempts to escape #DezNat https://t.co/GYuWDiXm2o </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 2649 </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> Police Verified the DRIVER WAS NOT AT FAULT and was shot before he attempted to flee. Everyone in #DezNat is praying for the driver's speedy recovery. Please help find the shooter! We love our cops our law enforcement, they're important! (I understand they are fans of my show) https://t.co/ZgpTvijh5H </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 379 </td>
  </tr>
</tbody>
</table>

???

We can see that there are a couple of DezNat-tagged tweets that are commented on a shooting that happened at a Black Lives Matter protest in Provo, Utah, trying to use the shooting to cast doubt on the racial justice protests that were happening at that time. We do not have time to watch the video, and it's a little disturbing to watch no matter where you come down on the issue...

---
class: center, middle

???

... but if you look at what actually happened, it's a lot more complicated than this DezNat partisan is trying to make it sound, involving a driver trying to force their way through a group of protesters.

And I think this tweet, more than any other, demonstrates the difficulty of pinning down DezNat. If the most shared tweet associated with the movement has nothing to do with Mormonism and everything to do with right-wing fearmongering about social justice movements, that really raises questions about the nature of the movement, which, in turn...

---

# "'squishy,' by which I mean...  not entirely well-bounded"

Gee, J. P. (2017). Affinity spaces and 21st century learning. *Educational Technology*, *57*(2), 27-31.

???

... comes back to the "squishy" nature of the space-based conceptual framework that we've been using. Yes, there are parts of #DezNat that are religiously oriented, but yes, there is also a clear presence of right-wing and far-right politics within the group.

---

background-color: gray

# conclusion

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To wrap things up, I want to make it clear

---

#DezNat is bad news...

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... that the DezNat movement is (or maybe was) bad news, and to really emphasize that, I want to share

---

# "Destroy your local printing press. #DezNat"

tweet by DezNat founder on November 7, 2020

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An example of a tweet by DezNat's founder on the day that media outlets called the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election for Joe Biden. "Destroy your local printing press" is a comment that leans into controversial parts of Mormon history at the same time that it expresses election denialism—that's not great.

---

# ... but how do we define #DezNat?

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And yet, our data also demonstrate that it's hard to pin down this movement and figure out what its boundaries are. In my mind, that only makes movements like DezNat all the more worrying—and all the more deserving of continued scholarly attention.

---

background-color: #272822

<h1 style="color:white; text-align:center">Thank you! Questions?</h1>

<p style="color:white"> slides: <a style="color: rgb(249, 38, 114)" href="https://spencergreenhalgh.com/_mssa_2024_DezNat.html">https://spencergreenhalgh.com/_mssa_2024_DezNat.html</a></p>

---

background-color: gray

# in anticipation of your questions: some bonus slides!

---

``` r
df %>% filter(tweet_status == "original tweet") %>%
  group_by(from_user) %>% 
  summarize(n_tweets = n()) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = n_tweets)) + 
  geom_histogram(binwidth = 1)
```

![](_MSSA_2024_DezNat_files/figure-html/unnamed-chunk-18-1.png)
???

a histogram with narrower bins, just to emphasize extent of long tail phenomenon

---

# "In Danish, for example, the word mæt means 'full' or 'satisfied,' and we therefore unwittingly collected a number of Danish tweets related to food and eating"

Greenhalgh, S. P., Rosenberg, J. M., & Wolf, L. G. (2016). For all intents and purposes: Twitter as a foundational technology for teachers. *E-Learning and Digital Media*, *13*(1/2), 81-98. https://doi.org/10.1177/2042753016672131

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the difficulty of "hashtag" as a boundary for a social space

---

## "Table 2 shows that nearly a quarter of participants posted no tweets at all (only 'liking' others tweets) and that less than 11% of participants actually posted original tweets. Moreover, the data presented in Table 3 suggests high levels of concentration: Over 15% of the total activity—and over half of the original tweets—can be traced back to the most active 1% of participants."

Greenhalgh, S. P., Koehler, M. J. (2017). 28 days later: Twitter hashtags as "just in time" teacher professional development. *TechTrends*, *61*(3), 273–281. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-016-0142-4

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evidence of other long-tail hashtags on Twitter

---

``` r
df %>% mutate(date = date(time)) %>% filter(date == top_dates$date[7]) %>% 
  group_by(text) %>% summarize(retweets = n()) %>%
  mutate(text = str_replace(text,"RT @[0-9A-z]*:","")) %>%
  arrange(desc(retweets)) %>% head(3) %>% knitr::kable("html")
```

<table>
 <thead>
  <tr>
   <th style="text-align:left;"> text </th>
   <th style="text-align:right;"> retweets </th>
  </tr>
 </thead>
<tbody>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> Yes, this latest proclamation seems obvious and plain to us now but the question is what will the world look like in 20 years where this will be needed just like the family proclamation was before? #GeneralConference #HearHim #DezNat </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 29 </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> . @NelsonRussellM are prophecy answer prayer. People's Republic China are receive temple. Ancestor rejoice! #DezNat #GeneralConference #HearHim </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 26 </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> &quot;We declare that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, organized on April 6th, 1830, is Christ's New Testament Church restored&quot;

This is it in a nutshell. This is why conventional creedal Christians will never accept us.

#GeneralConference #DezNat </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 20 </td>
  </tr>
</tbody>
</table>

???

DezNat can livetweet General Conference *and* still be disgustingly racist, part 1

---

``` r
df %>% filter(account_source == "FengwoZheng") %>% 
  group_by(text) %>% tally() %>% 
  arrange(desc(n)) %>% head(5) %>% kable("html")
```

<table>
 <thead>
  <tr>
   <th style="text-align:left;"> text </th>
   <th style="text-align:right;"> n </th>
  </tr>
 </thead>
<tbody>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> RT @FengwoZheng: . @NelsonRussellM are prophecy answer prayer. People's Republic China are receive temple. Ancestor rejoice! #DezNat #GeneralConference #HearHim </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 27 </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> RT @FengwoZheng: The @sltrib are refuse publicate my comment BYU Honor Code homosexuality. I am publicate my friends Twitter #DezNat https://t.co/RJmYT4Bxwj </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 20 </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> RT @FengwoZheng: I am advise #DezNat complain drama. I am see no drama in timeline. I am suspect if drama are in timeline are follow incorrect account female. </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 9 </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> RT @FengwoZheng: Asian man's are recommend exercise consume warm water vegetable are wisdom. Obesity are sin. #DezNat #GeneralConference </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 7 </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> RT @FengwoZheng: Brigham are do nothing wrong are invite many Chinese ancestor give hard work job build railroad #DezNat #utpol </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 7 </td>
  </tr>
</tbody>
</table>

???

DezNat can livetweet General Conference *and* still be disgustingly racist, part 2