Mapping the connections among the #wikileaks, #pdfleaks and #cablegate mentioning twitter populations with #NodeXL

On Saturday 11 December 2010 A Symposium on Wikileaks and Internet Freedom (http://personaldemocracy.com/pdfleaks) was held in New York City. I did not attend in person, but the event was streamed live.  A colleague of mine, Zeynep Tufekci (@techsoc), a sociologist from the University of Maryland ebiquity group, did attend and spoke on the second panel of the day (her blog at http://technosociology.org/).  Throughout the day it was an interesting discussion highlighting the many factors and facets of the release of diplomatic cables and more by Wikileaks.

Here are some NodeXL generated maps of recent  discussions around Wikileaks, pdfleaks, and cablegate in Twitter:

These are the connections among the people who tweeted the term “wikileaks” on 11 December 2010. The “wikileaks” account is at the center of the inner circle.  It is surrounded by a collection of very lightly interconnected people (there is a low clustering coefficient) who retweet messages from the wikileaks account.  This ring is surrounded by a thinner ring of 2nd order retweets.  This is a very common pattern for a successful “brand” or broadcast account, getting lots of retweets and, even more impressive, retweets of retweets.

The most between people who tweeted the term “wikileaks” on 11 December 2010.  The top ten: @wikileaks, @melhoresfrases, @ukelectionnews, @nonradical, @nelsonbocaranda, @linuxmall, @dominiofeminino, @resermarca, @crazy_dymnd, @rodolfomoros

Here is the data file: 20101209-NodeXL-Twitter-wikileaks

These are the connections among people who recently tweeted “pdfleaks” in Twitter on 11 December 2010.  It shares the brand/broadcast structure of the wikileaks account shown above.  After the wikileaks account itself, the second most between participant is @jeffjarvis who uniquely bridged to many people who would otherwise not be connected in this graph.

The most between people who tweeted the term pdfleaks“ on 11 December 2010.

Here is the data set: 20101211-NodeXL-Twitter-pdfleaks

The most between people who tweeted the term “cablegate” on 11 December 2010.  The cablegate discussion is more multipolar, with several high betweenness hubs connecting to otherwise separate communities.  El Pais, for example, is reaching a mostly Spanish language community.  The top ten: @anonops, @el_pais, @mparent77772, @wllawyer, @wikileaks_pp, @gdncables, @milenio, @evgenymorozov, @muschelschloss, @saladeprensa.

Here is the data set:

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