Packages & Data

Packages

Loaded Packages

  • r markdown
  • ggplot2
  • forcats
  • tidyverse
  • yaml
  • knitr
  • dplyr
  • twitteR
  • rtweet
  • stringer

Data Source

The data for this document was obtained through Twitter’s API with the rtweet package and searching for the use of the #Masonic and #Freemasons hastags.

Freemasonary and Twitter

Freemasonry is the largest and oldest fraternal organization in history. The fraternity has a storied history and counts some of the most influential men in history among its member. Some of those influential members include:

  • Founding Fathers – George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and John Hancock
  • U.S. Presidents – Fourteen U.S. have been Freemasons - George Washington, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, James Garfield, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Warren G. Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Gerald R. Ford
  • Entertainers – Ringling Brothers, John Wayne, Harry Houdini, and Richard Pryor
  • U.S. Civil Right Leaders – Booker T. Washington, and Thurgood Marshall
  • The Arts – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Oscar Wilde, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Mark Twain.

Freemasonry strives to make “Good Men Better” through charity, learning, and fellowship. Despite all of this Masonry has been tangled up in many conspiracies and is the subject of much miss information. Granted Masonry has made themselves an easy target by being a society with secrets. Conspiracy theorists would tell you that Freemasonry is a secret society, which is just not true. A secret society hides its membership, where Freemason are proud and open members of the organization.

The goal of this report is too examine the use of the hashtags #freemasons and #masonic on Twitter to see if they affect the organization in a positive or negative manner.

fm2 <- fm %>% select(created_at, screen_name, text, source, favourites_count, retweet_count, hashtags, lang, name, location, description, followers_count, friends_count) %>% arrange(desc(screen_name))

## plot time series of tweets
ts_plot(fm2, "3 hours") +
  ggplot2::theme_gray() +  
  ggplot2::theme(plot.title = ggplot2::element_text(face = "bold")) +
  ggplot2::labs(
    x = NULL, y = NULL,
    title = "Frequency of #Freemasons & #Masonic Twitter Hashtag Use"
  )

Issues and Concerns

  1. Unfortunately life gets in the way sometimes. The issues I had with this assignment were sick children and work responsibilities.