Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34879105›Full record

ArticlePloS one2021

Computational timeline reconstruction of the stories surrounding Trump: Story turbulence, narrative control, and collective chronopathy.

Peter Sheridan Dodds, Joshua R Minot, Michael V Arnold, Thayer Alshaabi, Jane Lydia Adams, Andrew J Reagan, Christopher M Danforth

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
4citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

4 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

7 authors.

Peter Sheridan DoddsComputational Story Lab, Vermont Complex Systems Center, MassMutual Center of Excellence for Complex Systems and Data Science, Vermont Advanced Computing Core, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, United States of America.
Joshua R MinotComputational Story Lab, Vermont Complex Systems Center, MassMutual Center of Excellence for Complex Systems and Data Science, Vermont Advanced Computing Core, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, United States of America.
Michael V ArnoldComputational Story Lab, Vermont Complex Systems Center, MassMutual Center of Excellence for Complex Systems and Data Science, Vermont Advanced Computing Core, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, United States of America.
Thayer AlshaabiComputational Story Lab, Vermont Complex Systems Center, MassMutual Center of Excellence for Complex Systems and Data Science, Vermont Advanced Computing Core, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, United States of America.
Jane Lydia AdamsComputational Story Lab, Vermont Complex Systems Center, MassMutual Center of Excellence for Complex Systems and Data Science, Vermont Advanced Computing Core, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, United States of America.
Andrew J ReaganDepartment of Mathematics & Statistics, MassMutual Data Science, Boston, MA, United States of America.
Christopher M DanforthComputational Story Lab, Vermont Complex Systems Center, MassMutual Center of Excellence for Complex Systems and Data Science, Vermont Advanced Computing Core, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, United States of America.ORCID 0000-0002-9857-2845

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Measuring the specific kind, temporal ordering, diversity, and turnover rate of stories surrounding any given subject is essential to developing a complete reckoning of that subject's historical impact. Here, we use Twitter as a distributed news and opinion aggregation source to identify and track the dynamics of the dominant day-scale stories around Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States. Working with a data set comprising around 20 billion 1-grams, we first compare each day's 1-gram and 2-gram usage frequencies to those of a year before, to create day- and week-scale timelines for Trump stories for 2016-2021. We measure Trump's narrative control, the extent to which stories have been about Trump or put forward by Trump. We then quantify story turbulence and collective chronopathy-the rate at which a population's stories for a subject seem to change over time. We show that 2017 was the most turbulent overall year for Trump. In 2020, story generation slowed dramatically during the first two major waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, with rapid turnover returning first with the Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd's murder and then later by events leading up to and following the 2020 US presidential election, including the storming of the US Capitol six days into 2021. Trump story turnover for 2 months during the COVID-19 pandemic was on par with that of 3 days in September 2017. Our methods may be applied to any well-discussed phenomenon, and have potential to enable the computational aspects of journalism, history, and biography.

Indexed as

PoliticsCOVID-19HumansSARS-CoV-2United States

Identifiers

PMID34879105
PMCPMC8654215

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.