Thank you, OP, for making this thread. You're... brave.
As we've already seen so far, people who cannot entertain the idea that the Bernie Bro narrative might be erroneous can find any number of reasons to question this research, from legitimate ones (e.g. "we need more detail about his algorithm and what constitutes a positive/negative tweet") to dumb ones ("he's a Bernie Bro himself lol and therefore biased and he can't possibly have done good work LOL", "yeah the percentages are the same but the raw volume isn't!"). They could try to come up with a way to analyze the veracity of it and counter this guy's model, but they don't. They'll point to a few tweets without acknowledging that there are literally millions of tweets and users involved in discussing the election. And they'll think that proving this research as wonky automatically proves the narrative true... When in reality, it just gets us back to square one.
But the biggest problem you, me, or anyone who wants to put an end to that stupid narrative will encounter is that what constitutes a "Bernie Bro" and the movement is unclear. It doesn't have a real definition, or a scope. We don't know where the Bernie Bro-ness starts, or where it stops. We don't know what kind, or what degree of criticism can be considered Bernie-Bro-esque, and what kind is fair. It's all wishy-washy. It's just feelings. Here's a few questions you could ask that make it impossible to derive a consensus definition:
- is a Bernie Bro literally a guy? Or is it a state of mind?
- is it someone who's a random supporter? A high-profile user? Or an official?
- does a random user's tweet weigh as much as a tweet from someone high-profile/an official? If so, what's the ratio?
- Is it limited to Twitter, or does it include other platforms? If so, which ones? And which one(s) are more important than the others? Most people seem to think Twitter was the main culprit, but idk since people are so vague about this stuff.
- does the target of the tweet count? i.e. does it matter more if it's the candidate themselves, a random supporter, a high-profile supporter, or an official?
- should we account for raw volume, or volume relative to the number of supporters for each candidate?
- if raw volume is the metric, how can you even attempt to fight the narrative? How it it fair? Up until SC, Bernie was the frontrunner, and skews younger. Of course his supporters are gonna be more active online. As would Buttigieg's if he were the frontrunner.
- is legitimate criticism considered a toxic Bernie Bro tweet? What if it's taken well? What if it's taken badly?
- is sarcasm considered a toxic tweet? What if it's in response to another sarcasm?
- by assigning these Bernie supporters a name, does that mean they have a unique quality that other supporters don't have? If so, what is it? And why do they have it? Do other candidates' supporters also have unique qualities about them? If so, what are they? And why don't they have a name? Well, I guess Kamala supporters have one (KHive).
- can anything even be done against it? How do you police hundreds of thousands of people on one platform without it turning into a clusterfuck?
- and so on and so forth.
A smartass, at this point, would probably want to respond: "Aha! Don't you see? By listing these examples, you're showing that the guy's methodology cannot be perfect! You played yourself! Checkmate, Bernie Bro!"... But that's the point. It cannot be perfect because the terms were never defined by anyone in the first place, and no concrete solutions, to the extent that there can be any, have been suggested. Well, aside from saying "Bernie should condemn!" Which he already did. It's just this vague feeling that Bernie supporters are more toxic [definition needed, again]. That there's something unique about them. That they're just nasty because... that's just who they are. When the plain reality is that they're people, like anybody else. And this dude, bless his soul, is trying his best to come up with a somewhat decent model to gather actual data rather than cherrypick stuff from the tiniest of sample sizes.
Like, y'all realize the guy didn't even have to do that, right? If someone is gonna make the claim that Bernie Bros are definitely a thing, the onus is on them to prove it. And proving it requires a little more work than a few screenshots here and there.
While I would be interested in knowing more about the algorithm - I'm sure it's fascinating - I don't think it would matter all that much. The thing is, I don't see why Bernie's campaign and supporters would uniquely use hard-to-detect negative tweets. They're not masterminds who can avoid algorithms by using clever, never-before-seen dogwhistles and 12-layered irony; conversely, Biden's, or anyone's supporters, don't post only super straightforward digs at other users and other candidates.
What I'm saying is that the faults of the algorithm affect everyone.
As we've already seen so far, people who cannot entertain the idea that the Bernie Bro narrative might be erroneous can find any number of reasons to question this research, from legitimate ones (e.g. "we need more detail about his algorithm and what constitutes a positive/negative tweet") to dumb ones ("he's a Bernie Bro himself lol and therefore biased and he can't possibly have done good work LOL", "yeah the percentages are the same but the raw volume isn't!"). They could try to come up with a way to analyze the veracity of it and counter this guy's model, but they don't. They'll point to a few tweets without acknowledging that there are literally millions of tweets and users involved in discussing the election. And they'll think that proving this research as wonky automatically proves the narrative true... When in reality, it just gets us back to square one.
But the biggest problem you, me, or anyone who wants to put an end to that stupid narrative will encounter is that what constitutes a "Bernie Bro" and the movement is unclear. It doesn't have a real definition, or a scope. We don't know where the Bernie Bro-ness starts, or where it stops. We don't know what kind, or what degree of criticism can be considered Bernie-Bro-esque, and what kind is fair. It's all wishy-washy. It's just feelings. Here's a few questions you could ask that make it impossible to derive a consensus definition:
- is a Bernie Bro literally a guy? Or is it a state of mind?
- is it someone who's a random supporter? A high-profile user? Or an official?
- does a random user's tweet weigh as much as a tweet from someone high-profile/an official? If so, what's the ratio?
- Is it limited to Twitter, or does it include other platforms? If so, which ones? And which one(s) are more important than the others? Most people seem to think Twitter was the main culprit, but idk since people are so vague about this stuff.
- does the target of the tweet count? i.e. does it matter more if it's the candidate themselves, a random supporter, a high-profile supporter, or an official?
- should we account for raw volume, or volume relative to the number of supporters for each candidate?
- if raw volume is the metric, how can you even attempt to fight the narrative? How it it fair? Up until SC, Bernie was the frontrunner, and skews younger. Of course his supporters are gonna be more active online. As would Buttigieg's if he were the frontrunner.
- is legitimate criticism considered a toxic Bernie Bro tweet? What if it's taken well? What if it's taken badly?
- is sarcasm considered a toxic tweet? What if it's in response to another sarcasm?
- by assigning these Bernie supporters a name, does that mean they have a unique quality that other supporters don't have? If so, what is it? And why do they have it? Do other candidates' supporters also have unique qualities about them? If so, what are they? And why don't they have a name? Well, I guess Kamala supporters have one (KHive).
- can anything even be done against it? How do you police hundreds of thousands of people on one platform without it turning into a clusterfuck?
- and so on and so forth.
A smartass, at this point, would probably want to respond: "Aha! Don't you see? By listing these examples, you're showing that the guy's methodology cannot be perfect! You played yourself! Checkmate, Bernie Bro!"... But that's the point. It cannot be perfect because the terms were never defined by anyone in the first place, and no concrete solutions, to the extent that there can be any, have been suggested. Well, aside from saying "Bernie should condemn!" Which he already did. It's just this vague feeling that Bernie supporters are more toxic [definition needed, again]. That there's something unique about them. That they're just nasty because... that's just who they are. When the plain reality is that they're people, like anybody else. And this dude, bless his soul, is trying his best to come up with a somewhat decent model to gather actual data rather than cherrypick stuff from the tiniest of sample sizes.
Like, y'all realize the guy didn't even have to do that, right? If someone is gonna make the claim that Bernie Bros are definitely a thing, the onus is on them to prove it. And proving it requires a little more work than a few screenshots here and there.
While I would be interested in knowing more about the algorithm - I'm sure it's fascinating - I don't think it would matter all that much. The thing is, I don't see why Bernie's campaign and supporters would uniquely use hard-to-detect negative tweets. They're not masterminds who can avoid algorithms by using clever, never-before-seen dogwhistles and 12-layered irony; conversely, Biden's, or anyone's supporters, don't post only super straightforward digs at other users and other candidates.
What I'm saying is that the faults of the algorithm affect everyone.
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