Elon Musk confirms ownership with a Tweet reading “the bird is freed,” reiterating his stance on freedom of speech. But what does the takeover mean for the platform and its users? We looked into the online conversations from October 26th – 28th to find out.

CONVERSATION SPIKES AS MUSK FIRES TWITTER EXECUTIVES

Conversation spiked following reports that Musk had fired Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former Head of Legal Policy, Trust, and Safety – and the woman who made the call to suspend Donald Trump permanently – along with CEO Parag Agrawal and other executives.

This choice was largely unpopular, with negative sentiment driving almost half (47.8%) of all mentions in the hour that followed.

TRUMP IS TRENDING

Our research identified Donald Trump as a key theme within the conversation as users discuss his potential return to the platform. Though conversation around Trump is largely negative (27.8%), positive sentiment is on the rise as supporters discuss the comeback.

WOMEN HAVE STRONGER VIEWS ON THE SUBJECT

Though male users are driving the conversation for every age group, it’s the older females who are making their feelings most clear. Online conversations revealed women aged 65+ have the highest proportion of positive mentions about Elon Musk (31.3%), whilst those in the 45-54 category had the highest proportion of negative mentions (34.4%).

This graph shows the percentage of positive and negative results for men and women in each age group:

#VOTE IS TRENDING WITHIN THE NEGATIVE CONVERSATION

Many users are leveraging the takeover to promote their political agenda. In fact, #vote is the largest trend within the negative conversation – among both sides!

TWITTER IS THE TOP DATA SOURCE

However the online conversations might be feeling about Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, and people are taking to Twitter to discuss it. It will certainly be interesting to observe if and how this may change over the coming months.

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