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Did President Trump Help Popularize The Phrase 'Tweet Storm'?

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The phrase “tweet storm” seems to be everywhere these days. Defined by Merriam-Webster as “a series of many, often impassioned tweets posted in quick succession on the social media site Twitter” the ubiquitous phrase does not seem to have a ready correlate for rapid-fire posting on other platforms like Facebook or Instagram. Where did the phrase come from and why is the concept so uniquely associated with Twitter?

The timeline below shows the percentage of airtime on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News from June 2009 to present that mentioned the phrase (“tweet storm” or “tweet storms” or “tweet stormed” or “tweet storming” or “tweetstorm”), using data from the Internet Archive’s Television News Archive processed by the GDELT Project.

Kalev Leetaru

Immediately clear is how recent the phrase appears to be, beginning in earnest in late 2015 and surging into popular use in late 2016. Though its use appears to be slowing as of late 2018.

Coincidentally, this timeline appears to closely match the rise of Donald Trump on his path towards the presidency. President Trump has become synonymous with Twitter diplomacy, elevating the use of social media as an integral part of the presidency.

It is also notable that there appears to be a strong difference among the stations in usage of the term. MSNBC mentioned the phrase 3.9 times more than Fox News and CNN mentioned it 3 times more.

The timeline below shows the percentage of mentions of the phrase across the three stations combined that also mentioned “Trump” within 15 seconds before or after.

Kalev Leetaru

On average 70-80% of mentions of the phrase over the last three years have referenced Donald Trump, showing how closely the phrase has become associated with him.

The timeline below shows US search interest in the phrase “tweet storm” since January 2004 using Google Trends. This closely mirrors the term’s rise on television news and also its gradually decreasing popularly over the past half-year. Google Trends also confirms that the most commonly searched phrases with respect to tweet storms all relate to President Trump.

Kalev Leetaru

Putting this all together, while the phrase “tweet storm” has been used to refer to any celebrity sending a rapid-fire barrage of impassioned tweets about a topic, it seems the phrase was born out of then-candidate Donald Trump’s heavy use of the platform to rise to the presidency. As with many of today’s household terms like “fake news” and “filter bubbles” it seems the electoral events of the past several years have forever changed how we see the Web itself.