Over a million and a half tweets were posted on Twitter from all around the world celebrating the beginning of the Year of the Rooster. The top cities included: Kuala Lumpur of Malaysia with 39,587 posts (7.9% of all posts), Manila with 34,400 tweets, New York city (23,373), London (22,021), Bangkok (21,428), Singapore (17,397), Jakarta (15,748), Seoul (15,384), Toronto (9,867) and Hong Kong (9,410). If you direct your attention to the world map below, you will notice that the darker the dot, the more activity that came from that specific city. Looking at countries, the United States represented the largest portion of tweets 30%, 280,000+ posts). The leading cities of the U.S. were New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C. and Chicago.
When examining emotions expressed in tweets, the majority were neutral (62%). But within the remaining tweets, as expected, the vast majority were joyful (89%).
Celebrations on Twitter started early, with over 200,000 posts from January 21st through the 25th. Bangtan Boys (#BTS), the South Korean boys band, was the most used hashtag in this pre-holiday conversation. Other key hashtags that showed frequent use were #Overwatch (a team-based multiplayer video game that was running a promotional give-a-away during the holiday), #GFriend (another South Korean band – this time a girl group that was featured on an MBC special), and #WinItWednesday (a hashtag used by @SpongeCakesLTD to increase brand engagement by offering a 7” sponge cake on January 25th).
The activity increased, as expected, during the days of the holiday (26th – 28th) with over 900,000+ tweets. Leading hashtags included #MissUniverse, as many users used this opportunity to wish “good luck” to contestants in the pageant. #BTS was popular again, as well as another and South Korean pop Group, #GOT7. Another popular hashtag – #ALDUBIncomparable- was associated with the Filipino power couple that appears in the variety show Eat Bulaga! Which airs on the GMA Network .
As celebrations continue after New Year’s day, the conversation dwindled down, but still shows some 400,000+ tweets occurring until February 5th; prevalent hashtags for this time frame include #Chinatown, #lantern, and the boys bands #BTS and #GOT7.
While pop bands, like were very popular within the BTS, Got7 and GFriend were very popular in the conversation about the Chinese New Year, they were much more prominent among women than men.
Activity of Chinese New Year-related tweets over time
By by Dalton Long and Savannah Reece.
