Twenty-five ways to tweet the convention

The Signal

Unlike domain names, hashtags on Twitter aren't owned by anyone, so it's common to see a trend originate with one group and then be co-opted by another. We saw this tug-of-war today over the hashtag #DNCin4Words, which attracted contributions from both supporters and detractors of President Barack Obama.

Below are the top 25 most popular entries among 18,178 that the Signal was able to parse from the Twitter data feed, as determined by those that were either highly retweeted or so obvious that multiple people came up with them. As you see, there's a mix of negative or sarcastic slogans along with a handful of what appear to be genuinely positive ones.

entry

frequency

where's mitt's tax returns?

302

you didn't build that

273

budget? what's a budget?

109

feigning compassion, peddling hate

101

we h8 others' greed

101

mitt romney's tax returns

84

obama is our man

69

why work? vote democrat

68

mene mene tekel upharsin

57

independent blacks not welcome

56

who made this mess?

54

class gender race hustlers

53

change that never happens

50

hey look, a squirrel

49

women are people too

49

this seat is taken

46

are you embarrassed yet?

45

skin color, not character

45

we exploit all minorities

43

bank of america stadium

41

my record doesn't matter

41

we still blame bush

40

empty promises empty chair

39

obama 2012 romney 1040

36

paul ryan scares us

35


Unfortunately, the Signal's Twitter analysis engines didn't quite pick up this tag soon enough to determine who started it. The analytics firm Topsy first registered it around 8 p.m. ET yesterday, but the Twitter API does not allow searches past a certain point. As these things go, however, it matters far less who started it than who stole the reins.

Below is a graph of the volume that we picked up.