A comparison between #MeghanMarkle and #PiersMorgan on Twitter
There has been ample discourse about the Royal Family in the past few weeks, and this was heightened by the interview given by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, to Oprah Winfrey on Sunday.
Piers Morgan, host of ITV’s morning breakfast show -“Good Morning Britain” — also became part of the conversation following the interview, facing a lot of criticism for comments he had made regarding Meghan Markle and her struggles with mental health that she shared with Oprah.
ITV announced on Tuesday that Morgan would be stepping down from Good Morning Britain after facing severe backlash for casting doubt on the veracity of Markle’s statement that she had suicidal thoughts whilst living in the Royal household.
In a tweet on Wednesday, Morgan remained steadfast about his views on Markle’s statement, tweeting that he still does not believe Meghan Markle.
In order to understand the current sentiment of Twitter users towards Piers Morgan and Meghan Markle, as well as to understand the demographic they represent, this article will do a comparative analysis of the hashtags #MeghanMarkle and #PiersMorgan.
2000 tweets were selected from #MeghanMarkle and #PiersMorgan respectively.
These tweets were first analysed to see where the user’s had indicated their location was on their profiles.
The two graphs show that a majority of tweets about Meghan Markle and Piers Morgan were coming from accounts with locations set in the U.S. or the UK. However, Meghan’s graph shows more variability — there are also users from India, Australia, and the Philippines tweeting with #MeghanMarkle. This might indicate that the story about Piers’ exit and his comments about Meghan were more relevant to people in the US and the UK, as compared to Meghan Markle who shows a more global reach.
Next, the top 10 mentions associated with the hashtags #MeghanMarkle and #PiersMorgan were evaluated. The results are as follows:
As Meghan does not have her own Twitter account, it is interesting to see that the top account in her mentioned using the #MeghanMarkle is in fact that belonging to @piersmorgan. Both graphs also show a lot of the same accounts being mentioned, including @GMB and @YouTube. Interestingly, @MrsSOsbourne, the twitter handle belonging to TV personality Sharon Osbourne is also among the top mentions under both hashtags — likely because Osbourne came under fire for defending Morgan’s comments.
Tucker Carlson, conservative American television host, also makes an appearance in top mentions under #piersmorgan — also sparking conversation after his support of Morgan’s comments on Markle.
An analysis on the follower frequency associated with accounts tweeting the hashtags #MeghanMarkle and #PiersMorgan shows striking similarity. This shows that accounts with similar follower counts were tweeting about both individuals at that particular moment.
Finally, a comparison was done of the different hashtags most often used alongside #MeghanMarkle and #PiersMorgan.
It reflects on how strongly the discourse about the two individuals is intertwined on Twitter — both of them sharing references to almost entirely the same hashtags.
One hashtag that stands out however, is #piersmorganisabully — showing some of the criticism he has faced online.
