On June 26, the Supreme Court helped change people’s lives and the color of their social media profile pictures with the national legalization of same sex marriages, and a few million minds. According to data from social intelligence company Wayin, over 2.5 million positive tweets were sent in support of marriage equality.
Wayin analyzed public profiles on Twitter and Facebook, filtering through more than 160,000 public Facebook posts and over 3.9 million tweets. Overall, Twitter embraced the news of marriage equality better than Facebook with 66 percent of the responses on Twitter being positive compared to 56 percent positive messages on Facebook. But, in the battle of the sexes, women were more supportive than men. The data revealed that 10 percent more women support gay marriage on social media than their male counterparts. On Facebook, 72 percent of women supported marriage equality compared to 54 percent on Twitter.
Only 45 percent of men on Facebook sent positive messages about marriage equality. On Twitter the ratio is better, at 63 percent of men. According to Wayin’s heat map of the twitter activity surrounding marriage equality, the vast majority of chatter occurred on the east coast with most of the midwest and South displaying relatively timid activity.
Wayin analyzed millions of tweets and Facebook comments in real-time with the ability to discern intangible details such as sentiment. The company’s technology has been used by The Weather Channel to help the network input weather photos from their viewers’ social media accounts on live television in real-time.
While the positivity shined through, Facebook and Twitter’s abundance of negative user comments have got them in trouble in recent history. Last September, The Association for Progressive Communications’ Women’s Rights Program gave both Facebook and Twitter “F” grades for their “public commitment to human rights standards,” according to a statement. Less than three months later, Twitter announced improved measures to prevent cyberbullying including easier response time for reporting abuse. Facebook also altered its cyber bullying policies months after the grade.
