The volume of tweets that include specific terms is obtained from a manual search of @realDonaldTrump’s twitter feed from June 2009 to January 2018 facilitated by trumptwitterarchive.com/archive. Data related to number of RTs, Favs, and dates are also retrieved from the same source.
The period of the search starts in June 2015, as it was the month in which Trump announced his candidacy for President of the United States.
The frequency of tweets was grouped monthly to appreciate significant variations over time.
For the first graph, terms that included the word “wall” but which did not make a direct reference to a defense structure or border fortification were excluded from the search results (e.g. “Wall St.”, “Wallstein”, “wallet”). Retweets were also excluded.
The count on “migration related-terms” includes the words “migr,” “Mexico,” “DACA,” “alien,” “caravan,” “border.” There was no other filter used in the search. Retweets were excluded.
Image 1. Trump and the wall. Caravan of migrants from Central America. Credits: Ueslei
Image 2. The Wall in Context. Credits: Marcelino/Reuters
Image 3. Anti-immigrant protest in California with American flags. Crédito: Getty
Image 4. Interaction with Trump’s Tweets. Kevin Lamarque:Reuters