The Grammys and Oscars according to #BlackTwitter (2016)

Black Twitter, a subculture of the online social networking site Twitter, has served as a vital tool to promote social change particularly in the Black community. The subculture is often criticized for not being a legitimate platform to document and voice various opinions regarding these social movements, however Black Twitter is often referred to as the modern day civil rights movement. Historically, people of color have been underrepresented throughout the arts with this year being no exception. Several black actors, actresses and music artists have been snubbed of Grammy and Oscar nominations. Therefore, blacktags or hashtags with black racial and controversial context such as #OscarsSoWhite and #WhitePeoplesChoiceAwards are currently trending on Black Twitter. We gather and began to analyze these blacktags and others during award ceremonies. 

To obtain the real-time data needed for this study, we use a series of data streaming functionalities as mandated by Tweepy, a Twitter Application Programming Interface (API) implemented in Python. By classifying certain tweets and blacktags with their prospective topic or issue, we will be able to inform a broader range of tweeters about important discussions that are critical to the black community. We can further demonstrate how and potentially why Black Twitter is used as an open forum for minorities to voice their opinions on racial issues. We show preliminary analysis results of our Grammys and Oscars tweet collections.