I have to say, I didn't think I would be doing this. I have used social media before, Snapchat and Instagram, sure, but this? Never thought I would do this - analyzing one hundred of twitter's tweets.

Quick Refresher

As you can guess by my topic - Abortion - there are two sides to this debate.

• Pro-Life are those who wish for anti-abortion laws, making abortion illegal

• Pro-Choice are those who wish for the individual to have the choice of whether they should have an abortion. 

Method

In order to gather evidence and information about my topic, I used the hashtag #abortion to collect tweets that were related to anything about abortion. Next, I had to order my methodology into four categories: (1) Stance, (2) Gender, (3) Rhetorical Appeal, and (4) Media. 

Findings

What I found out at the conclusion of my research was that out of the hundred tweets I analyzed, the majority of the tweets were against abortion. In the beginning even before I conducted my research, I had assumed that it would be around 50/50, half against and half for. But, no. My assumptions were wrong; it was much more one-sided. More as 70/30 than 50/50. 

Another one of my findings was that surprisingly, the tweets of both genders were even. I had more expected the tweets to be 70/30, the majority to be female and minority to be male. But, no. Like earlier, my assumptions were also wrong. This research showed that both female and male are likely to take part in this hot debate on abortion. However, for this aspect of my research, I will say that there are definite limitations. I labeled the user tweet as female or male based on their profile picture and name. So, this account may not show the full picture. 

I went into this aspect assuming that the majority of tweets would emphasize pathos, and I was right. The majority of arguments in the tweets were 70% pathos or emotion. I had expected this aspect to be true as I generally know that in real-life conversations, people are more likely to argue in an emotional way. Researching on the internet, I had also expected arguments to be even more emotional. It was correct, most of the tweets were very emotional or acted on behalf of emotions or tried to have the reader react to the tweet in an emotional manner. However, something I did not expect was for ethos to take up over 20% of the tweets. Of course, in hindsight, it made sense. For a topic such as abortion, it would make sense for there to be tweets from organizations, news reporters, information reports, and the such. I did expect logos to be very, very small as not many people think logically in real-life conversations, especially on the internet. I was right. Not many tweets emphasized logos or logic. 

For my last category, Media, I went in not knowing what to expect. I usually use platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram, which uses primarily video and images. But, Twitter? My findings were that the majority of users tweeting about abortion used websites or links. This makes sense as most of the tweets emphasized pathos and in order to provide credibility to their tweet, the user provided a link to a "credible" website. Potentially, individuals believed that their tweets will be taken more seriously if they provide a website that acted as evidence for their tweets. About a quarter of the tweets used images. These images were pictures or illustrations that painted abortion in a negative light as most of the abortion hashtag tweets against abortion.

Unfortunately, I was unable to embed the tweet, so I will use the image that was inserted inside the tweet instead. This image emphasized how ridiculous it is that one can attribute dollar amount to a baby's eyes, heart, and organs. The image depicted that one could rationalize how much a baby would cost when the user's argument was that every life is precious and priceless.