How the Chicago teachers strike is playing out on social media
The vast majority—we’re talking nearly 100 percent—of mentions on Twitter about each side’s leadership are negative. Oh, and Mayor Emanuel is not a Nickelback fan. That and more in this roundup.
From Sunday, Sept. 8 through Monday, Sept. 10, social media monitor Radian6 reported that social media traffic with references to the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) logged 65,000 mentions across all social media platforms, with Twitter accounting for nearly 80 percent of the traffic.
On Tuesday morning, marking the second day of the strike, the issue was not trending on Twitter primarily because it didn’t have an established hashtag. Union backers were pushing #FairContractNow and #CTUStrike, but as of early Tuesday they didn’t seem to have much traction. The most used hashtag, according to Radian6, was #ctu.
Radian6 also found:
• Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is in almost 1,700 posts with 93 percent of them classed as negative;
• CTU President Karen Lewis accounts for 926 mentions with negative sentiment at 94.6 percent.
The Chicago Teachers Union Facebook page remains active, posting multiple times each hour. To the union’s credit, it doesn’t appear they are deleting negative comments, like this one:
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