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An election twitter bot from BBC News

Wesley Stephenson @Wesstephenson

Alison Benjamin @Hey_benjamin

Link to this dropbox paper: https://tinyurl.com/s3ayd34

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Agenda

Introduction: today’s workshop

Building graphics with R

Tweeting graphics with Python

Considerations

Introduction: today’s workshop

What did our twitter bot do?

We took the results for each of the 650 seats in the UK and we created 690 of these Twitter results cards:

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One for each seat in the UK House of Commons and 40 in Welsh for the Welsh constituencies.

As the night went on we also created 29 of these UK scorecards:

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And scorecards for Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales.

What we’ll cover in today’s workshop:

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Part 1 - Building graphics with R

Line 3 - delete it.

Let’s go

Let’s deconstruct this card. How do we get this:

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From this result csv:

gssId

constituency_shortName

newPartyCode

partyCodeLast

turnout_percentage

majorityNow

resultBanner

fullName

party_shortName

votesNow

candidate_party_code

UC0001

Nicarshire

MAC

87.1

6309

MAC HOLD

Lauren Davies

Modern Alliance Coalition

21098

MAC

UC0001

Nicarshire

MAC

87.1

6309

MAC HOLD

Justin Henderson

Social Advancement

14789

UC0001

Nicarshire

MAC

87.1

6309

MAC HOLD

Habiba Khan

Moderate Resistance Party

2466

MRP

UC0001

Nicarshire

MAC

87.1

6309

MAC HOLD

Jean Cleveland

Environmental Climate Alliance

1017

ECA

UC0001

Nicarshire

MAC

87.1

6309

MAC HOLD

Elise Taylor

Traditional Preservation Movement

543

TPM

UC0001

Nicarshire

MAC

87.1

6309

MAC HOLD

Crazy Chuck McGraw III

Nutty Noodle Alliance Party

211

NNAP

UC0001

Nicarshire

MAC

87.1

6309

MAC HOLD

Janae Sheridan

Independent

IND

UC0001

Nicarshire

MAC

87.1

6309

MAC HOLD

Hector Whelan

Independent

IND

UC0001

Nicarshire

MAC

87.1

6309

MAC HOLD

Mylo Mcgee

Independent

IND

UC0001

Nicarshire

MAC

87.1

6309

MAC HOLD

Adrienne Curtis

Independent

IND

UC0001

Nicarshire

MAC

87.1

6309

MAC HOLD

Jan Stuart

Independent

IND

UC0001

Nicarshire

MAC

87.1

6309

MAC HOLD

Wiktoria Rivas

Independent

IND

It consists of two images. First a background which is 1920x1080 pixels. This has everything on it that will stay the same:

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And the live data for each seat which is coming in from your data source.

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This is all drawn using ggplot and the secret to this is remembering that all ggplot is doing is placing things on a grid. If we put the grid back in you can see what I mean.

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Follow the process

Open this file ~desktop/hands_on_classes/an_automated_twitterbot_using_r_and_python_2176/src/R/BUILD_GRAPHIC_DEMO.R

Formatting your data

Arranging and filtering your results, adding the colours for each of the parties and changing the results text so it is easier to read

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Creating coordinates data frame for the twitter card:

Each of the graphics on the sheet is drawn using a set of x, y co-ordinates. You need to create a data frame with these coordinates in it.

We have set a maximum of six candidates for each card. Each candidate has their own set of graphics - a small solid box and a large opaque box and the co-ordinates need to be set out in a data frame like this.

order	group	x_small	x_large	y	grow
6	cand6	3	6	20	0
6	cand6	6	57	20	0
6	cand6	6	57	0	0
6	cand6	3	6	0	0
5	cand5	3	6	49	29
5	cand5	6	57	49	29
5	cand5	6	57	29	29
5	cand5	3	6	29	29
4	cand4	3	6	78	58
4	cand4	6	57	78	58
4	cand4	6	57	58	58
4	cand4	3	6	58	58
3	cand3	3	6	107	87
3	cand3	6	57	107	87
3	cand3	6	57	87	87
3	cand3	3	6	87	87
2	cand2	3	6	136	116
2	cand2	6	57	136	116
2	cand2	6	57	116	116
2	cand2	3	6	116	116
1	cand1	3	6	165	145
1	cand1	6	57	165	145
1	cand1	6	57	145	145
1	cand1	3	6	145	145

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The code below creates the data frame above.

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Building the plot

Fixed text:

This is the text that always stays the same regardless of the result

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Winning party polygons:

The polygon on the left on the left denotes the winning party in 2020. The smaller one on the right is the party that won the seat in 2016.

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Candidate picture or party logo

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Candidate party colours

This uses the data frame of coordinates we made for the large and small boxes.

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Dynamic text:

The text that will change depending on the result

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The calculation below is used to determine the y coordinate used for placing the text for each candidate - the party code, the name of the candidate and the umber of votes they received.