Notes

Lockdown Protest Share Data

Alex Kasprak

Published May 20, 2020

Access the Full Dataset Here:

Lockdown Protest Facebook Share Data, Chronological (v 1.0)

Source of Crowdtangle Share Data:

Between April 24 and April 27, 2020, we downloaded Crowdtangle share data derived from the URLs of 39 different anti-lockdown related Facebook events, listed below. The first three events listed below with bolded dates are the Michigan events referenced in this story:

We identified these events using the search terms "Operation Lockdown" and "ReOpen" by following those links to other events recommended to us by Facebook’s algorithms, and from a list of events advertised by the libertarian group FreedomWorks.

*The event "Mi. Citizens Unifying against Tyranny" was organized by Michigan Conservative Coalition members but deleted by Facebook prior to the event. Another event, the American Patriot Rally, occurred at the same place on the same day, and the activities of these two groups, evidently, blended into each other.

Explanation of Database Columns:

  • ID: Sorting by this column provides the true chronology of shares (added by Snopes)*
  • State: The state in which the protest occurred (added by Snopes)
  • Event Name: The name of the protest shown on the Facebook invite (added by Snopes)
  • Event Date: The date the event was scheduled to be held (added by Snopes)
  • Event Link: Archived link of the event page (added by Snopes)
  • Hosts: The people listed as hosting the event on Facebook (added by Snopes)
  • Facebook Share Source: the page or group the event was shared to (Crowdtangle)
  • Share Date: The date and time of the share event (Crowdtangle)*
  • Followers: The number of followers the page or group shared to has (Crowdtangle)
  • Interactions: The number of interactions the shared event had (Crowdtangle)
  • Share Link: The URL of the shared post (Crowdtangle)
  • FreedomWorks: A “Yes” indicates the event was advertised by FreedomWorks (added by Snopes)
  • Burst Group: Use to group by multiple-post events (added by Snopes)**
  • Booster Profile: Defined in the story, the person who multi-posted (added by Snopes)**
  • Data DL Date: Day the data were downloaded on Crowdtangle (added by Snopes)

* The Crowdtangle-derived data field "Share Date" sorts alphabetically by day of week; the "ID" field is used to preserve the true order of shares.

** Events in which one user shared an event to several groups in a short period of time are highlighted in yellow.

Updates to Data:

None at present.

Corrections? Please contact Snopes here.

By Alex Kasprak

Alex Kasprak is an investigative journalist and science writer reporting on scientific misinformation, online fraud, and financial crime.