Exploring The Conversations Of Burkini Gate On Twitter Community

Abstract

A burkini (combination between burqa and bikini) is a type of woman swimsuit that covers the whole body, except the face, the hands, and the feet. The suit was designed in Australia by Aheda Zanetti in 2004. The burkinigate hashtag (#burkinigate) emerged after photographs show French policemen confronting a middle-aged woman wearing a burkini on the beach in Nice, France. The policemen were ordering her to take off her burkini as part of a controversial burkini ban in France. This photographs became more controversial because the woman involuntary removed a blue long-sleeved tunic and one of the policemen appears to take notes and fined her. The photographs triggered a trending topic in Twitter community and received responses from all cultural and religion background. This paper explored conversations of burkini gate on Twitter including number of posting, popular topics, top retweet, top posters, top profiles mentions, and most followed users. Using TAGS (Twitter Archiving Google Sheet) as a data archiving tool and Tableu as a data visualisation program, this study was collecting a sample of Twitter data from 16-26 August 2016. The collected data included hashtags of burkini, burkiniban, and burkinigate. Some tweets categories found from the conversations of burkinigate on Twitter including; news & political discourses, satire comments & images, form of solidarity, burkini viral marketing, and negative sentiment towards burkini. Keywords: burkini, burkinigate, conversation, community, Twitter