On Tuesday and Wednesday this week, the US Supreme Court heard two landmark cases related to same-sex marriage rights in this country. Simultaneously, to show solidarity for the cause of civil rights for gay members of society, thousands of Facebook users changed their profile pictures to a red equality symbol at the suggestion of the Human Rights Campaign. Most profile pictures looked like the one shown at right, but there were also many variants used as well. (By the way, here's R code use can use to generate the red equality logo, with thanks to Josef Fruehwald.)
The change in Facebook profiles provided some interesting information about the support of advances in gay rights across the USA. Some clever data science from Facebook's Eytan Bakshy reveals that there was indeed a significant increase in the rate of profile picture changes during the oral hearings:
(The chart above is the result of a time-series analysis using the R language, after extracting the normal day-night cycle of profile updates.) Moreover, by looking at the rate of changes of Facebook profiles across every county in the USA in a choropleth, we see those regions where support for gay rights is the strongest:
While it's unlikely that the Justices will consult Facebook profiles as part of their deliberations, the proceedings did seem to be favourable to the advance of gay rights. (Especially for the second case regarding DOMA, which if overturned will be a hugely positive outcome for thousands of couples already married, including me and my husband.) But for those of us for whom this cause means so much personally, it was truly heartwarming to see that sea of red from allies all across the county. What strikes me so much about the map above is that support is coming from all across the country — not one county is a totally unsupportive white. And that's something that all of America can be proud of.
Facebook (Eytan Bakshy): Showing Support for Marriage Equality on Facebook (via Sean J. Taylor)
Very nice to see so many supporters! It would be interesting to see the same plot for the rest of the world as well. Quite a number of people here in Sweden are changing their profile pictures too!
Posted by: Martin | March 30, 2013 at 08:45
This is awesome! Quick note, though- I think you meant "favourable to the advance of Gay rights", not Day rights.
Posted by: Mary | March 30, 2013 at 10:20
Personally I am sad to see a data analytics blog turning political... I thought the point here was to show cool stuff you can do with R and Revolution Analytics, not to promote one ideology over another. It is also disturbing to see this disguised under a neutral-titled visualization post. And no, not all of America is proud of.
Posted by: schiribocs | March 30, 2013 at 10:52
Thanks Mary -- and thanks for pointing out the typo, which I fixed above.
Posted by: David Smith | March 30, 2013 at 11:03
Personally I am glad to see a data analytics blog turning political! ... It is awesome when leaks make information public that politicians and military tried to conceal. But a lot of powerful information is hidden in heaps of already publicly available data.
Posted by: Raffael | March 30, 2013 at 15:21
I find quite disturbing that no quantitative scale is shown on the plots. This is sad for a blog on quantitative data analysis. Without any scale, it is difficult to understand what the plots means, and the real amount of support.
Posted by: Matthieu | April 08, 2013 at 02:22
Interesting! I wonder how much of the variation is explained by population density (i.e. is it a city) and university towns (Gainesville jumps out).
Posted by: Tim | April 25, 2013 at 16:45
well the south still doesn't much go along
Posted by: Zed Power | May 04, 2013 at 05:14
Where's the scale? I don't even know if the over-time chart even starts at 0. I believe the data looking at the trend in the south though, but I wouldn't say they're in support exactly.
Posted by: Bobby Awsumb | May 30, 2013 at 13:09