What connects a social media user to the ethnocide of the Uyghur people? How do social media comments reflect public response to international crises and act as a metric for online activism? Presently, nearly 2-million Uyghurs are detained and tortured in reeducation camps in Xinjiang, China. Yet, the crisis lacks representation in broadcast media and instead relies on online activism to raise awareness. A short, viral comic titled What Has Happened to Me documents Uyghur refugee Mihrigul Tursun’s trauma in reeducation camps. In online activism, comments are akin to word of mouth. This project seeks to determine how comments reflect public response in order to aid activists in gauging reception beyond quantified but indeterminate “likes.” Using Intelligent Archive, Microsoft Excel, and Python, Ozkiral answers these questions by congregating and analyzing the comic’s comments through word frequency analysis and sentiment analysis. Being able to examine the responses of an entire comment section, as opposed to cherry-picked examples, reveals the general opinion of the audience by quantifying their sentiments and graphing their associations and reactions. Thus, his project ascertains whether Instagram and Twitter respond similarly to the same comic that is a testament to an international crisis, as well as amalgamate the two platforms’ comments to gauge a holistic response. In answering the posed questions, his data gauges a congregated sentiment of each population that can aid online activists to communicate with their target audience. Furthermore, this project contributes to a broader field of activism while raising awareness for an international crisis.

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