How can R help us understand when this situation might change?

Make the code immediately reproducible by anyone, anywhere
Google search trends
Wikipedia page views
Broadcast news airtime

Immediately reproducible

Binder builds a Docker image from my GitHub repo
Low friction interaction with a specified computational environment
Follow along at http://bit.ly/rstats-public-interest

Data from the Mother Jones article US Mass Shootings, 1982-2018: Data From Mother Jones’ Investigation

Side note: interactive plots

library(ggplot2)
library(plotly)
p0 <- 
  ggplot(us_mass_shootings,
         aes(Year)) +
  geom_bar() +
  ylab("Number of mass shooting events per year") +
  theme_minimal(base_size = 14)
ggplotly(p0)

98 mass shooting events in the data. School shootings seem clustered.

Google search trends

gtrendsR by Philippe Massicotte and Dirk Eddelbuettel to perform and display Google Trends queries
Easy to get data from the API
Issues with resolution (month-day) and scale (0-100 per query only)

Side note: text halos in ggplot

library(ggplot2)
g <-  ggplot(...) 
# get a halo on the text https://stackoverflow.com/a/10691826/1036500
theta <- seq(pi/8, 2*pi, length.out=16)
xo <- diff(range(my_data_frame$x))/200
yo <- diff(range(my_data_frame$y))/200
for(i in theta) {
  g <- g + geom_text( data = my_data_frame,
    aes_q(x = bquote(x+.(cos(i)*xo)),
          y = bquote(y+.(sin(i)*yo)),
          label = ~label), 
    size=4, colour='white', hjust = 1)
}
g + geom_text(..., colour = "black")

Small multiples to show the decay in Google search activity

Side note: iterate by row

library(gtrendsR)
library(glue)
library(purrrlyr)
search_results_over_time_with_cases <- 
by_row(search_intervals,
    ~gtrends(c("gun control"), 
             gprop = "web", 
             time = glue('{.x$Query_start_date} {.x$Query_end_date}'))
    )

Interactive overlay to compare decay in Google search activity

Wikipedia page views

pageviews by Oliver Keyes to search and download article page view counts of Wikipedia and its sister projects
One of the most popular sites on the Web to satisfy information needs
Current API limited to 2015 onward

Side note: reading large text files

# https://gist.github.com/benmarwick/20eac969ce9199756dc074801f5b531d
library(chunked)
library(tidyverse)
my_file <- 'pagecounts-2012-12-14/pagecounts-2012-12-14' # 3.5 GB
# to find where the content starts, vary the skip value, 
read.table(my_file, nrows = 10, skip = 25)
# work on chunks of the file
df <- 
read_chunkwise(my_file, 
               chunk_size=5000,
               skip = 30,
               format = "table",
               header = TRUE) %>% 
  filter(stringr::str_detect(De.mw.De.5.J3M1O1, "Gun_control"))

Side note: non-equi joins

# https://stackoverflow.com/q/41132081/1036500
library(tidyverse)
    elements <- c(0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 0.9, 1.1, 1.9, 2.1)
    intervals <-  frame_data(~phase, ~start, ~end,
                               "a",     0,     0.5,
                               "b",     1,     1.9,
                               "c",     2,     2.5)
library(fuzzyjoin)
fuzzy_left_join(data.frame(elements), 
                intervals, 
                by = c("elements" = "start", 
                       "elements" = "end"), 
                match_fun = list(`>=`, `<=`)) %>% 
  distinct()
##     elements phase start end
## 1      0.1     a     0   0.5
## 2      0.2     a     0   0.5
## 3      0.5     a     0   0.5
## 4      0.9  <NA>    NA    NA
## 5      1.1     b     1   1.9
## 6      1.9     b     1   1.9
## 7      2.1     c     2   2.5

Do mass shootings with more fatalities result in more page views?

Broadcast television news coverage

newsflash by Bob Rudis for tools to work with the Internet Archive and GDELT Television Explorer
Keyword search the closed captioning streams, daily data going back to 2009 for MSNBC, CNN and FOX
Measurement variable is % airtime (15 second blocks)

Summary

☹️ There are too many mass shootings
👉 Stoneman Douglas resembles previous mass shooting events in generating and sustaining public interest in gun control, as measured by Google search volume and TV broadcast news content.
👉 Most striking difference between Stoneman Douglas and previous mass shootings is the high number of page views to Wikipedia articles
If Sandy Hook didn't change anything, probably no single event will

Colophon