#FightForWonho: hashtags, countries and statistics (November)

(Hay una versión en español de este artículo aquí.)

Because of my profession I suggested that I could collect data on the hashtags that we have used on Twitter to attract attention from the public and the media about these severe problems within the k-pop industry. That would serve to see with hard data the general picture of how many countries have participated, how many global trends have been achieved, and for how long it has been done.

With this I intend to show the international reach of Monsta X and the international demand that the idols should be protected from abuse and defamation  (although, it must be said, we are against this behavior towards any type of person).

Where did the statistics come from?

Will tables in Excel alone bring Wonho back? No. But this phenomenon has been the first one of its kind and it is worth keeping records of the perseverance and organization that Monbebe has as a fandom, as well as the impact of Monsta X abroad. But beyond that, it’s a symbol of the great interest to demand a cultural change in favor of the well-being of other people.

My original plan was to obtain the approximate number of how many tweets each of the hashtags used so far had. That soon proved to be impossible. There are no free or accessible tools to get that information and the large volume of tweets would require that we hire a tool for corporations.

To get the statistics that we capture in the images distributed in social media and in this article I used the Get Day Trends site, which is a trend archive on Twitter. This page informs you if a hashtag was a local and / or global trend, for how many days and in which countries.

(FIRST UPDATE: While I was getting the data for the month of December, Get Day Trends updated its platform and now offers a number of tweets per hashtag. Later in this article I will include the new information I got with this new feature.)

(SECOND UPDATE: During the data collection for the January report, Get Day Trends updated its platform again and now they also indicate the highest position in the world trends ranking. So now that information will also be available later in this article.)


I used the Monbebe Entertainment Twitter account (created on November 1; Wonho's announcement was released on October 31) to collect the hashtags. For this first report I took into account from November 1 to November 30, to analyze the first month of the movement.

Data emptying was done in two Excel sheets. In the first one, all hashtags were registered next to their publication date, the dates and number of days of the trend and in how many countries it was.

In the second sheet all the countries that presented the hashtags in their national trends were registered, as well as each of the hashtags that were.

Hashtags and participating countries

In total 121 hashtags were used, which were created and used during the 30 days in question. The strategy was to use only two hashtags every 12 hours, one in English and one in Korean, to maintain relevance on Twitter. 74 of those 121 became a worldwide trend.

The hashtag that was a worldwide trend in the largest number of countries was #FightForWonho, which was used on November 1 and became a national trend in 57 countries. Every day at least 2 of the 4 hashtags became a worldwide trend. With the exception of November 24 and 25, in which the project stopped in respect to the memory of Goo Hara.

After #FighForWonho, the other 4 hashtags with more national trends were:

2. #몬베베_원호_응원해 (Monbebe supports Wonho): 52 countries
3. #AllInForMonstaX7: 51 countries
4. #스타쉽_우리가_답변을_원해 (Starship, we want answers): 49 countries
5. #사랑한다_몬스타엑스 (I love you, Monsta X): 49 countries

To date, 58 countries in total have presented national trends of this campaign. This does not necessarily mean that Monbebe only exists in those 58 countries, but it is in those places where the concentration managed to be reflected in the form of a national trend on Twitter.  Hashtags in English reported more global trends than those written in Korean.

The top 10 countries that have had more hashtags in national trend have been:

1. Philiphinnes: 108

2. Malaysia: 108
3. Puerto Rico: 108
4. Brazil: 106
5. Indonesia: 106
6. Mexico: 106
7. Russia: 105
8. Argentina: 103
9. Chile: 102
10. Germany: 101

SECOND UPDATE: Of the 74 hashtags that were a worldwide trend, 14 of them reached 1st place in the ranking.

The number of national trends has decreased with the passing of days, as tends to happen in any movement. To contrast, on November 3 the hashtag #AllInForMonstaX7 was a trend in 51 countries. While on November 14 the hashtag #BeStrongForWonho was in 28 countries. And the #WeStandBehindWonho hashtag of November 30 was in 15 countries.

But, as you can see in the list of participating countries, those who lead it tend to put almost all the hashtags of the day on a national trend. It seems that this participation is sufficient for the campaign to continue to be a worldwide trend, although it is increasingly descending on this list (again, as is natural in this kind of movements).

Still it is striking that 15 countries that are not South Korea remain firm after a month since Wonho's departure.

FIRST UPDATE

How many tweets were published? 

As the Get Day Trends site offers an approximate amount of tweets published in each hashtag, it is necessary to take into account that the figures I will show below are approximations for the following reasons:
 
1. It is not possible to know the exact amount of tweets in a hashtag unless a specialized service is contracted.
 
2. Hashtags that were not a national trend do not show the number of tweets. The advantage in this case is that 2 hashtags were published at the same time and are usually used together in each tweet. Although a Korean hashtag was not a worldwide trend, the ones written in English have always been. So I consider that the number of tweets recorded in the English hashtags is representative of the total number of tweets.

3. There are cases (15, to be exact) in which a hashtag did become a worldwide trend, but since the number of tweets was less than 10,000, the site does not record the exact amount. In these cases the figure I took into account for the sum was 10,000. Which is obviously not accurate, but that is what I thought was appropiate with the tools available.

The hashtag used in more countries (#FightForWonho) had a total of approximately 1,300,000 tweets. But it is striking that the hashtag with the most tweets was
# 원호 사랑해 (Wonho, I love you), which recorded approximately 2,100,000 tweets. The approximate total of tweets when adding the 121 hashtags of November is 14,028,400.

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We ask that if you retake this data, you give credits to Lilian Pérez and Monsta X Mexico. If you want to share them with Starship Entertainment on their social media or via email, we invite you to do so. As well as share it in Monsta X's Fancafe.

This research is updated every month in a new blog post.