Hashtag analysis of Azerbaijani elections tweets

Today Azerbaijan, a small oil-producing country on the Caspian shores, held their presidential elections. Ilham Aliyev, sitting president since 2003, when he took over after his father, won with a great majority of the votes. (The result was actually leaked one day before the elections, so that was no big surprise!) However, what is interesting, is this analysis of the opposition and pro-regime youth groups' use of twitter hashtags in the run-up before the elections. Katy Pearce has been logging the main hashtags connected to the elections for more than a month, and finds that twitter has become an important battlefield between opposition groups and pro-regime youth groups before the elections. Thus, while the oppression of human rights and the opposition in particular in Azerbaijan continues, the regime still seem to care about their reputation...

http://www.katypearce.net/we-are-young-heartache-to-heartache-we-stand-no-promises-no-demands-azvote13/