The following data was collected during the Presidential Debate on the 22nd of October by tapping into the Facebook social graph API using R.

The top three posted links during the debate for each candidate are:

Obama-

#1     http://bit.ly/QCODJg

#2     http://bit.ly/RXstnm

#3    http://bit.ly/P8MmJ1

Romney-

#1    http://bit.ly/zDdsKf

#2    http://bit.ly/SjFbKx

#3    http://bit.ly/SjJaXv

The top five video (for both candidates) of the debate are:

#1    http://bit.ly/WearzC

#2    http://bit.ly/QTEibe

#3    http://bit.ly/VT9xXE

#4    http://bit.ly/SeIGDJ

#5   http://bit.ly/PcKJV5

The top five shared photos are:

#1    http://on.fb.me/TOTPIY

#2    http://on.fb.me/RYF7m6

#3    http://on.fb.me/QCQLkj

#4    http://on.fb.me/RSkXXv

#5    http://on.fb.me/T7Lr6h

This data was collected by tapping into the facebook API using the following R code (adapted from cloudstat.org) run in a loop :

library(RCurl) library(RJSONIO)

Result fb.base<-paste("http://graph.facebook.com/search?q=",Facebook,"&limit=10",sep="") fb.url<-getURL(fb.base) fb.parse<-fromJSON(fb.url) return(fb.parse)

}

FBdebate<-function(x){ candidate<-list("Romney","Obama") for(a in candidate){ fbkeyword fbresult fbdata fbdata.length fbid = facebookers = fbmessage = fbpic = fblink = fbname = fbcaption = fbdescription = fbicon = fbtype = fbcreated = fbupdated = fblikecount = 0 for (i in 1:fbdata.length){ fbid[i] facebookers[i] fbmessage[i] fbpic[i] fblink[i] fbname[i] fbcaption[i] fbdescription[i] fbicon[i] fbtype[i] fbcreated[i] fbupdated[i]fblikecount[i]

#for(j in 1:fblikecount[i]){ fblikename[i] } assign(paste0("fbtable.", a),as.data.frame(cbind(fbid, facebookers, fbmessage, fbpic, fblink, fbname, fbcaption, fbdescription, fbicon, fbtype, fbcreated, fbupdated, fblikecount, candidate=a))) } debate<-merge(fbtable.Romney,fbtable.Obama, all=TRUE) debate$fbupdated<-format(as.POSIXct(strptime(as.character(debate$fbupdated), "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S+0000"), tz="GMT"), tz="America/New_York",usetz=TRUE) debate$fbcreated<-format(as.POSIXct(strptime(as.character(debate$fbcreated), "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S+0000"), tz="GMT"), tz="America/New_York",usetz=TRUE) return(debate) }