Twitter Users' Interest in Asteroid 2012 DA14 Mirrored the Asteroid's Trajectory During Its Earth Flyby

On February 15, 2013, asteroid 2012 DA14 passed close to Earth during its flyby. We used this opportunity to analyze how the event affected the social-networking community of Twitter. We analyzed whether the flyby of the asteroid elicited more tweets about the asteroid close to the asteroid's trajectory compared to the neutral search term NASA. A spatio-temporal analysis of tweets about NASA revealed a natural movement of the geographical mean from east to west, mirroring the Sun's path through the sky. For the geolocation of users tweeting about the asteroid, this east-west movement changed direction, mirroring the asteroid's trajectory (from south-east to north-west) as soon as the asteroid was potentially visible from Earth. This effect appears to represent emotionally contagious flocking behavior among Twitter users influenced by the position of the asteroid itself.