Don't Ask, Don't Tell

October 10, 2009 President Obama spoke at a dinner for homosexuals and promised that he would end the "don't ask, don't tell" policy used by the military to deal with gays in the armed forces.

It was not "news alert" for The Washington Post, but it did make BreakingNews on Twitter.

# BreakingNews URGENT -- President Obama says he will end the controversial "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military.about 3 hours ago from BNO Headquarters

# BNO NewsBreakingNews President Obama tells gays and lesbians: "My commitment to you is unwavering."about 3 hours ago from BNO Headquarters

There was a sharp spike on Twitter at 19:00 and 20:00 as news of the promise of a change in policy circulated -- according to a Trendistic figure.

A news story in The Washington Post covered the dinner and the promise the next morning.

I learned about the Obama statement a couple of hours after it was made. By the time I started an Archivist search it found 1,500 messages going back to 20:05 p.m., which was an hour after the news about Obama's statement started circulating. Twelve hours later, 9:00 a.m., there are 3,100 Twitter messages.

It would be an interesting stream to track because there was almost no criticism early, at least as I read it. Criticism seems to have shown up later. That is an interesting transition to spot -- except I lost an hour of messaging.

November 8, 2009 and it is time to stop the search. There was a big spike immediately after the Obama promise. It quickly fell to one or two hundred. At the end it was the right combination of words -- don't ask don't tell -- but the reference was not to the policy of the armed services. The last weeks will need to be cleaned before analysis will be meaningful.

The final timeline was

The .txt file that can be read by Excel to acquire the data is: don't ask, don't tell.txt