Hoping to spur conversation about its big Edward Snowden interview, NBC News asked its viewers to vote on their view of the leaker.
Distilling the debate around Snowden's leaks into a black-and-white question (or maybe red-and-blue), NBC wanted to know: Was the NSA leaker a #patriot or a #traitor?
#Patriot or #Traitor? Weigh in as you watch #InsideSnowden http://t.co/Rwz28jolNT pic.twitter.com/uYoNy7Px2u— NBC News (@NBCNews) May 29, 2014
Well, the results are in.
The outcome was "extremely close" in the lead-up to the program, NBC News said, but over a 36-hour period that included the special, tweets mentioning #Patriot outnumbered #Traitor, with nearly 60% of Twitter users calling Snowden a "#Patriot."
According to data provided by Sysomos, the word "patriot" was used in nearly 25,000 tweets in the past 24 hours, with most -- but not all -- related to the Snowden special. Approximately 68% of those tweeters were male, while 32% were female.
The word "traitor," meanwhile, was used in 18,700 tweets, Sysomos said. Males again outnumbered females, but to a slightly lesser degree when opposing Snowden's actions.
Overall, either #InsideSnowden (the most commonly used hashtag) or just Snowden has been tweeted 142,853 times, Sysomos said. About 60% of those users were American, far and away the most popular country tweeting along. The second most popular: Germany, which learned U.S. spy services were listening in on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's calls.
As for NBC's ratings, the effort to secure the Snowden interview paid off, at least for the most part:
Prelim ratings: just under 6M viewers watched Brian Williams interview Edward Snowden at 10 pm Wed. Behind CSI rerun, but #2 show for night— Alex Weprin (@alexweprin) May 29, 2014