FLINT, MI -- People are taking their opinions about the United Automobile Workers strike to Twitter and most of the chatter is taking place in Michigan, a map by PartCatalog shows.

More than 49,000 UAW members walked off the job at General Motor plants Monday, Sept. 16, after their contract expired without a replacement deal in place. Talks are continuing Friday, Sept. 20, according to officials with the UAW and GM.

Using software with direct access to geotagged Twitter data, PartCatalog created a map showing where most of the UAW talk is happening. Most of the tweeters are located in Midwest states where most of the General Motors manufacturing sites are, said Alan Marek, President of PartCatalog.

PartCatalog is an automotive website specializing in aftermarket accessories. The company has done similar research to look at the most popular Tesla car models by state or Uber and Lyft popularity by state, Marek said.

“Being in the automotive industry, we have an interest in all automotive news and happenings,” Marek said about creating the map.

Fifteen of the company’s manufacturing plants and more than 14,000 employees are based in Michigan.

“It’s a different way to look at trending news and one that can give insights into which states/regions are leading the chatter,” Marek stated. “With bigger news, we can get enough Twitter data to make a statistically significant representation.”

An interesting takeaway from the data, Marek said, is there is little chatter about the UAW strike in the nation’s most populous states: California and Texas. There this little to no chatter about the strike in the Southern states.

Data for the map was collected between Monday, Sept. 16, and Wednesday, Sept. 18, Marek said. PartCatalog employees searched “UAW strike," “GM strike,” or “#gmstrike," “#uawstrong,” “#uawstrong,” and “#unionstrong” to collect the information.

“Once we had the results, we simply constructed a heat map showing where the most activity for those terms was,” Marek said.

If there is continued interest and the strike continues to grow, Marek said the company will see if there are any changes to update the map.