How Topic Detection Leads to Share-of-voice Analysis
It was a full day of events on Twitter. Time to make an
inventory of the principal topics and the buzz created on the social network in
the Dutch speaking community in the north of Belgium.
First, the figures: 10.605 tweets were analysed of which
5.754 were referring to an external link (i.e. a news site or another external
web site like a blog, a photo album etc…)
As the Flemish nationalist party leader Mr. Dewever from
N-VA (the New Flemish Alliance in English) launched his appeal to the French speaking
community today, we focused on the tweets about, to and from this party.
A mere 282 tweets were deemed relevant for topic analysis.
And here’s the first striking number: of these 282 tweets only 16 contained a
reactive response.
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| Tweets that provoked a reactive response are almost nonexistent |
About 49 topics were grouping several media sources and
publications of all sorts. We will discuss three to illustrate how the relationship
between topic, retweets, klout score and added content makes some tweets more
relevant than others. These are the three topics:
- Dewever addresses the French speaking community via Twitter
- Christian Democrat De Clerck falsely accuses N-VA of using fascist symbols in an advertisement
- You Tube movie from N-VA is ridiculed by the broad community
Dewever addresses the French speaking community via Twitter
This topic is divided in a moderately positive headline and two
neutral ones. The positive: Bart Dewever to the French Speaking Community: “Give
N-VA a Chance”
This headline generates a total klout score of 188 where the
Flemish tv station VRT takes the biggest chunk with 158 klout score.
This neutral headline generates only 98 klout score: “Dewever
puts the struggle between N-VA and the French speaking socialist party at the
centre of the discussion”
The other neutral headline “N-VA President Bart Dewever
addresses the French speaking community directly” delivers a higher score: 140 klout
score partly because one of N-VA’s members of Parliament promoted the link to
the news medium.
All in all with 426 total klout score, this topic does not
cause great ripples, especially not if you compare this to a mere anecdote,
which is the second topic.
Christian Democrat De Clerck falsely accuses N-VA of using fascist symbols in an advertisement
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| On the left, the swastika hoax, commented by the christian democrat and in the right the original ad showing a labyrinth |
Felix De Clerck, son of the former Christian democrat minister
of Justice Stefaan De Clerck, reacted to a hoax and was chastised for doing
this. With a klout score of 967 this has caused a bigger stir although the
political relevance is a lot smaller than Dewever’s speech… Emotions can play a
role even in simple and neutral retweets.
You Tube movie from N-VA is ridiculed by the broad community
Another day’s high was reached with an amateuristic and
unprofessional YouTube movie which showed a parody on a famous Flemish
detective series to highlight the major issues of the campaign. This product
from the candidates in West-Flanders, including the Flemish minister of Interior
Affairs, Geert Bourgeois generated a total klout score of 778 tweets and retweets
with negative or sarcastic comments.
Yet an adjacent topic about a cameraman from Bruges who is
surprised by minister Bourgeois’ enthusiasm generates a 123 moderately positive
klout score.
Three topics out of 49 generate 20.6 % of total klout scores!
This illustrates perfectly how the Twitter community selects
and reinforces topics that carry an emotional value: the YouTube movie and the
hoax from De Clerck generated a share of voice of no less than almost 17% of
the tweets.
Forgive me for reducing the scope to Flanders, the political
scope to just one party and the tweets to only three because this blog has not
the intention of presenting the full enchilada. I hope we have demonstrated
with today’s contribution that topics and the way they are perceived and
handled can vary greatly in impact and cannot be entirely reduced to numbers.
In other words, the human interpreter will deliver added value for quite a long
time.
