Journalists and news organisations enjoy a huge presence on Twitter but in the run-up to this year’s opening of parliament, it was citizens who generated the most content on the social networking site. TheMediaOnline reports.
Media analysis group Ornico released the results of a survey this week on the conversation on social media ahead of President Jacob Zuma’s state of the nation address (SONA) in Parliament on Thursday evening. According to its SocialTrac survey, new political players emerged this year to dominate social sites.
The top three most prolific or active Twitter authors discussing SONA were @ALETTAHA, @RSApolitics and @ZANC2EFF, measured according to the volume of tweets.
“These are independent Twitter authors who actively generate content and discussion on SONA2015,” says the survey.
The top three retweets trending in the 11 days running up to SONA, came from a single author — Richard Nel, the founder of Gate Investment Group and an active member of the ANC Progressive Business Forum.
“He has an impressive Twitter presence with 534 000 followers, and together with his followers @GateInv dominated discussion regarding SONA2015. This made Dr Richard Nel one of the key content drivers for #SONA2015.”
As an example, one of his Tweets discussing education was retweeted more than 420 times.
But those generating the most content are not necessarily the most influential.
The top most influential people on Twitter were news sites, politicians – and Afrikaans singer Steve Hofmeyr.
“The top four authors for #SONA2015 on Twitter, are the Democratic Alliance (@DA_News); News24 (@News24); Helen Zille (@helenzille) and Times Live (@TimesLIVE) in order of influence. Steve Hofmeyr (@steve_hofmeyr) follows as the fifth most influential Twitter user for the posts surveyed.”
This is measured according to “Klout scores”.
“The higher the Klout Score, the greater the influence. Influence for the purpose of this survey is deemed to be the ability to drive or direct social media action.”
The score is derived from a combinations of attributes, such as the ratio of reactions generated compared to the volume of content shared, and the size of the user’s follower base. The most influential authors are those who potentially have the biggest effect on a topic or content.
Turning to sentiment, Ornico found that most people were either neutral or negative ahead of the opening of Parliament.
“Sentiment analysis on the Twitter and Facebook posts showed that the overwhelming majority of sentiment relating to SONA2015 was either neutral or negative in nature. Ornico’s SocialTrac divided surveyed Twitter and Facebook posts into Neutral and Negative. Fifty three percent were deemed neutral, and 47 percent negative.”
