ImpactWatch Blog

On June 29th and 30th the ImpactWatch team and The Bivings Group had the pleasure of attending the 2009 Personal Democracy Forum Conference in New York City. One of the tools that we built for the conference was a Twitter aggregator called Twitterslurp so that everybody could keep track of the tweets about the conference on one web page.

Dave Witzel over at the Personal Democracy Forum has a great post up analyzing all of the data Twitterslurp collected to determine which people and topics got the most buzz on Twitter during the conference. These are the top five:

• danah boyd
• Micah Sifry
• Mark Pesce
• Andrew Rasiej
• Michael Wesch

Media monitoring and analysis is what we do over here at ImpactWatch, so we decided to see how online News and Blogs stacked up against the Twitter results. They tell somewhat of a different story.

Speakers

Looking at News and Blogs published between June 29th and July 8th the clear standouts were White House CIO Vivek Kundra and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Online News 6/29 – 7/9

Kundra’s announcement about usaspending.gov, an online “IT Dashboard” where citizens can go to look up how the government is spending their tax dollars on Information Technology was reported in over 54% of main stream news sites online. Bloomberg also announced five NYC government information technology initiatives including the NYC Big Apps contest asking developers to find creative ways to mash-up New York City’s data feeds so information could be better shared with the public. He garnered 17.3% of the media attention as a result.

Blogs 6/29-7/9

Comparatively, in blog posts, Kundra and Bloomberg again dominated the coverage with a combined 55% share from bloggers. The overall results, however, were closer to the trends that Dave Witzel found in Twitter. danah boyd and her presentation on class differences on Facebook and Myspace was the third most written about in 25 different blog posts. Anthropologist Michael Wesch’s session on the evolution of the phrase “whatever” managed to make a top five appearance with 19 blog posts, a tie with PDF co-founder Andrew Rasiej.

Themes

The overall topics again reflected the “Gov 2.0” initiatives by Kundra and Bloomberg, earning 53.9% of the total coverage. Other top trending topics were health care, being driven by Obama’s health care initiatives and the call for an open data format for health care data. Iran was still on a lot of people’s minds as a result of the recent elections. Again, danah boyd’s discussion of classes in social networks received a lot of press. Rounding out the top five themes was the debate over whether or not Broadband is a civil right.

Shift to Real-Time information

The following two graphs represent the volume from June 25th and the days leading up to the conference, to July 9th, nine days after the conference ended. If we take a look at the total volume of Tweets, News, and Blogs, the spikes look pretty similar, but there are two big differences that stand out.

The most obvious difference is the volume. 19324 total tweets versus 91 News articles and 194 blog posts during the same time frame. Twitter has clearly become the communication method of choice, at least at technically oriented conferences like PDF.

The other noticeable difference is when the spikes in volume occurred. The peak day for News with 41 articles and Blogs with 61 posts was the second day of the conference reflecting the coverage of the previous day’s events. Twitter however peaks on the first day of the conference with 9615 tweets and is almost as high on the second day with 7959. The audience’s value of the real-time nature of Twitter conversations is clearly evident.

Twitter Volume

How do you know what you know? It’s a question worth asking that seldom crosses people’s minds. When it comes to media literacy, few people stop to critically analyze the sources from which their news originates. After all the prestige and organization is stripped from it, mass media boils down to a story written by a biased individual.

One of the widely recognized normative goals of journalistic media is to remain “objective” and “unbiased”, a lofty and impossible goal. Unavoidable forces such as deadlines, ownership, the author’s personal worldview, editorial influence, and story selection all contribute to media bias. What I’m trying to get at is that news isn’t always fair, and anyone with a vested interest in their publicity should be wary of their perception in the media.

Take, for example, someone recently familiar with media coverage: Sarah Palin. Without speaking to my personal favorability, what comes to mind at the mention of her name? Does the term Malibu Barbie, the popular appearances of Tina Fey, or opinions about wardrobe selection come to mind? In reality, many people were turned off by Sarah Palin. Over her campaign for vice presidency, the media chose to zoom in on certain aspects of her personal life, imagery, and political history (as is the media’s responsibility for anybody vying for a spot as prestigious as she was). Whether you felt Sarah Palin was treated fairly or unfairly is irrelevant to my point: the picture you saw was painted entirely by the media.

Some wisdom can be drawn from this. If revenue is driven by consumers, and consumers are informed by an inherently biased media, it is necessary to “maintain” public image with the public. This is nothing new. Public relations firms have been around since the days of Edward Bernays, and before that in other forms. Building relationships with the public, networking with relevant (and influential) members of the media, and responding to negative criticisms are all key qualitative elements to maintaining desired public perception.

Somewhere along the way, a little thing called the internet came along. It took some time to catch on, but it is unstoppable; a TV-killer. Please take advice from this youngster: Do not underestimate its influence. While traditional media personalities have come to terms and accepted the internet as part of their toolbox (see our newspaper study), nobody could predict the overall influence social media would have on media relations. Tweets and blogs and spaces of all varieties have popped up anywhere and everywhere I seem to be looking. For the first real time in history, a medium with virtually instantaneous feedback has become the norm. Opinions from virtually anybody have the potential to go viral.

That’s where we come in. At IW, we take care of that for you. There is simply too much noise out there to maintain relations the way one could in the golden days. Harnessing the vast scanning capabilities of machines and the sentiment of living, breathing people, we deliver information about brands to people who get it. If you think I’m wrong, you’re probably missing something.

With only three days left before things kick off in Beijing, our ImpactWatch demo has made itself clear: within the media, China is being portrayed at a far less favorable rate than that of the actual Olympic Games. Even with widespread buzz addressing athletic performance enhancers, coverage of China’s human rights record, air pollution, algae blooms, and authoritarian domestic policies have been pushed to the forefront of western media. While glittering articles about athletes’ preparations boost the favorability of the Olympics, China is struggling to find its own crutch topic under the strain of relentless criticism and unfavorable press.

The graph below illustrates what I’m talking about:

 Even from this raw graph of daily average favorability, the difference is quite noticeable. When I visualize by month to show overall trends, things get interesting:

These trend lines highlight the discrepancy between the two topics. While the Olympic Games’ average favorability has had its ups and downs, its average favorability has both remained positive and increased in positivity from May to August.

China has not fared as well in its coverage; while enjoying two relatively neutral months (May and June), its favorability rating began to falter in July (-.13) and August (-.29). Quite the opposite of the Games’ coverage, China’s trend line indicates both a negative rating and an increase in negativity from May to August.

As the Games’ opening ceremony nears, a new chapter in our ImpactWatch demo begins. With Beijing as a stage, the world — and our demo — is all eyes…anything could happen.

After last week’s debacle with Barack Obama’s MySpace page, lots of bloggers have been discussing whether or not political campaigns should take control over MySpace profiles and other voter-created websites and online groups. It’s no surprise that bloggers have been covering this issue, but I wondered to what degree the story had reached mainstream media (MSM) outlets.

I did a quick Google search for articles about Barack Obama from May 2 to May 4. I limited my search to print media outlets (newspapers and magazines) and major online news sources (such as CNN.com or MSNBC.com). I did not include blogs, international sources, or TV/radio outlets in my search. To further narrow my search, I only considered articles that were directly about Barack Obama–his name was either in the headline, or he was a substantial part of the story. I did not include political overviews or articles where he was mentioned in brief.

I found 51 articles over the three days, 10 of which were about Barack’s MySpace page. I marked particularly negative articles with an asterisk.

Political blogging growing like a vine*
Barack Obama Could Lose Some ‘Friends’ In MySpace Debacle*
This Should Make Bloggers Happy *
Learn from Obama: Hire a Professional *
Campaign takes control of ‘official’ MySpace site
Between Barack and MySpace
I’m Sorry, Barack, We’re Through*
Obama Campaign Asks: Is it MySpace or Yours?
Obama Takes MySpace Page from Backer
Obama to MySpace: That’s MyPage

These 10 articles were spread over 8 different publications and make up 20% of Barack-specific coverage during May 2-4. I was pretty surprised that such a variety of MSM outlets, some of them very significant publications, picked up on this story. I was also surprised that MSM outlets were so critical of Barack’s efforts at regaining control over his MySpace page. I expected that since most newspapers and magazines maintain top-down strategies in most of their media coverage, they would be supportive of the transition to the “official”, rather than voter-controlled strategy.

To see the articles I included in my survey, please take a look at my datasheet.

Our media monitoring platform, ImpactWatch, would be perfect for tracking an issue such as this one. In order to complete this analysis, I had to manually search through Google results. If I had used ImpactWatch, this search would have been automated, allowing me to pre-determine which news sources I would be tracking. In addition, ImpactWatch would have given me a mechanism for sorting, graphing, and ranking the results according to subject, source, author, and bias (positive, negative, neutral).

For more information about ImpactWatch , check out the website and our current free demo, which tracks coverage of the PS3 and Nintendo Wii.

We’ve just published the second in a series of reports on media favorability in the Connecticut Senate race. The race isn’t nearly as close as it was a couple of months ago, but come election day surprises are always plentiful! Even so, as a niche case study in media favorability on a major Senate race, we think it’s probably one of only a handful out there. We used our ImpactWatch(TM) web platform to generate this report — those interested can obtain access to a demo showing the nuts and bolts of the system here.

Key findings in our second Connecticut Senate race report covering the period from October 1, 2006 to November 5, 2006:

• Campaign Tactics, a category we created for articles about overall strategies employed by the candidates, particularly advertising strategies, was the most written about subject with 18% of all articles.
• The subject most written about in the last reporting period, the war in Iraq, was written about in 16% of the articles in this reporting period.
• Overall, coverage for both Ned Lamont and Joe Lieberman was predominantly negative at 47 and 48% respectively.
• Local Connecticut publications favored Ned Lamont in the Campaign Tactics and Iraq War subject categories much moreso than national publications which tended to slightly favor Joe Lieberman.
• Poll results seem to directly affect the overall positive or negative media coverage of a particular candidate in a very significant manner.

To view the full report click here. We blogged about our previous report here.

The following graphs illustrate some of the trends in coverage available within the full report.

Lieberman Favorability Breakdown:

Lamont Favorability Breakdown:

Lamont vs. Liberman Average Favorability:

As mentioned previously, we are currently running a demonstration of our ImpactWatch™ media monitoring platform that tracks mainstream media coverage of the Connecticut Senate Race. As part of the demonstration, we have used ImpactWatch™ to create a report on media coverage of the race during the month of September. This is the first in a series of reports we will release in the days leading up to the election.

Following are some of the reports key findings:

• Iraq was the subject of 20% of all stories written about this race, making it the most popular frequently mentioned topic.
• Overall, coverage of Ned Lamont was slightly more favorable than the coverage of Senator Joe Lieberman.
• However, Senator Lieberman’s coverage became more favorable as September went on due to the release of positive poll numbers at the end of the month. During this same period, Mr. Lamont’s coverage became more negative.
• Connecticut media had a larger proportion of positive articles written about Mr. Lamont and negative articles written about Sen. Lieberman than the national media.

The following graphs demonstrate some of the trends in coverage.

Subject Breakdown

Lamont vs. Lieberman Avg Favorability

You can view the full report here.

If you are interested in learning more about ImpactWatch™, please sign up now for our free access to our demo on the CT Senate Race.

As a small company, we’ve always struggled with how best to market our media monitoring platform, Impactwatch™. We don’t have a dedicated sales force or the budget to sponsor every conference or present at every trade show. We also aren’t much for intrusive cold calling (unlike a lot of folks in this space). Plus, it’s difficult to explain Impactwatch™ on a marketing site with text and screenshots – it’s the kind of product that doesn’t really click until you see an in person demo and/or play with it yourself.We may be delusional, but we think we have a great product here. We just need more folks to give it a try.

So we’re trying a different approach. Today, we are launching a new version of our Impactwatch™ marketing site that includes an invitation to sign up for a 5 day pass to a demo of the product. The topic of the demo is the Connecticut Senate race between Ned Lamont and Joe Lieberman. We’ll run this demo until November 15th, and then launch a new one on some other timely, non-political topic soon thereafter. This initial demo will track only Mainstream Media (MSM) – in future demos we will show how Impactwatch™ can be used to help track the blogosphere in addition to MSM.

I would encourage anyone who is interested to sign up for our demo now. You can also check our our FAQ about the demo to learn more. We’ll begin issuing usernames and passwords for the demo tomorrow.

If you have questions or comments about the demo, please feel free to send me an email or give me a call at 202-741-1500.