This week marked President Obama's second to last State of the Union Address. It's always a highly social event, with news outlets, Americans, and the world paying close attention and doling out opinions and Retweeting quotes and reactions to the presidential speech.
As people were predicting what the President would say, the White House Twitter handle even got the best of some people when they published a photo of a tan suit describing #YesWeTan - it was all a prank!
Everything seems to get the Watergate treatment in the age of social media. Bendgate. Gamergate. Nothing is safe. Perhaps because it just rolls off the tongue. The New England Patriots also found themselves in the middle of a "gate" scandal - #DeflateGate.
Let's take a look at these two events and the social conversations around them.
State of the Union Address, a lesson in snark and social
We tracked the hashtags associated with the speech and saw more than 540,000 mentions of the State of the Union on Twitter.
The most popular hashtag was #SOTU (499,000+ tweets and retweets). Hashtags like #SOTU2015 (43,000+ tweets and retweets), #ActOnClimate (22,000+ tweets and retweets), and #StateoftheUnion (21,000+ tweets and retweets) were also prevalent.
The official Twitter handles of the White House and President Obama himself were the most mentioned throughout the speech, unsurprisingly of course. Additionally, President Obama's Tweet about free community college was one of the most popular and received more than 4,800 retweets.
President Obama's snarky response (click the link!) of "I know, because I won both of them," to Republicans after their applause that he has no more campaigns to run, garnered more than 11,000 mentions.
The biggest spike in mentions occurred around 9:55 p.m. (ET) when President Obama discussed climate change. Many Tweets used the #ActOnClimate hashtag and quoted the President.
The split between men and women in this conversation was close, with men having a slightly larger share of voice (51%). Women Tweeted about "future generations," while men mentioned the "middle-class." Both used the #SOTU hashtag and mentioned "national security," "paid leave," and "Act On Climate."
Unsurprisingly, the most Tweets originated from California and New York, however, residents in Washington state, Texas, Florida, and Illinois represented a fair amount of the conversations.
Someone dropped the ball - #DeflateGate
Did the Patriots really deflate their footballs to gain an advantage against the Colts to make their way to the Super Bowl? We may never know, but we do know how people are discussing #DeflateGate online. We also know that there was an inordinate amount of news coverage on this very serious topic.
We began tracking conversations of #DeflateGate on January 20, and have seen nearly 62,000 mentions of the incident.
Within those conversations we have seen an increase in mentions of other hashtags that have become popular including: #BallGhazi (nearly 1,000 mentions), #Shrinkage (nearly 3,000 mentions), and #FlexBall (more than 1,500 mentions). There hasn't been a ball pun DeflateGate enthusiasts haven't met and used.
Hashtag Comparison
Of note, this graph represents a 20% sampling of #DeflateGate, #BallGhazi, and #Shrinkage mentions
Hashtag Comparison - without #DeflateGate
Of note, this graph represents a 20% sampling of #DeflateGate, #BallGhazi, and #Shrinkage mentions
It's no surprise that "Patriots," "NFL," and "SuperBowl" were three of the most mentioned topics, in addition to different conversations surrounding the incident.
The ball is in the court of the males on this one, as men have held a much higher share of voice (80%) compared to women (20%) in discussing #DeflateGate.
The states that have discussed #DeflateGate the most include: New York, Massachusetts, and California.
Next Week In Data
With the Super Bowl in sight, we don't see #DeflateGate losing too much steam. We're also tracking mentions of the main advertisers during the Super Bowl to determine which ones received the most mentions on social media. There's always an out and out battle on the football field during the season culminating game, but the brand battle on social media is usually a riveting one (you can indeed dunk in the dark, well-played Oreo). The Oreo Superbowl blackout Tweet (fast-acting social media folks turned that around in about 10 minutes) is the zenith of social agility, and the one campaign that gets compared the most to any real-time social marketing/responses.
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