The Official Royal Wedding Website Returns to Royally Rule the Roost ♯

At the end of March we began analysing the key influencers in the debate on the Royal Wedding and discussed how we measure influence. We followed this up towards the end of April to see how the influencers had changed.

Let’s have a final look at the top 20 most influential websites in the debate on the Royal Wedding:

Table 1: Top 20 Influential Stakeholders in the Debate on the Royal Wedding

Rank	Previous Rank	Name	Influence 19/04/2011	Influence 06/05/2011	% Change
1	6	The Official Royal Wedding Website	42.0	202.6	382.4%
2	1	The Guardian	70.7	178.1	151.9%
3	2	The Telegraph	58.4	145.3	148.8%
4	4	The Daily Mail	48.8	123.3	152.7%
5	3	The BBC	51.0	122.8	140.8%
6	7	The Scottish Sun	31.0	100.4	223.9%
7	8	The Sun	29.4	95.5	224.8%
8	10	MSNBC	24.8	74.4	200.0%
9	11	The Independent	23.7	64.1	170.5%
10	New Entrant	US Magazine	N/A	54.7	N/A
11	19	The New York Times	17.1	53.1	210.5%
12	9	People	26.7	48.1	80.1%
13	5	CNN	42.3	45.9	8.5%
14	New Entrant	The Mirror	N/A	44.5	N/A
15	Re-Entrant	ABC News	12.2	38.6	216.4%
16	New Entrant	The Wall Street Journal	N/A	37.4	N/A
17	New Entrant	Sky News	N/A	35.2	N/A
18	New Entrant	Pop Sugar	N/A	35.0	N/A
19	New Entrant	CBS News	N/A	34.2	N/A
20	14	Pop Eater	21.7	32.2	48.4%

There have been sizeable shifts in the top 20 influencers since April. The Official Royal Wedding Website managed to return to the top of the chart, after falling to rank 6th in April. Interestingly the high-ranking Australian news media outlets have fallen from the top 20 as more US news media outlets have taken their place.

We tracked a number of different topics in relation to the Wedding, such as the Cake, the Dress, Security, Westminster Abbey, Rings, Souvenirs and the Honeymoon. We found that Westminster Abbey was the most discussed, followed by the Dress, but when the voices were weighted for influence, the Dress became the key issue, followed by Security.

We analysed the debate on the royal couple and found that Kate was marginally more discussed than Prince William and also proved more popular among influential stakeholders.

Report compiled during the period 1st October 2010 – 6thMay 2011. Please email me (Sophie.hill@onalytica.com) if you would like further information on findings presented in this blog post.

Will We Have a ‘Yes To AV’ or a ‘No To AV’ in Today’s Referendum? ♯

The referendum to decide whether to introduce a new voting system to replace our current first-past-the-post system is taking place today. We have been tracking the debate on the Alternative Vote (AV) since the 1st January 2011. 

We posted our first blog on this topic on the 14th April 2011.

As might be expected, discussion of AV has increased dramatically since January and in the first five days of May there has been more debate than what was seen during the whole of March! AV is clearly a hot topic but let’s have a look at discussion of the different campaigns:

The ‘Yes To AV’ campaign generated marginally more buzz between January and March than the ‘No To AV’ campaign, however, during April ‘No To AV’ came into focus, only for the ‘Yes’ campaign to move marginally ahead during the first week of May. That said, the volume of coverage is only part of the story; the influence of the voices and the sentiment of what is being said also need to be taken into account. 

Overall, ‘No To AV’ has been slightly more discussed and has proved more popular among influential stakeholders. Interestingly, the ‘Yes To AV’ campaign has featured in more polarised coverage than the ‘No’ campaign, appearing in a sizeable proportion of negative posts and only slightly more positive posts. Whereas, when those posts are weighted for the influence of the different voices in the debate, the landscape changes dramatically; the ‘No To AV’ campaign features in 25% unfavourable debate while ‘Yes To AV’ campaign appears in only 21%. Essentially, those who are influential in the debate are discussing the ‘Yes’ campaign in a more positive light. The first five days of May have proved particularly negative for the ‘No’ campaign, but will sentiment determine the results of the referendum or will the high volume of ‘No’ discussion put that stance in the forefront of the public’s mind? In order to establish the overall picture we need to analyse the influential voices in the debate.

So let’s have a look at how the top 20 most influential websites in the global English debate on AV have changed since the last time we looked at them:

Rank	Previous Rank	Name	Influence 12/04/2011	Influence 05/05/2011	% Change
1	1	The Guardian	24.8	25.4	2.4%
2	2	The Independent	24.0	24.8	3.3%
3	3	The BBC	17.5	22.9	30.9%
4	4	Liberal Democrat Voice	14.7	16.2	10.2%
5	5	London Evening Standard	14.4	15.5	7.6%
6	7	The Telegraph	11.5	13.2	14.8%
7	6	Conservative Home Blogs	12.9	13.1	1.6%
8	9	The Liberal Democrats Website	9.1	12.5	37.4%
9	8	The Spectator Magazine	9.7	10.1	4.1%
10	14	Total Politics Magazine	6.3	9.0	42.9%
11	13	Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors	6.6	8.7	31.8%
12	10	The New Statesman	8.9	8.6	-3.4%
13	11	Next Left Blog	7.8	7.3	-6.4%
14	16	The Daily Mail	5.6	7.3	30.4%
15	12	Left Foot Forward Blog	7.4	7.0	-5.4%
16	17	The Conservative Party Website	5.5	6.8	23.6%
17	18	Labour List	5.4	6.5	20.4%
18	15	UK Polling Report	5.7	6.0	5.3%
19	20	The Economist	4.7	5.7	21.3%
20	New Entrant	The Financial Times	N/A	5.6	N/A

For information on how we calculate influence please see our blog post looking at the key influencers in the debate on the Royal Wedding.

There has been considerable movement in the top 20. The most noticeable change was Iain Dale’s Diary, which was knocked out of the top 20 by new entrant, the Financial Times. Although the top five stakeholders have held their rank, the rest of the top 20 has been somewhat reshuffled. Total Politics Magazine experienced the greatest increase in influence over the time period, closely followed by the Liberal Democrats Website.

At this point there are still more websites in the top 20 dedicated to the Liberal Democrats than any other party. Nevertheless, the Conservatives are indeed present in the top 20 and furthermore, both Conservative-focused websites have become more influential in the past few weeks.

It will be interesting to see if the high levels of discussion signify a No in today’s referendum or if strong sentiment and influential voices encourage a Yes from the UK electorate.

Report compiled during the period 1st January 2011 – 5th May 2011. Please email me (sophie.hill@onalytica.com) if you would like further information on findings presented in this blog post.

Who is Influential in the Debate on the Royal Wedding This Week? ♯

 

At the end of March we began analysing the key influencers in the debate on the Royal Wedding. Now we are going to look at how those stakeholders have changed as we approach the big event.

Influence is dynamic, in that a stakeholder can become more or less influential on a topic over time.  So who are the current top 20 most influential websites in the debate on the Royal Wedding?

Table 1: Top 20 Influential Stakeholders in the Debate on the Royal Wedding

Rank	Previous Rank	Stakeholder	Influence 29/03/2011	Influence 19/04/2011	% Change
1	2	The Guardian	40.1	70.7	76.3%
2	4	The Telegraph	37.3	58.4	56.6%
3	3	The BBC	39.4	51.0	29.4%
4	5	The Daily Mail	36.3	48.8	34.4%
5	New Entrant	CNN	N/A	42.3	N/A
6	1	The Official Royal Wedding Website	42.8	42.0	-1.9%
7	6	The Scottish Sun	26.3	31.0	17.9%
8	7	The Sun	24.7	29.4	19.0%
9	8	People	20.4	26.7	30.9%
10	New Entrant	MSNBC	N/A	24.8	N/A
11	12	The Independent	16.3	23.7	45.4%
12	10	News Online from Australia & the World	16.9	22.5	33.1%
13	13	The Australian	15.6	22.2	42.3%
14	9	Pop Eater	19.1	21.7	13.6%
15	New Entrant	Courier Mail	N/A	20.5	N/A
16	14	London Evening Standard	15.0	18.9	26.0%
17	16	Variety	11.6	17.6	51.7%
18	11	The Daily Telegraph - Australia	16.9	17.2	1.8%
19	New Entrant	The New York Times	N/A	17.1	N/A
20	20	AOL News	9.0	16.9	87.8%

We saw the Official Royal Wedding Website climb to the top of the chart in March, surpassing national online news media from the UK, the US and Australia. Now we have seen it fall to rank 6th, as it became less influential in the debate and was overtaken by news media outlets from the UK and the US.

Four stakeholders fell out of the top 20 between the 29th March and the 19th April 2011 including; ABC News, Celebuzz!, TMZ - Celebrity Gossip and Fox News.

As we come closer to the date of the wedding, the top 20 is becoming more and more dominated by online news media outlets as stakeholders dedicated to the Royal Wedding and celebrity gossip sites, such as the Official Royal Wedding Website and Celebuzz, are becoming less influential.

Report compiled during the period 1st October 2010 – 19th April 2011. Please email me (sophie.hill@onalytica.com) if you would like further information on findings presented in this blog post.

Who is Influential in the Debate on the Alternative Vote? ♯

The referendum to decide whether to introduce a new voting system to replace our current first-past-the-post system is fast approaching. We have been tracking the debate on the Alternative Vote (AV) since the 1st January 2011.

For information on how we calculate influence please see our blog post looking at who is influential in the debate on the Royal Wedding.

We found the top 20 most influential websites in the global English debate on AV:

Table 1: Top 20 Influential Stakeholders in the Debate on the Alternative Vote

Rank	Name	Website	Influence
1	The Guardian	guardian.co.uk	24.8
2	The Independent	independent.co.uk	24.0
3	The BBC	bbc.co.uk	17.5
4	Liberal Democrat Voice	libdemvoice.org	14.7
5	London Evening Standard	thisislondon.co.uk	14.4
6	Conservative Home Blogs	conservativehome.blogs.com	12.9
7	The Telegraph	telegraph.co.uk	11.5
8	The Spectator Magazine	spectator.co.uk	9.7
9	The Liberal Democrats Website	libdems.org.uk	9.1
10	The New Statesman	newstatesman.com	8.9
11	Next Left Blog	nextleft.org	7.8
12	Left Foot Forward Blog	leftfootforward.org	7.4
13	Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors	aldc.org	6.6
14	Total Politics Magazine	totalpolitics.com	6.3
15	UK Polling Report	ukpollingreport.co.uk	5.7
16	The Daily Mail	dailymail.co.uk	5.6
17	The Conservative Party Website	conservatives.com	5.5
18	Labour List	labourlist.org	5.4
19	Iain Dale's Diary	iaindale.blogspot.com	5.4
20	The Economist	economist.com	4.7

Interestingly, at this stage, the Liberal Democrat Voice is the most influential politics-focused website. Furthermore, of the nine websites dedicated to a particular political party, five of those had a penchant for the Liberal Democrats, compared to three for the Conservatives and one for Labour. Whether this will have an effect on the results of the referendum, we will have to wait and see.

Report compiled during the period 1st January 2011 – 12th April 2011. Please email me (sophie.hill@onalytica.com) if you would like further information on findings presented in this blog post.

Who is Influential in the Debate on the Royal Wedding? ♯

The Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton is a very topical subject at the moment with just four weeks to go until the big day. We began tracking the debate on the Royal Wedding around the time of the couple’s official announcement of their engagement in November 2010. Just look how the volume of debate has increased so dramatically between December and March:

Figure 1: Monthly Buzz Trend for Mentions of the Royal Wedding

 
Not only are we interested in the discussion of the Royal Wedding, but we are interested in who is discussing the Royal Wedding and just how influential those voices are.
Before revealing some of the most influential voices in the debate I want to outline what I mean when I say influence and how this can be measured.

What is influence?
Influence, is the capacity of a publication, an organisation or an individual to impact the viewpoints, actions or opinions of others over whom they do not hold power.

This shouldn’t be confused with popularity. Popularity is about how many listen to you whereas influence is more about who listens to you.
This can be seen in the graphics below:

Figure 2: Popularity vs. Influence

Figure 3: Focus on Popularity

Figure 4: Focus on Influence

But what do all these links mean without context? 

Influence is topical: Those who have influence in the debate on cat-food may not have the same influence on energy supply.

We put a key focus on defining the appropriate context in order to then measure the influence of the stakeholders contributing to the online debate within that context.

So how is influence measured?

Firstly, let’s have a think about why we need to measure influence, rather than go with our own impressions or gut feel: The identification of influencers based on measurement is important as we (as humans) tend to overrate the importance of those we hear about more often and similar underrate the importance of those we hear about less (or never).

So now on to measurement; in order to measure influence, we need to take indirect influence into account.

For more than three decades academics have used something called “citation analysis” to measure the influence of academic journals, researchers and universities. In academic articles, writers cite the works of other academics. They do that for several reasons, but mainly because they believe that those they cite are relevant to the context. They reference other publications that are relevant to their arguments and to the context. In doing so they reveal which other publications have influenced them.

In citation analysis these citations from one journal to another are regarded as links. These links are extracted and transformed into a huge system of equations. When solved the result is a relative measure of influence.

This way of measuring influence was developed by Russia-born American, Wassily Leontief. He developed something called input/output analysis to measure how sectors of the economy influence each other.

Wassily Leontief was awarded the 1973 Nobel Prize in Economics for developing input/output-analysis and thereby solving the illusive problems of “circular influence”.
We use this method to measure the influence of websites based on which websites link to them, and in turn, which websites link to those websites and so on.

So here it is what you’ve all be waiting for: We have used this measure to find the top 20 most influential websites in the global English debate on the Royal Wedding:

Table 1: Top 20 Influential Stakeholders in the Debate on the Royal Wedding

Rank	Name	Website	Influence
1	The Official Royal Wedding Website	officialroyalwedding2011.org	42.8
2	The Guardian	guardian.co.uk	40.1
3	The BBC	bbc.co.uk	39.4
4	The Telegraph	telegraph.co.uk	37.3
5	The Daily Mail	dailymail.co.uk	36.3
6	The Scottish Sun	thescottishsun.co.uk	26.3
7	The Sun	thesun.co.uk	24.7
8	People	people.com	20.4
9	Pop Eater	popeater.com	19.1
10	News Online from Australia & the World	news.com.au	16.9
11	The Daily Telegraph - Australia	dailytelegraph.com.au	16.9
12	The Independent	independent.co.uk	16.3
13	The Australian	theaustralian.com.au	15.6
14	London Evening Standard	thisislondon.co.uk	15.0
15	ABC News	abcnews.go.com	12.2
16	Variety	variety.com	11.6
17	Celebuzz!	celebuzz.com	11.3
18	TMZ - Celebrity Gossip	tmz.com	10.9
19	Fox News	foxnews.com	10.3
20	AOL News	aolnews.com	9.0

We have recently seen The Official Royal Wedding Website climb to the top of the chart, surpassing national news media from the UK, the US and Australia. We will be keeping an eye on the top 20 over the next four weeks to see what kind of movement occurs.

Report compiled during the period 1st October 2010 – 29th March 2011. Please email me (sophie.hill@onalytica.com) if you would like further information on findings presented in this blog post.

Mobile World Congress - Handsets ♯

Our latest report covering analysis on the talk of Mobile World Congress is now available - this week's report focuses on handsets:

• The Global English debate on MWC experienced a slight dip in volume the w/c 24th Jan.
• Samsung gained on its lead over the other tracked brands in terms of volume and attention. Samsung’s Galaxy family (including Galaxy S range) remained a key driver of the debate.
  • The announcement of four new handsets to Samsung’s Galaxy family sparked discussion.
  • A leaked document outlining the appearance of the Galaxy Tab successor at this year’s MWC ignited discussion of customer expectations for the tablet.
• The number of news media sites among the top 10 Influential Stakeholders increased this week as City A.M. (www.cityam.com) and Reuters (www.reuters.com) entered the list. There were three new entrants into the top 10 Stakeholders with high relative influence scores. These included a forum and technology news media site.
• HTC experienced the most significant gains in attention week-on-week, boosted by rumours it would be teaming up with Facebook to create the first ‘Facebook Phone’.
• Glasses-free 3D displays are becoming increasingly important in the debate. The LG Optimus experienced the largest gain among the top handsets this week, driven by rumours that a 3D version of the handset will be launched at MWC.

As before, if you would like to receive a copy of this report, please contact Sophie Hill [sophie.hill@onalytica.com]. If you have a general interest in the event and analysis relating to it, or want to know how we help companies interpret and understand the discussion around industries, brands, themes and issues then please contact us on 0207 407 7642. You can also subscribe to this RSS feed where we will be posting some of the findings.

*this report was produced using data analysed from the period 27th Sep 2010 – 30th Jan 2011.

Mobile World Congress - Tablets are grabbing attention ♯

Our latest report covering analysis on the talk of Mobile World Congress is now available!

In summary, during the last week of debate the following details have come to light:

The Global English debate on MWC continued to increase week-on-week. In terms of absolute volume, the debate increased by just over 50%.

- Samsung contributed significantly to this increase. Official communication from Samsung announcing the launch of the Galaxy S successor at MWC was a key driver of discussion.

Influential Stakeholders continued to consist predominantly of technology media sites. There were four new entrants and three re-entrants into the top 10 Stakeholders with high relative influence scores. These included a blog and a community. These sites are becoming increasingly referenced in the debate on MWC.

Samsung retained its position as the most mentioned brand and moved ahead of Sony Ericsson to draw more interest among influential Stakeholders.

Tablets are of significant interest. Their presence in the debate has fluctuated from 10% to just over 50% of the debate during any particular week since tracking began.

- The iPad is, unsurprisingly, the most prominent tablet, however, its share of the debate has significantly declined over the past two months as other tablets have begun to move into the spotlight.

- In regard to tablets, online commentators are particularly interested in operating systems, processors and release dates as they race to report on these before anyone else.

As before, if you would like to receive a copy of this report, please contact Sophie Hill [sophie.hill@onalytica.com]. If you have a general interest in the event and analysis relating to it, or want to know how we help companies interpret and understand the discussion around industries, brands, themes and issues then please contact us on 0207 407 7642. You can also subscribe to this RSS feed where we will be posting some of the findings.

*this report was produced using data analysed from the period 27th Sep 2010 – 23rd Jan 2011.

How big was 'bigot-gate'? ♯

The below graph shows the Share-of-Influence for various election issues from 22^nd April to 5^th May.

The comparison issues (Hung Parliament, Expenses Scandal, and Electoral System) were also major stories during the election and selected here to provide a benchmark for measuring the scale of the Bigot-gate story.  The chart shows us:

• Bigot-gate (and associated terms) were discussed more than any of the benchmark topics for two days, the 28^th and 29^th of April.
• Among the other issues selected, Hung Parliament was discussed the most.
• Bigot-gate declined rapidly in Share-of-Influence after the 29^th of April but did continue to be widely discussed on May 5^th.

What happened in the election debate? ♯

Last night Onalytica sponsored the drinks reception for the PdF (Personal Democracy Forum) post election review “Action Replay” at the RSA in London.  We were able to showcase to a very interested audience some of the results of our analysis of the debate - analysis that we have been tracking in the run-up to the election.

The below chart shows a sample of  ‘UK election’ daily buzz and influence – calculated using InfluenceMonitor between 6^th April and 6^th May. As the discussion was monitored on a daily basis, we can instantly see when the topic is most and least discussed.  When the amount of talk rapidly changes – we can drill into the debate to learn why.

• 6^th May had the greatest amount of discussion – the actual day of the election.
• There is a clear pattern of discussion throughout the days of the week – for example, the UK election was not discussed as much at the weekends.
• Weekly peaks coincide with Thursdays – the 15^th, 22^nd and 29^th April – these were the days of the TV debates.
• The peak in discussion in the run-up to the election was Wednesday 29^th April, the day of the third TV debate which gained most attention; this also coincides with “bigot-gate”.
• 6^th April – the day the election was announced was also the day that saw the second most discussion, after the actual day of the election.
• It is interesting to note that at the beginning of this analysis, 6^th April, when the election was announced - the share-of-influence was significantly higher than the share-of-buzz, however share-of-buzz caught up fairly rapidly and followed the share-of-influence throughout the remainder of the debate.

Benchmarking the influence of a blog ♯

Another interesting example of how influence has developed over time comes from looking at the blog of Iain Dale. Mr. Dale is a prominent political commentator whose blog has gained quite a following.

The graph below shows the influence of Mr. Dale’s blog when the topic is “David Cameron”. The baseline is again the influence of the BBC (same context).

We can see that the Influence of Mr. Dale’s blog in February was roughly 8% of that of the BBC.Since then his relative influence (compared with the BBC’s) has grown steadily – until the end of June. Here it took a bit of drop.

However, it is likely that the drop was attributable to a surge in the general influence of the BBC on the topic of David Cameron.

Using the contextual influence of The Guardian as a baseline for Mr. Dale’s blog reveals that he is still doing well. (See below).Benchmarking influence aside it is actually interesting to see how much influence a blog can carry on a major topic. Mr. Dale’s influence on the debate on David Cameron currently stands at about 15% of that of the BBC and just under 60% of that of The Guardian.