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
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.
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
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.
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.