From a high-level, Facebook plays a fairly insignificant role for the four leading candidates in Ottawa-Centre. Participation rates are relatively low or take place among a very small group of people — or both. It’s hard to say if the issue is the level of energy applied to Facebook by the campaigns, the level of [...]
Last week I looked at some of the Twitter accounts most actively contributing to the online chatter about the federal election. The intent was to build a profile of some of most active election tweeters, identify who’s following them and how their updates fan out the conversation beyond the political epicentre. Note that numbers provided [...]
Social media, velocity, polls, lobbying and the 7 year cycle [ 42:15 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadMy good friend Michael von Herff joined me in a coffee shop to chat about the election and what everything may mean on May 3. Among the topics: Stand out social media moments The Velocity Election The unexpected shift in polls Canada’s seven-year political cycle Political system under an NDP government Social media after the [...]
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I’ve nearly finished the process of pulling together an amazing team to help me with digital analysis on election day. We’ll be using a variety of tools — the most significant being Sysomos MAP and Sysomos Heartbeat — to watch a variety of channels for general conversation, themes, sentiment, volume of traffic, discernible traffic patterns [...]
Most of my analysis to date has focused on the national level conversation, channels, issues and languages. It’s time to look at what the provinces are talking about. The analysis that follows looks at Twitter traffic from April 24 through April 26 inclusive and only consider provinces in which traffic exceeds 1% of the share [...]
I’ve long argued it’s a mistake to suggest online impact can be measured by follower count. Yet, many people unfamiliar with social media and digital culture rely on these numbers. The media have been reporting on a site called SocialElection.ca which is hoping to identify a connection between Facebook “likes” and voting results. A CBC [...]
Thanks to John Moore of the amazing GovInTheLab.com site for alerting me to a technical problem with my blog which broke my RSS feed. My apologies to people who are subscribed to my site for having missed my recent posts. We’re back in service. By the way, I’m working on analysis of federal election Twitter [...]
I’m hoping to blog more in the final week of the election. I’ll kick off the morning with the most common themes coming up on Twitter as identified in my analysis using Sysomos MAP. The findings come from two reports, a Buzzgraph (which illustrates the relationships of keywords) and a Word Cloud (which indicates frequency [...]
We’re now in the final week of campaigning. While each week has provided surprises, most of the online traffic has been consistently about a select few issues. Of the top five most tweeted themes in the first four weeks, only two are platform issues. Among the remaining three, one is about governance in the Parliamentary [...]
I’ve been looking at traffic patterns on Twitter for the first four weeks of the election campaign. What’s particularly interesting is how the overall reach of election related tweets has increased even with fluctuating levels of traffic. Even though traffic is down in the most recent week of the campaign compared to the first week, [...]
Gillian Shaw has a piece in the Vancouver Sun from two days ago in which she describes an organized effort to challenge the antiquated Canada Elections Act media blackout clause (see Canadians vow to break election day Twitter ban). Basically, the law states that election results from one poll can not be broadcast to other [...]
Do you want to follow all of the BQ candidate Twitter accounts (35 at the time of writing this post)? I’ve made a list available. All you have to do is click here to stay up to date on all BQ candidate tweets. For those of you who are savvy, you can add the list [...]
Do you want to follow all of the Green Party candidate Twitter accounts (116 at the time of writing this post)? I’ve made a list available. All you have to do is click here to stay up to date on all GPC candidate tweets. For those of you who are savvy, you can add the [...]
Do you want to follow all of the NDP candidate Twitter accounts (143 at the time of writing this post)? I’ve made a list available. All you have to do is click here to stay up to date on all NDP candidate tweets. For those of you who are savvy, you can add the list [...]
Do you want to follow all of the Liberal Party candidate Twitter accounts (181 at the time of writing this post)? I’ve made a list available. All you have to do is click here to stay up to date on all Liberal candidate tweets. For those of you who are savvy, you can add the [...]
Do you want to follow all of the Conservative Party candidate Twitter accounts (135 at the time of writing this post)? I’ve made a list available. All you have to do is click here to stay up to date on all Conservative candidate tweets. For those of you who are savvy, you can add the [...]
I was part of a Canadian Journalism Foundation forum called “Social Media Meets Traditional Election Coverage” last night. It was the first time I’d been in front of a room full of journalists. At times I felt like I was in a scrum. There evening was filled with tough questions, skepticism and curiosity. By all [...]
I was really hoping to get some mid-campaign stats out tonight. I haven’t had a chance to review and analyze the stats, yet (client work and family comes first). Then it occurred to me I should coincide the release of the new stats with my presentation at the Canadian Journalism Federation event I’m participating in [...]
Neither politics or Parliament are known for rabbit-like agility. We usually see decisions and actions materialize over time rather than happen with alarming enthusiasm. The same is typical of campaigns. They’ve a reputation for playing out like a baseball game — strategic and methodical with bursts of activity; strike-outs and home runs being noteworthy while [...]
I’m honoured to be both a speaker and panelist this Tuesday evening as part of an event hosted by the Canadian Journalism Foundation. The event is titled Social Media Meets Traditional Election Coverage and features journalists Chris Boutet, Kenyon Wallace and Jesse Hirsch. If you’re at the event, be sure we have a chance to [...]
In theory, those engaged online would be the most concerned by an iPod tax. It’s an unproven theory since I can’t say for sure the folks contributing to election chatter on Twitter are also the most likely to have iPods or be affected by the controversial (and possibly non-existent) iPod tax. However, since it’ll make [...]
Unless otherwise stated, this post looks at Election and debate Twitter traffic for the full day of April 13 (yesterday), only. It does not consider traffic from April 12 or today, though the analyzed traffic does include tweets related to ongoing election issues, parties, candidates and the English debate which took place on the 12th. [...]
Yesterday morning I shared some statistical analysis of online chatter related to the leak of the G8 draft report. At the time, that report became the breakaway leader for single day, issue-specific traffic (see The G8 draft report by a country mile). As a refresher, here’s a graph showing a comparison of some of the [...]
For the first time in this election, fresh Twitter content trumped the amplifier effect. That is, debate-related tweets provided a different way of looking at what’s resonating with Canadians. I imagine debate watchers sat on their couches with laptops, iPads or smartphones in place sharing their favourite zingers or the remarks that motivated to tell others. [...]
There’s about one hour and 15 minutes to go before the starting pistol fires for tonight’s English debate between Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff, Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe. There’s lots of speculation on the questions and tactics. Twitter is already alive with chatter. Those in the know are using #db8 to identify debate related tweets. [...]
Since the election began, the issue that grabbed the greatest single-day chatter was coalition; March 26, the day the election was called. Coalition was mentioned in more than 2,600 tweets that day alone, and coalition held the single day pole position for 16 days. That changed yesterday with the story about the draft report by [...]
Election chatter is showing us the issues that don’t require much time or space to discuss and/or offer an emotional connection get the most attention — a fact that was further proven today with election chatter about the Auditor General’s report on the G8 summit. I’ll blog about that separately. This post focuses on the [...]
It’s raining in Ottawa right now. Which makes it a crummy day to be on the campaign trail and a good day to be inside doing election analysis. I’ve been examining trends in the online discussion over the first two weeks of the election. It’s interesting to see what’s being talked about and where. I [...]
Social media are multi-dimensional. They’re really not as simple as a channels over which anyone can pump content; though, they are often used that way. I often talk about two major considerations which must be closely tied to goals (e.g. donations, feedback, sales, votes or voter turnout, etc…) THE CHANNEL/TOOL Think of this in terms [...]
It’s time to break up the rhythm of all this social media analysis with some levity. This fun distraction was sent to me by my mom.
GeoPollster is a location-based polling service which has jumped into the election mix. Built on the location service Foursquare, users can to register their party support when they “check in” to a location. The following text is taken from GeoPollster’s FAQ. When you sign up for GeoPollster, you select which political party you currently support. [...]
My Who’s this man? post led to a friendly debate on Twitter. It was pointed out to me that I was off-base to be evaluating candidate information available on official party websites since nomination lists aren’t final until April 11th. I accept the argument and will hold off doing any further party website analysis until [...]
I conducted traffic analysis of election-specific issues and how they matched up against each other among analyzed issue traffic for the period of March 26 through April 6. Issues considered were: Bruce Carson, coalition, contempt, crime, economy, environment, ethics, healthcare, screening/control, taxes. It’s worth noting the analysis identifies volume of traffic, not sentiment. SHARE OF [...]
I’m in the process of reviewing candidate websites and the online ecosystems of the major political parties. However, this couldn’t wait. This page came up while searching for candidates on the Conservative Party’s website. It’s the Party page for their Laurier – Sainte-Marie, QC candidate. However, the page is missing some information. Basic stuff. Like [...]
I knew the term “beach heads” to describe the use of social media channels and how they should relate to a central online presence (read: your website) would become more obvious one day. I used the expression when talking about the Liberal Party’s YouTube video Hey Stephen Harper, stop creeping me on Facebook (see video [...]
Twitter is certainly getting a lot of attention during this election. I will claim responsibility for my part. It’s important to note Twitter is just one of many digital channels through which politicians can engage with their audience. And, I intend to spend some time over the coming weeks looking more closely at how politicians [...]
The Liberal Party made Canadian election history, yesterday, when they launched their campaign platform at an event that was live streamed to the Internet. The party invited Canadians to participate by submitting comments and questions through and interactive liveblog interface and to share their comments and questions using Twitter. Campaign staff monitored the liveblog and [...]
It’s time to stop citing Barack Obama’s use of social media as part of his 2008 election victory. It’s a tired example and many people I’ve heard talk about it only know it by name. It’s time to look at what works now; what has worked in Canada. Please have a listen to an conversation [...]
Last night I blogged about the apparently fake Twitter account @DKonstantinakos which was venturing into libel territory in the way it presented Conservative candidate for Ottawa Centre, Damian Konstantinakos (whose real Twitter handle is @votedamiancpc). In additional to embarrassment for the candidate, fake accounts can cause cascading embarrassment for voters and other candidates — which [...]
For most of the last week, I’ve been looking at the volume of election related traffic on Twitter, blogs and forums. In the process it’s become clear that Twitter’s primary role in #elxn41 is to serve as an amplifier, pushing out messages and activity to adjacent networks where further amplification can take place. I haven’t [...]
I’ll be following the online stream for the Liberal town hall to report any stats and share any analysis. You can follow in the liveblog window, below. Liberal town hall
I promised myself I wasn’t going to blog again so soon after finishing an epic series on the role of digital during the first week of the election campaign. Then, just before packing it in for the night, I discovered some trouble brewing in the digital version of my consituency. A tweet was published on [...]
Part 5 of this analysis looked at the parties. Ahhh… the final post in my week 1 in review recap. Like the previous one about parties, I expect this analysis of the leaders will be of particular interest to the campaign teams (I wonder who from the campaign teams are reading this) and media. Let [...]
Part 4 of this analysis looked at forums. Of all the analysis I’ve done, I expect this analysis of the parties and my next post on the leaders will be of most interest to the campaign teams and media. Hello out there! Okay. So, how are the parties stacking up against each other? I’m put [...]
Part 3 of this analysis looked at Blogs. While a somewhat dated way to engage with others online, discussion forums are still somewhat popular in certain communities. Productive discussion forums thrive through the informed contributions on niche subjects – politics, for example. So, a healthy discussion forum typically includes respectful and thoughtful contributions rather than [...]
Part 2 of this analysis looked at Twitter. Where Twitter allows users to wade in and out of discussions, share the thought-of-the-moment and rebroadcast ideas or information that resonate with them, blogging typically requires more time. It takes a special person to write a blog, someone with patience and attention span. Blog authors are typically [...]
Part 1 of this series sets up the discussion with reflections on the first week and some high-level stats. At the macro level, online chatter is not as conversational as many predicted it would be. That may be in part due to the sheer volume of traffic. Staying on top of the discussion stream has [...]
Week one of the campaign provided plenty of proof social media will play an important role in the current election. Notwithstanding the use of social networking tools and multimedia content by specific candidates, the parties and leaders have found the social web to be a new and powerful platform for message delivery and media air [...]
It’s been a long time since I blogged this much. Here’s a list of my election-related blog posts from the first week of the campaign. The five most-read posts are indicated in bold. NDP acts on the first immutable law of marketing Blog Word Cloud for Canadian political blog posts Graphing the Canadian Political discussion [...]
Throughout this election, I’m working with the Canadian Press to cover the digital element of the election. The plan is to cover online activities for the media and provide supplemental information on my blog. We’ve put most of our energy into Twitter coverage (it’s the most active digital channel). Today, we turned our sights on [...]
Political insiders and enthusiasts often talk about the “theatre of politics.” This is typically event during Question Period where harsh words and shouting are mixed in to the discussion. It makes for better television and radio than a polite exchange. Some might say the passionate politician gets the air time. The truth is, humdrum discussions [...]
Andrea had her last chemo treatment one year ago, today. Looking at the photos and videos of the treatment process, it’s hard to believe there was a time, not so long ago, when she didn’t have hair. A year later, she’s healthier and more beautiful than she’s ever been. If you have eight and a [...]
