Can Charlie Crist Catch Up with Rick Scott on Twitter?

Posted on by

I’ve been critical of team Crist’s efforts on Twitter over the months, watching as they’ve squandered their chances to build and maintain a dialog with voters during the run-up to the primary. But in July, activity on social media picked up for Crist:

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge.  Ironic colors courtesy of Excel.

About mid-July the activity on Crist’s Twitter mentions started picking up, albeit raggedly. By the end of July, thanks to a slowdown in governor Scott’s mentions, Crist had pulled almost even with Scott.

To be clear, much of Crist’s relative gains are due to Scott’s slowdown; Scott could kick it back up and leave Crist behind.  But Crist has also been able to boost his mentions back into the 1000-1500 a day range, so there’s a chance for him to move up as well and to start to dominate the discussion on Twitter.

Will Crist do that? With Nan Rich continuing to be a distant second in both polls and social media, it’s clear that there’s no sense of urgency for Crist.  But this opportunity may not come around again …

 

Turnquest leads GOP in Florida’s 18th district in July: A Twitter Analysis

Posted on by

Florida’s 18th congressional district is one of the more interesting races this mid-term year. The incumbent, Patrick Murphy, won his seat by defeating the highly controversial Allen West.  But the district as a whole is not a strong one for the democrat, with most predictions seeming to put it at “lean” democratic.

That has generated a large number of GOP contenders who will face off in this month’s primary.  For reasons that escape me, the GOP as a whole has not focused resources on this district, and the primary is still a large scramble.  And there seems to be no recent polls, which makes it hard to know what’s happening.

We can look to Twitter to get a sense of what’s happening, however, and although it doesn’t give us a solid prediction, right away some things are obvious:

Click to Enlarge

Click to Enlarge

Continue reading →

#InterviewPalestinians Dominates Cable News Twitter on Saturday, August 2, 2014

Posted on by

Cable News Trending Topics for 2014-08-02

Every so often, a group with a cause will flood Twitter with messages that mention various cable news channels and groups.  The goal is almost to raise awareness and affect the news coverage.  A while ago, there was an Iranian group and before that a venezuelan group.  Yesterday, the hashtag #interviewpalestinians rose to the top position in US Cable News Twitter.

There were about 7.5K tweets that went out with the hashtag, which put it far ahead of any other topic.  It also brought the word “gaza” to the top of the lists.  It’s hard to say that all of this will do the backers any good, but it’s clear that their voices have been heard.

Continue reading →

Melissa Harris-Perry and Sean Hannity win Cable News Twitter on Saturday, August 2, 2014

Posted on by

MSNBC’s The Melissa Harris-Perry Show had the strongest hour while Sean Hannity had the best day in total.

Welcome “The Hunt”

With Saturday’s report, I have begun tracking CNN’s “The Hunt with John Walsh”.  It was somewhat difficult as there is no official show Twitter account or hashtag; however, the informal hashtag #TheHunt seems to have gained sufficient currency that I can use it as well as looking for all tweets which include “CNN” and “The Hunt” in the text.

It continues to amaze me that networks do not establish show accounts and hashtags for social media accounts.  It makes it easier for their communities to find each other, and it makes it easier to run analytics to track the conversation…

Continue reading →

Cable News Aggregate Data for July, 2014

Posted on by

If you are interested in stats for Cable News shows, the following CSV files contain mention counts for each of the news shows on the major networks.

First, the counts by Network, Show, Date, and Hour.  Not all hours are present for all shows: tweetsByNetShowHour201407

Next, the counts by Network, Show, and Date.  This is just an aggregation of the above data: tweetsByShowDay201407

Finally, just the counts by Network and Show: tweetsByShow201407

Let me know if you do anything fun with these!