This document summarizes the results of social media monitoring during the 2010 Australian federal election between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott using Alterian SM2 technology. Over 410,000 social media posts between July 15th and August 23rd were analyzed. Key findings include:
- Climate change was the top election issue discussed, making up 49.4% of topics.
- Tony Abbott received slightly more positive sentiment than Julia Gillard overall.
- Forums like Whirlpool and influential Twitter users helped drive discussion online.
- The election resulted in a very close outcome with Labor forming a minority government.
Australian Election - Abbott v Gillard - Social Media Monitoring
1. Abbott v Gillard – Key Social Media
Takeouts!
Daniel Lodge
Alterian
@daniellodge
2. Australian Election – Abbott v Gillard!!
News Ltd wanted to
monitor the Social Media
Buzz/sentiment in the time
from Julia Gillards Election
Announcement to polling
day.
Key dates
Announcement of election:
Saturday 17 July
Polling day: Saturday 21
August.
The sentiment toward party
leaders and topics was of
high importance.
3. They needed some nice technology to help.
Exclude:
Non English
Final results
410, 554
Date range:
From July 15th – to
August 23rd
Search Key Terms
Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard,
ALP and the Coalition.
4. Collect
Alterian SM2 indexes the entire
social media universe, across the
globe and across all platforms.
Store
Alterian’s Social Media
WarehouseSM, created in 2007,
contains over 9.5 billion social
media mentions, blogs, tweets,
posts, images and
conversations.
Understand
An incredibly powerful and
intuitive tool, the Techrigy SM2
User Interface enables clients to
visualize, analyze, communicate
and share findings. Turn content
into actionable insight.
Abbott v Gillard - SM2 Social Media Monitoring
Over 9.5 Billion Results
5. Federal Election – Daily Conversation Volume
SM2 pulled in
410K Social
Media posts
between
15/7/2010 –
23/8/2010.
This averaged
at over 10K
posts per day.
Key peak on
25/7/2010 was
in response to
the TV Debate.
6. Abbott v Gillard – Positive Sentiment
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1000
Very Positive Tony Abbott Very Positive Julia Gillard
Very Positive
mentions for
both Tony
Abbott and
Julia Gillard.
There were
10478 Very
positive
mentions for
Tony Abbott
and Julia
Gillard with
11240.
Shows how
close it was!!
8. Abbott v Gillard – Conversational Topics
All -
Asylum
Seekers,
9.30%
All - Broadband,
11.40%
All - Climate Change,
49.40%
All - Economy, 8%
All - Families,
0.90%
All - Health, 14.80%
All - Immigration,
6.20%
Climate Change
recorded almost
50% of the
Federal Election
debate.
Other big topics
included Health
(and Health
Reform) and
Broadband!
9. Abbott v Gillard – Climate Change
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
Tony Abbott Very Positive Julia Gillard Very Positive
Tony Abbott Julia Gillard
Positive 453 / 40% 221 / 34%
Negative 671 / 60% 423 / 66%
Total 1124 644
Of Climate Change
mentions…
Tony Abbott received 8,657
compared to Julia Gillards
13,766
Therefore 13% of Climate
Change mentions invoked
sentiment with Tony Abbott.
Compared to just 5% of Julia
Gillards mentions.
Tony Abbott also has a higher
% of positive to negative
mentions.
11. Abbott v Gillard – Influential Communities
Influence value
is to show the
most active
domains with
the most
popular.
These include a
number of
twitter users
forums and
news sites.
12. Abbott v Gillard – Whirlpool Forum
The National
Broadband Network
conversations
numbered1968 on
the Whirlpool Forum
Relative to the overall
population of internet
users, Whirlpools
audience tends to be
Caucasian; they are
also
disproportionately
childless men under
the age of 35.
14. Conclusion
After all was said and done, we witnessed one
of the closest elections ever with Labor forming
a minority government with the support of
an Australian Greens MP and
three independent MPs.
