Traditional media focuses on royal visit while social media preoccupied with O’Farrell resignation
The two big stories of the last week have been the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the sudden resignation of NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell, O’Farrell’s resignation and its links to a bottle of Grange the more talked about news item across social media according to numbers from iSentia.
ISentia reports that in the period between April 16 and April 23, there was more than three times as many comments about O’Farrell’s resignation on social media than discussing the royals and their visit, however it must be noted that a large portion of that discussion most likely centred around the numerous memes being shared across the internet.
However, there were eight times as many talkback calls discussing the resignation when compared to those wanting to talk about the visit from the UK royals. O’Farrell was mentioned 13,248 on radio while the royals only managed 6,679 mentions on radio.
ISentia group communications manager Patrick Baume said: “It may be a matter of bad news being more interesting for people on social media.
“There was almost no calls about the royals on talkback. I think while people might not be against the royals visiting it seems from the feedback it’s a bit of a here or there, they’re not as interested as the level of media coverage would like you to think.”
The press also preferred covering the royal family compared to the leadership change with a total of 1,041 royal mentions with O’Farrell only mentioned 812 times.
Across traditional media, the royals reigned the winner with the royal visit mentioned a total of 19,436 times on TV compared to O’Farrell’s 11,101 mentions.
From a social media perspective, ‘News breaking’ is one of the biggest drivers of social sharing. The motivation here is social utility plus a desire to be first. Humour is another key driver of sharing online so the memes that followed would have driven that.
The Barry O’Farrell resignation was genuinely shocking (and amusing to some) compared to a run of the mill visit of the junior Royals. So on that basis, I think the data pretty much confirms what you’d expect.
User ID not verified.