Analysis: Social media statistics around News of the World closure

Yesterday's announcement over the closure of the News of the World was a huge story for Twitter - We Are Social offers analysis of just how huge.

Much speculation spread throughout Twitter as news was pouring out of the newspapers offices, with reaction also becoming readily available from former members of staff, including former editor Piers Morgan.

For Twitter, the closure of the News of the World was big business with around a quarter of a million tweets sent in connection to it, more than the super injunction story at its peak, which has around 80,000 tweets.

Meanwhile 15% of tweets about the subject mentioned a brand name – as advertisers were lauded for abandoning the title.

Below Robin Grant, managing director of social media agency We are Social discusses the impact that social media had on driving and reporting the story, with diagrams showing just how

'The findings here saying quite strongly how big an event it was. The super injunction stuff was just a few weeks ago and that pales in comparison. The super injunction stuff seemed to drive a mass adoption of Twitter and that helped Twitter grow massively in the UK a few weeks ago. News of the World seems to have been a much bigger conversation involving a much large amount of people.

'The graphs show that a variety of different key words were used to compile the conversation. People were using a whole variety of different hashtags. People were mentioning Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, so we aggregated that all together…It was a trending topic for a while, but then it seemed to disappear.

'What’s interesting is that it reflects the mood of the nation and you can clearly say that it had a direct effect. What also had a very interesting effect is that if you look at the brand conversation, a lot of people were talking to brands and asking them why they were still advertising with the News of the World. I think that will have had a massive impact on those brands themselves and shaped their positions. To pull their advertising was presumably part of Murdoch’s decision to pull the plug. That’s not just through Twitter. If you look at what was happening on Facebook. On most of those big brands pages, the big advertisers were being targeted on their Facebook pages by protestors and quite a large amount of their existing fan base were saying ‘Why are you still advertising with them?’ That will have had more effect on those brands than people talking to them on Twitter. If you look at the advertiser’s pages that they have kept those conversations there and not deleted it.'

Extra information

Important here is that the twitter protest site (which annoyingly has been taken down) was actually first shared in a forum "The simple-to-use page with a list of News of the World advertisers allows Twitter users to send tweets direct to brands.

The link was first published on Mumsnet, but is now being widely circulated on Twitter."

Mentions of NOTW (1 May - 7 July)

"news of the world" OR "murdoch" OR coulson OR notw OR "news international" OR "news corp" OR "Rebekah Brooks" OR "Rebecca Brooks"OR "Rebecca wade" OR saynotonotw OR saynotomurdoch

Twitter WordCloud (July only)

Twitter BuzzGraph (July only)

Mentions of NOTW vs. Super Injunction (1 May - 7 July)

(superinjunction OR "super injunction" OR giggs OR "David Allen Green" OR davidallengreen OR injunction)

Impact on Brands

(""news of the world" OR "murdoch" OR coulson OR notw OR "news international" OR "news corp" OR "Rebekah Brooks" OR "Rebecca Brooks"OR "Rebecca wade" OR saynotonotw OR saynotomurdoch) AND (sky OR npower OR "n power" OR "P&G" OR O2 OR tesco OR boots OR ford OR asda OR sainsbury OR sainsburys OR "sainsbury's" OR aldi OR virgin OR halifax OR renault OR asda OR bt OR vauxhall OR renault OR hutchinson OR mars OR unilever OR harveys OR dfs OR "everything everywhere" OR TheCooperative OR easyjet OR VirginMedia OR gigsandtours OR whsmithcouk OR "ww_uk" OR carpetright OR "pcworld_uk" OR butlins OR "renault_uk" OR gonefairtrade OR firstchoiceuk OR Orange OR "T-Mobile" OR Vodafone OR mumsnet OR specsavers OR mitsubishi OR CPWtweets OR CocaCola OR CometPLC OR GoneFairTrade OR MorrisonsOffers OR "RBS_mediateam" OR TheBodyShopUK OR TheCooperative OR UKTesco OR dixonsops OR firstchoiceuk OR forduk OR "halifax_online" OR tmobileofficial OR xtravision)

Above is a list of brands - it is estimated that the % of tweets that also mentioned a brand was around 16%

Twitter Brand WordCloud (July only)

Twitter Brand Buzz Graph (July only)

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