UK election: Which party election broadcast created biggest social media buzz?

The study, from semantic web platform OpenAmplify, found that Labour’s most engaged video – “Our Journey” – completed the top three. 

OpenAmplify analysed how people reacted to, commented on and linked to the election broadcasts on the main parties’ official YouTube channels, and how these ‘Reactions’ filtered across social media channels.

OpenAmplify determined that the Liberal Democrats’ election broadcast “Say Goodbye to Broken Promises” – which had fairness as its key message - had the best online ‘Engagement Ratio’ of all of the televised broadcasts, generating a Reaction once every 36 views.

This was despite recording the third lowest number of views overall.  The Labour Party’s Eddie Izzard-fronted “Brilliant Britain” was the second most viewed, but was only engaged with once every 107 views.

By far the most viewed broadcast was the Conservative Party’s “How many people does it take to change a country?” which was the only broadcast to have surpassed the milestone 150,000 views. 

The footage - shot in David Cameron’s back garden - generated over 2,500 social media reactions, which despite being numerically higher than the other broadcasts, had a lower engagement level of once every 60 views (see accompanying data table).

 “The true value of party election broadcasts is not how many viewers it gets, but how many people actually engage with the message.  Online engagement is absolutely vital in what is shaping up to be one of the closest elections in living memory,” said Mark Redgrave, CEO of OpenAmplify. 

“The number of views and direct comments beneath the videos only tell half the story - the key to analyzing the effectiveness, and subsequently what resonates best with voters, comes from a deeper analysis of the numbers.  With less than a week to go before polling day we expect the number of views and reactions to increase as people look to finalise their decisions, but at this crucial time it is the Lib Dems whose message has been engaged with most.”

To determine how the broadcasts generated online reactions, OpenAmplify examined how the video broadcasts were commented on and engaged across all the major social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Friendfeed and the main blogging platforms like Wordpress and Blogger.  OpenAmplify, who currently work with over 300 brands and agencies on semantic analysis, examined 6,457 Reactions in total. 

Engagement Data

(0000 hrs, 30th May 2010)

Source: www.OpenAmplify.com

********************************

Get Netimperative updates on Twitter