Ethics, economy in lead as top Twitter election issues
According to MediaMiser’s first Issues Index for the 2011 Canadian federal election, ethics and accountability holds a slim lead as Twitter’s most talked-about election issue.
Several issues trended up and down in the aftermath of this week’s French and English leaders’ debates. But concern on the subject of ethics and accountability spiked dramatically around April 11 – jumping in volume by 845 per cent – when news broke of the pending Auditor General’s G8-G20 spending report.
And though that issue has trended downward since peaking that day, dropping 70.8 per cent by April 12 and another 66 per cent from April 12 to 13, it was still garnering hundreds of tweets per day by April 13.
The data – collected and analyzed by MediaMiser’s patented media monitoring and analysis software – indicates that between April 3 and 10:30 p.m. on April 13, chatter centering on the economy, jobs and economic issues was a solid second in terms of election issue-related tweets.
Indeed, tweets focused on the election and the economy increased 310 per cent since April 6 to propel that issue into second place. Earlier in the study period, the economy had sat below the issue of democracy and democratic values within Canadian society.
The concept of democracy and democratic values is the third most-talked about issue, according to MediaMiser’s analysis, though the issue trended slightly downward (by 18 per cent) since April 12.
Health care and health care-related issues sit in fourth spot, more or less unchanged from April 12 but up considerably from the day before. Health care’s real spike on Twitter came on April 8, when it jumped 152.5 per cent on the same day the Conservative Party of Canada released its election platform.
Crime and prisons, a hot-button issue in the lead-up to the election, rounds out the top five but was apparently losing steam by the evening of April 13.
Issues such as the environment, the coalition, leadership and character, Afghanistan and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter purchase currently sit out of the top 10 as of the evening of April 13.
The MediaMiser analysis is comprised of a sample of Canadian federal election-related tweets as defined by keywords, and the hashtags #elxn41 and #cdnpoli.
MediaMiser issues trend meter:
HOT: Ethics, economy
NOT: Afghanistan, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter
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