It’s not often OC Transpo makes the national media. But when it does, you can count on it being in very much a spectacular fashion.
That was certainly the case this week, when - as during 2009′s seven-week bus strike in Ottawa - the city’s transportation service made Canada-wide headlines once again. The culprit this time wasn’t picket lines, but rather a now-infamous and seriously ticked-off bus operator.
The incident, posted to YouTube Nov. 3, surfaced in public chatter over the weekend. It quickly went viral (of course), garnering more than 116,000 hits by this morning.
By Monday, both traditional media and Twitter commentators were heaping large slices of scorn onto to the organization. And by scorn, we mean it: after toning a random sampling of #OCTranspo tweets from the past few days, 54 per cent were negative and 38 per cent were neutral. Only eight per cent of tweets were positive or supportive of OC Transpo.
Worse, reports on Tuesday indicated a second OC Transpo video was making the rounds, this time showing a driver on a cell phone.
Here’s who led the conversation so far both in the traditional media and on Twitter (all data is as of 11 a.m. eastern time on Tuesday, Nov. 8), gleaned via MediaMiser’s software solution:
Media trends

After the initial posting of the YouTube video on Nov. 3, #OCTranspo Twitter activity didn’t begin its acceleration until late on Nov. 5 and into Sunday.
The traditional media, while it did cover the story on Sunday, didn’t devote significant space to it until Monday the 7th.
Please note coverage and tweet levels shown in this chart until are only until 11 a.m. on Nov. 8.
Twitter
The top influencers by retweet ratio (the number of retweets each user garners, compared to number of original tweets) were:
1) @StefankeyesCTV (retweet ratio of 14)
2) @Ottguy (retweet ratio of 7.5)
3) @stuntmanstu (retweet ratio of 6.33)
4) @crimegarden (retweet ratio of 5)
5) @Ottawasuncom (retweet ratio of 4.83)
Four of the top five most retweeted users were either journalists, media outlets or former journalists, and six of the top seven (including @CTVNews and @globeandmail, which finished sixth and seventh, respectively).
The top tweeters by number of followers and volume were as follows:


Traditional media (print, online, television, radio)
Danielle Bell of Sun Media had at least 36 stories published on the incident in publications such as the Ottawa Sun, Sudbury Star, Owen Sound Sun Times, Niagara Falls Review and Sarnia Observer.
Ms. Bell and her colleagues at Sun Media dominated print and online coverage, with five of the top six authors from the outlet (Scott Taylor, Jon Willing, Kelly Roche and Errol McGihon).
Mr. McGihon is a photographer with Sun Media and has been attributed a byline for this study, thanks to his standalone photo that ran in a series of Sun-owned papers.
CTV and Sun Media (especially the Ottawa Sun) picked up on the story in a big way over the past couple of days, with Ottawa’s CTV Two (formerly A Channel) and CTV Ottawa leading the broadcast pack.
CBC also ran with the story, with three of the top ten publications including CBC News Network and CBC Ottawa.
Postmedia publications didn’t seem to cover the story with the intensity of other major outlets, although the Ottawa Citizen did crack the top ten.
Talk radio station CFRA finished in 11th, just out of the top ten publications.

Coverage between outlet types was mixed, with news websites and daily newspapers each picking up at least 30 per cent of coverage each.
Television held its own at just under 30 per cent, while radio garnered just a shade under nine per cent of all coverage.