Before, during and after U.S.
President Barack Obama‘s
2011 State of the Union address last night, the social web was abuzz with political commentary. But what were we all talking about, and how do our tweets, posts and updates reflect on national sentiment about the President and the country’s general position?
Data gathered from Twitter (courtesy of
Tweetbeat)and Facebook (courtesy of
U.S. Politics on Facebook) paint an interesting picture. Americans are a politically chatty bunch, if nothing else, and their
web-based public messages prove it.
In fact, tweets about the State of the Union address far outnumbered tweets about other events of the day, including tweets about the upcoming Super Bowl. Tweetbeat counted around 400,000 tweets about the State of the Union address, and 100,000 appeared in the first hour of the event itself.
That huge volume of tweets got broken down by keyword for a more colorful image of what exactly Americans and others were talking about during the President’s address:
Spending, healthcare and jobs were also high in the rankings of keywords contained in Facebook status updates during the address, with government spending far outstripping other topics:
On Twitter, the ten most talked-about people were:
- Barack Obama
- John Boehner
- Joe Biden
- Michele Bachmann
- Gabrielle Giffords
- Michelle Obama
- Samuel Alito
- Robert F. Kennedy
- Antonin Scalia
- Gary Allen
However, on Facebook, Bachmann’s name appeared in far more updates than did President Obama’s:
Did you tune in to watch the State of the Union address, either online, on the radio or on television? How do you think the President did? We welcome your opinions in the comments.
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