Social Media an Indicator of Mainstream Sentiment
March 17th, 2010Author: Nazim Uddin
Last week I looked at what drove the meteoric rise of Chatroulette. In short, it showed that while traditional news outlets primed the audiences about the service but with limited effect, it was Mashable’s coverage that boosted the service to stratospheric heights.
There were at least two lessons from that study.
1) Social media outlets such as Mashable, Engadget and others can have much greater influence than online version of traditional news outlets.
2) How the content is covered is also different in social media than on television news shows. While the sentiment on social media was mostly neutral towards the service, those that communicated an emotional response, showed that the users found the service to be “funny,” “hilarious,” “great” and “addictive.” While others said described the service as “creepy,” “NSFW” and “perverts,” it was no where near what CNN and other television news outlets suggested. A cursory study by Casey Neistat shows that 83% of users were anything other than perverts. Despite such a large section of normal users, CNN decided to frame the issue based on the small 17% of “perverts” and headlined the service as “titillating.”
What this suggests is that social media is definitely a better indicator of mainstream sentiment on issues. The traditional media, especially television news programs while embracing social media are engaged in framing issues in a way that may not be reflective of public opinion. The implication are far reaching especially when it comes to critical national issues such as healthcare reform, financial reform and other important issues.
