Digimind and El País Partner to Monitor Online Public Discourse about the 2017 Catalan Elections

Social media has undoubtedly become a preferred means for individuals to express their opinions, especially when it comes to matters of public interest. Digimind recently partnered with Prisa, a global Spanish and Portuguese media group and the official public opinion aggregator for the Catalan elections to be held on December 21st.

El País, the most influential Spanish newspaper which is operated by PRISA media group, is using Digimind Social to analyze online conversations during the electoral process and its staff is crafting content based on findings before, during, and after the election.

The Project

The objective of the project is to use social intelligence to gain a panoramic view of public opinion as the event occurs, in addition to identifying the most relevant topics of discussion regarding the election. The analysis will follow English, Spanish, and Catalan conversations occurring across online and social media sources, particularly focusing on Twitter.

The period of data collection began on December 12th, and will end December 22nd, the day following the election, and has predominantly focused on the seven relevant political parties and eight candidates running.

Preliminary Results

Which candidates and political parties have generated the most buzz leading up to the election? Which issues have internet users discussed most extensively prior to voting?

El País has already reported the following data, which was collected from Twitter conversation analysis:

• Current candidate for President of the Generalitat of Catalonia Inés Arrimadas has been discussed as frequently as both Carles Puigdemont and Oriol Junqueras, despite having far fewer followers.
• Between December 9th and December 19th, Arrimadas has been mentioned in 14,900 tweets, compared to 15,500 for Puigdemont, who has almost double her followers, and 15,150 for Junqueras who has over 100,000 followers.
• The terms most commonly associated with Carles Puigdemont are “Spain” and “president,” while those for Oriol Junqueras are “jail” and “Puigdemont”

Best Practices for Monitoring Current Events

Successful analysis of an event of this magnitude and popularity requires very close monitoring in real time. For this reason, it’s necessary to use an online monitoring tool which enables users to segment data and KPIs for three phases: before, during, and after an event.

Due to the large volume of mentions that public discourse surrounding an election will accumulate, using an alert system to detect critical mentions of an event is essential.

If a simplified view of data in real time is of the utmost importance, simple and structured data visualization tools facilitate easier tracking and analysis- all by creating dashboards to summarize the most significant KPIs at a glance.

Key KPIs:

• Notoriety: volume of messages by topic, as well as the number of times users, influencers, and media shared relevant information
  
• Top Hashtags: the most commonly used hashtags
  
• Reach: number of internet users potentially exposed to messages
  
• Classification of Media Channel: by volume of mentions and potential reach
  
• Interactions: measurement of engagement (likes, shares, and retweets) by social media channel
  
• Thematic Classification: classification by popular theme and share of voice by volume of mentions and audience potential
  
• Sentiment Analysis: associated feeling by theme and by share of voice