#OWS Analytics

#OWS Analytics for #whilewewatch  4/30/2012

Measuring the Buzz

Tweetreach.com shows that @whilewewatch has reached 33,524 accounts and created a total 82,806 impressions on Twitter alone.  26% of the accounts reached, 21,599, have seen between 2 and 4 tweets clearly suggesting that the film has considerably large and engaged following on Twitter.  Of the accounts 30 contributors SNAG Films is the most influential, generating 55,698 impressions from 3 tweets and 5 retweets over the past three days.   The KloutScore for @whilewewatch has increased from 44.0 to 47.9 out of 100 over the past week from 4/23/2012 – 2/30/2012.  

The #whilewewatch Facebook Fan page received 54 new likes between 4/23/2012 and 4/28/2012.  The page’s impressions or total reach on Facebook exploded from 1,718 users on 4/23/2012 up to 58,153 total users by 4/28/2012.  This is a viral 3,284.9% increase in the number of Facebook users that have seen this page between 4/23/2012 and 4/28/2012.  38.7% of external referrers to the site have been from Twitter, validating the effectiveness of promotion strategy centered around Twitter.  266 Facebook users have been talking about the #whilewewatch page on Facebook from 4/22/2012 – 4/28/2012.  50% of those Facebook users are male, 46% are female, and it is significant to note that 13% of those female users fall into a 55 + age year category, a group often under-represented from surveys of occupywallst.org users, owsresearch.tumblr.com.  

Analytics on the Breslin Whilewewatch YouTube channel show the channel’s clips have generated 1,410 views, 26 likes, 20 shares and 12 new subscribers from 4/22/2012 – 4/28/2012.  Before this on 4/20/2012 for example the channel received only 4 views.  The channel’s audience is 66.0% female and 34.0% male, which once again is significant given a 60/40 male/female bias typically seen towards much occupy content observed by #OWS Analytics.  48% of the channel’s total views were on YouTube.  Twitter was the number one external traffic source for 5 out of 8 of the clips, again validating the effectiveness of a promotion strategy centered around Twitter.  Audience retention reports on these clips, how often each moment the clip is being watched out of the clip’s total views, have yielded insights and feedback provided back to media activists by #OWS Analytics as to which specific messages within the channel’s clips resonate the most with the channel’s views.  Those insights will not be shared in this public report however.  

Measuring and Understanding the True Impact of the Film’s Buzz

Engagement

Data collected in January from an ongoing custom survey research project administered by Hector Cordero Gusman at Baruch College at the City University of New York showed that 69.6% of 1,538 respondents strongly agreed that they support the protests.  The research also showed that only 9.2% out of 1,541 of the same respondents strongly agreed that they regularly participate in the Occupy Wall Street Protests.  This suggests that there is much potential for the numbers of people who attend OWS actions to dramatically increase.  Data collected by Facebook insights provides us with clues as to how we might go about encouraging this.

Photos from tumblr blog posts of creative actions created by Revolutionary Games have been more likely to go viral within Facebook than have YouTube clips of the same actions.  The most viral post I’ve yet seen came from the Occupied Stories Fan Page.  It had 114 people talking about it out of a reach of 302, a virality score of 37.75%.  (The next best closest score on the page was 9.46% virality for sake of comparison).  It was picture posted March 22nd with the following caption…”The latest from Union Square : No Performing, rallying, and engaging in commercial activity, except by permit!  I hear our resident hula hooper plans to make this evening in Union Square quite interesting!..”  It generated 52 shares, 28 likes, 51 comments, with some of those comments getting additional likes.  Comments in response to the post as well as the post itself, demonstrated that first hand trusted news of suppression of expressive activities, performance, rallying, etc actually led to Facebook users to reply to the notice with similar complaints about not being able to skate or play kickball, as well as similar desires to directly challenge this irrational encroachment on our basic rights to leisure and play, which need be constantly sacrificed and abstained from by the working masses in order for capitalism to function.  

OWS affinity groups such as Revolutionary Games, the Puppet Guild, the Plus Brigades, have been preparing and rehearsing various forms of street performances all winter and it seems as if the NYPD will be just as likely to attempt to suppress this new round of artistic tactics every bit as much as they attempted to suppress the occupations during the fall of 2011.  However the analytics suggest that any attempt to suppress creatively expressive actions will likely only encourage more individuals to creatively express themselves in direct defiance of transparent oppression, just as the occupations tended to grow after every time protestors were brutalized in October and early November of 2011.