How I’ve analyzed The World Games 2017 with Watson Analytics

Jair Ribeiro
Jul 28, 2017 · 6 min read

The city of Wrocław in Poland was awarded to host The World Games 2017. The 10th edition of the multi-sport event will take part from 20 to 30 July 2017.

With more than 640.000 residents, Wrocław is located in Central Europe, in the south-western part of Poland, near the border with the Czech Republic and Germany. By the number of inhabitants it is the fourth largest city in Poland. Wrocław — throughout more than a thousand years of history — was at the crossroads of different cultures: Polish, Czech and German.

I’ve been living here since 2016 and I consider Wroclaw as one of the most cultural active cities I’d ever living at. It’s a place of tolerance, open to new ideas and challenges, famous for its hospitality. The extraordinary history of this city is constantly enriched by prestigious scientific, cultural and sports events“ like the UEFA EURO 2012 Tournament. Wrocław was the European Capital of Culture in 2016.

The World Games take place every four years in the year following the Olympic Games showcasing 25 sports and approximately 4,500 athletes and officials from more than 100 countries take part in The World Games.

Said that, during this week I started to analyze the World Games 2017 from the Social Media point of view, using IBM Watson Analytics to produce some interesting graphics about the social engagement, sentiment and other aspects.

Using Watson Analytics for Social Media I’ve examined a 10% sample of mentions of “The World Games 2017”, “#twg2017” and “TheWorldGames” between July1th and 20th. In this sample selection, there were included over 25.000 documents, in 7 languages , divided by themes like Games, volunteering, Wroclaw, sports and others from different sources like Youtube, tweeter, forums, reviews, blogs, news and Facebook pages.

Demographic Analysis

My dataset shows that the female audience was more engaged than males like 15% male to 45% female).

And of course I monitored the Global sentiment regarding the games:

Also included in my demographic analysis was the Languages. Interestingly, I discovered that the number of French drove 52,59% of the conversations while the English Language accounted for 20% of the conversation.

From a geography standpoint, the United Kingdon led all countries with 39% of all mentions followed by Sweden and Spain

Going deep into the Content

Looking deeper into the conversation, I analyzed the most important categories of interest based on the number of Favorites and Likes: nothing new if the most representative category is Gymnastics :-)

And regarding the number of followers by Interest areas, we have Art and Entertainment leading, followed by Sport and Food and Drink.

There were already many influential authors contributing to the World Games 2017 conversation. Some important influencers involved in the discussion included Casey Davis, Christoph Hahn, Herbert Bickel and of course The World Games’s webpage.

Social media analytics is a great shift in the way market research can be conducted on brands while it can help brands to make sense of high volumes of unstructured data from social networks helping to better understand brand performance, brand reputation, engagement, affinities, influencers and so on.

IBM Watson Analytics help me to make sense of senseless and sporadic patterns that social media like twitter, Facebook and some blogs provides me during the last months when I’ve been watching the advent of the World Games here in my city. With Social Media Analytics it’s possible to “hear” what people are saying, even if that conversation spans an ocean or a continent.

The modern world is more connected than ever before. An event like the World Games highlights the massive amount of data that’s generated from consumers, influencers and personalities.

With Cognitive tools like Watson Analytics this data can be mined to understand a specific demographic, a target audience or market. For example there are insights on Social Media Analytics that a business can learn if they are eager to reach a particular demographic.

In the following graphics I’ve analyzed the average number of post by hours, the engagement and the total number of posts during the current month (from 01st to 20th July 2017):

During the next days (The World Games begin today, July 20th and will finish on July 30th) I will monitor the Social Media to update the graphics with the daily number of tweet and retweet, the daily sentiment about the topic and the most important hashtags of the day.

Apart my real passion about Analytics one of the main reason that I’m following with so much attention the World Games is the volunteering, since I will be working as volunteer during the games at the Media Center, helping the organization to receive and support the accredited journalist from all around the world.

Probably there will be not better place for me to touch with my hands everyday the Social Media sensation about The World Games.

Thanks

Jair Ribeiro

If you want to follow the trends.. let’s keep in touch!! I will update here everyday:

Update

July, 26th 2017

July, 25th 2017

July, 24th 2017

July, 23th 2017

July, 22th 2017

July, 21th 2017

July, 20th 2017

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