Twitter On Fire During Third Republican Debate
Last night’s Republican debate sparked a lot of #socialmedia activity. The Annenberg Media Social Data Desk analyzed the social reaction to the debate so you don’t have to.
Social Media Responses:
Twitter reigned supreme as the main social media outlet used by viewers throughout the debate, with 96% of engagement coming from the Twittersphere. Surprisingly, less than 1% of viewers engaged in debate chatter on Facebook. Looks like people may be trying to clean up their news feed activity after all.
Most Discussed Candidates:
Donald Trump stole the digital conversation last night, with over 95,000 mentions on Twitter. Although Ben Carson is getting closer to Trump as the leader in the polls, he came in fourth place on Twitter last night, falling behind both Rubio and Cruz.
And Cruz’s engagement didn’t stop there. His attack on the media earned him a lot of attention among the members of his focus group, according to political consultant Frank Luntz.
Trending Topics:
Twitter got a bit more excited at the mention of a few key topics, with pharmaceuticals, regulations and climate change getting the highest number of topical mentions last night.
#gopdebate was the most used hashtag for the event, followed by #cnbcdebate. Here are the most used words that went along with these respective hashtags on Twitter:
The most retweeted items on social media included some sass from Hillary Clinton and fact checks of the debate.
For more debate coverage visit us at atvn.org.
