Rio 2016: Five Insights from Twitter
What do Americans think about the Rio Olympics? Twitter provides a wealth of information on this topic. After examining the nearly 3 million olympic-related tweets created in the United States from August 5th to 10th for key subjects, words, phrases, and sentiments we were able to drill down on what exactly people are saying about Rio 2016. Here are the five key trends driving the conversation:
1. Things are going much better than anyone expected.
Prior to the start of the games many news stories and tweets about the competition expressed criticism or apprehension. There was significant conversation on Twitter around fear of Zika, political corruption in Brazil, pollution, protests, crime levels in Rio, and reports of poor preparation by the Rio organizers. But, now that the games have begun, conversation has shifted to more positive topics. In fact, since the day of the Opening Ceremony the percentage of negative or concerned tweets about the Games has fallen to almost zero. This is not to say that these issues have gone away completely. Twitter users are still discussing Zika, pollution, political upheaval, and other problems at a similar level but they have also started tweeting about positive, olympic-related subjects relatively more frequently. As a result, expressions of concern or pessimism are a much smaller part of olympic-related tweets than they were before the games.
2. The Opening Ceremony was a big hit: Gisele Bundchen and the refugee olympic team stole the show.
Conversation on Twitter during the Opening Ceremony was generally optimistic (88% of tweets were positive or neutral)* and focused on a few key moments. Gisele Bundchen’s entrance to “The Girl from Ipanema” was the most discussed moment capturing 3.5% of opening ceremony Twitter mentions. The second largest driver of conversation was the entrance of the refugee team during the parade of nations. However, in the days following the start of the games, the flag bearer from Tonga has become the second most discussed of these topics in the United States, still below Gisele Bundchen’s entrance but above the Refugee team’s entrance and the torch lighting.
*Based on manually analyzed and coded n=200 random sample of tweets. Margin of error is 5 percentage points
3. Katie Ledecky and Michael Phelps are the most popular American athletes so far.
From August 5th to 10th, the three most discussed athletes in the United States were Michael Phelps, Hope Solo, and Katie Ledecky. As in the pool, Phelps has a commanding lead with almost four times more Twitter mentions than any other American athlete. Hope Solo and Katie Ledecky are in distant second and third place, respectively, by volume of conversation. Ledecky, despite being mentioned about 30,000 times less than Solo, seems to be more popular. Virtually all of the tweets about Ledecky are positive or complimentary. In contrast, a significant portion of the tweets about Solo are critical of her recent comments on the threat of Zika or her being booed by local crowds. Swimmers like Ledecky and Phelps have participated in more events than almost any other American athletes at this point in the games, so this ranking may change as track and field events begin and Americans advance in more team-oriented sports.
4. Americans really go for gold
As of 5:00 PM on August 10th Americans had set one new world record and five new Olympic records at the Rio games and had eight silver medals, nine bronze medals, and ten gold medals. Consistent with this ranking, Gold and bronze medals were the most discussed accomplishments. However, Americans seem to like talking about gold medals more than anything else. gold saw almost twelve times more mentions between August 5th and August 10th than bronze even though the US had won similar numbers of medals in each category at that point.
5. The most popular sports so far are swimming and gymnastics
Swimming, gymnastics, and basketball have dominated Twitter conversation since the start of the games. Given the fame of the athletes competing in these sports and the large number of events (swimming has 34 events and gymnastics 14), this is unsurprising. Look for these numbers to change, however, as popular track and field events begin next week and US basketball and soccer teams advance through their respective brackets. If you’re looking for a less popular sport where the US has a good shot at winning check out the shooting events — the US women’s team has medaled in half of the events so far.
