Publications
Partners
Fewer South Africans may have participated in the online conversation regarding President Jacob Zuma’s state of the nation address last week, but one thing that remained constant across the race groups was sentiment against him.
A social media online monitoring company which specifically deals with data, BrandsEye, tracked online conversations on the 2016 state of nation address (Sona). The data showed that South Africans – blacks, whites, coloured and Indians – were united in their sentiment against Zuma.
According to BrandsEye chief executive, Jean Pierre Kloppers, the racial issue on social media gets very heated.
“We thought about this beforehand just to say, it will be great if we can bring clarity in South Africa, of whether races are divided when it comes to how they view Sona. This is the reason we included those race statistics,” he told City Press.
He admitted that this year’s figures were lower than last year.
“The use of the Sona hashtag by unique authors decreased 45% compared to last year,” he said
This means that there were definitely fewer people taking part in the conversation this year, than last year.
Last year there were about 300 000 number of mentions, and this year only 237 0000 in terms of total number of mentions.
He added that this year there was also at least 11% more black authors on Twitter, and 11% less white authors on social media.
“This was encouraging to me to see the shift and balance on social media being more representative in South Africa,” he concluded.
But the biggest insight from social media during the Sona2016 address was how sentiment against Zuma remained constant irrespective of race, he said.
* All graphs supplied by BrandsEye
