PSCSF | Blog | UK Councils Social Media Reputation Index for May 2011

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UK Councils Social Media Reputation Index for May 2011

on 09/06/2011 · View Comments">View Comments · in Features

This month:

The top 20 UK councils for online reputation
“With the rise of the internet, everybody’s a publisher”: Controlling reputations, controlling Twitter
Who is your ‘Mr Monkey’?
The Media Mix – News v Blogs v Twitter etc

The Top 20
The top 20 councils ranked by social media sentiment (subject to them attaining a minimum number of references during the month – Districts = 100 mentions, Counties and Unitaries = 300) for this month are:

“With the rise of the internet, everybody’s a publisher” (David Allen Green, Media Lawyer): Controlling reputations, controlling Twitter

Many of us have watched with interest as the Twitter injunction debate progresses. We have shown the growth of Twitter in local government in this index. With this growth comes influence and power. For councils and individuals who want to maintain their reputation, Twitter presents a challenge that all need to consider. South Tyneside Council have already taken action …

Who is your ‘Mr Monkey’?

Buzz and Media Mix

Next, this month’s total references to ‘Councils’ online is:South Tyneside Council are thought to have spent over £75,000 in an ongoing battle with a blog named as ‘Mr Monkey’ which has made numerous damaging statements against the council, its councillors and a council officer. This is thought to be the first action of its kind but we are sure to see more of it.

The dip we discussed last month (caused by news syndication no longer being included) is the explanation for what would appear to be a dip in the growth on total online buzz. This can still be seen in more detail below in the Media Mix chart:

Here we see that despite a recent lift in news coverage, likely to be due to the elections in May, the volume of news coverage has fallen substantially in this chart with the change in measurement techniques. The coming months will allow us to see news coverage proportionally to the other media types.

Notes.

Images and chart data may be used provided CouncilMonitor are credited accordingly.

For a more comprehensive service description please look at www.councilmonitor.com/about

Monthly Buzz Index methodology – Details can be found here

About CouncilMonitor – CouncilMonitor trawls the Internet 24 hours a day, seven days a week, searching through news, blogs, forums and social media sites. It reads through all of this information and summarises what’s being said about UK councils, and can even tell you whether the sentiment is positive or negative (similar to the election worm we have seen at #leadersdebate). The service was launched in December 2009 so is still quite early on, but by measuring a benchmark group of councils on a consistent basis we hope to be able to provide some national trend information relating to what people are saying about their councils – and how they choose to say it.