Leveson is announced this year’s most tweeted topic among UK Journalists

Leveson is announced this year’s most tweeted topic among UK Journalists

The Leveson Enquiry dominated journalists’ conversations in the twittersphere this year, the Portland NewsTweet Index released today can reveal.

The NewsTweet Index, which analyses the content, impact and quantity of tweets generated by UK journalists each quarter, can reveal the phone hacking scandal was the subject of one in five tweets this year between July 2011 and June 2012.

To download a clickable graphic of the full Portland NewsTweet Index Top 50, click here.

Topics including: ‘Murdoch’, ‘Hacking’, and ‘NOTW’, shaped this year’s Twitter discussion as journalists became absorbed with the present and future state of the UK media landscape.

Despite prominence across other media channels, topics such as the Syrian civil war, the UK’s ongoing economic uncertainty and the Euro-zone implosion ranked low on the annual content index in eighth, tenth and fifteenth respectively.

David Cameron was the most talked about politician in the UK, eclipsing Ed Miliband with four times as many tweets. With the run-up to the Olympics and hotly contested London Mayoral elections, Boris Johnson attracted almost twice as much attention as Nick Clegg but almost a quarter less than Ed Miliband.

The BBC held its position as the UK’s most active news outlet on Twitter since it overtook The Guardian in March 2012. BBC journalists recorded a 17 per cent increase in their Twitter presence during the year to help retain its title.

The NewsTweet Index can also reveal that Financial Times journalists have heightened their Twitter activity by 69 per cent since April 2011; overtaking Sky News, The Telegraph and The Independent as the second most active outlet . Notably, this surge in activity coincides with the success of the pay wall business model as FT digital subscribers outweigh print circulation for the first time.

Portland NewsTweet Index Q4 Top 50 Most Influential

Mark Flanagan, Digital Partner at Portland, said:

“The Portland NewsTweet index highlights the power of Twitter as an open forum for public debates. The micro-blogging site breaks open discussions that would previously have been held behind closed doors. Despite this new degree of transparency, it remains to be seen whether the openness of Twitter will translate into a greater level of trust towards the press among the wider public”

Following two quarters of dominance, Paul Waugh, editor of Politics Home, has again been named the UK’s most influential journalist – securing the title of number one NewsTweeter for the third time this year.

Although known for his political exclusives from the Westminster lobby, it was a simple, humorous tweet comparing pictures of Boris Johnson to Orang-utans that saw Paul Waugh’s greatest interaction of the year with an enormous 775 retweets.

Paul Waugh, Editor of Politics Home, said:

“It’s a real honour to be named again as No.1 NewsTweeter again. With every passing month, Twitter is becoming the leading source of rolling news for many people, particularly the young, and I’m delighted I’m playing a small part in that. As the Olympics showed, perhaps one of Twitter’s most attractive qualities is that it likes ‘good news’ as much as ‘bad news’. Maybe there’s a lesson there for the media as a whole.”

The NewsTweet Index is published by Portland in partnership with Twitter analysts at Tweetminster.

By studying the content, impact and quantity of tweets generated by UK journalists on Twtter, the NewsTweet Index illuminates the trends and personalities which are shaping Britain’s media Twittersphere. The Index includes:

• The Top 50 Media Tweeters
• Which Publication is dominating Twitter
• Which stories have been most heavily covered in the media

Indexes from previous quarters can be found here: http://notebook.portland-communications.com/?s=newstweet

Back to thoughts