Thai Political Protests Were Third Most Discussed Twitter Topic
Statistics from Pew Research – "a nonpartisan "fact tank" that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world" – released late last week show that the political unrest in Thailand was the third most discussed subject on Twitter the previous week (19-23 April 2010) as the graphic below illustrates.
To give a some context news and updates from Thailand are a credit third place (with 6% of links) behind Apple which was (unsurprisingly) the most discussed topic (37% of links) given the launch of the iPad and rumours of a 4G iPhone device surfacing, while the news of a US actor's mugging, an example of niche news going viral, was second with 9% of links.
These statistics are important as they give a global context to the influence of Twitter in broadcasting news from the protests. The numbers also showing just how interested Twitter users have been in the developments in Thailand.
It is impossible to gauge the share of voice and popularity of a subject (behind the often trivial trending topics) without such statistics as the level of noise, and mentions for each topic, vary depending on which Twitter users one is following.
I previously described Twitter as a tool which "amplifies" the news in Thailand, an argument supported by this research from Pew.
It is important to note that, in analysing tweets containing links, Pew does not assess all tweets sent on Twitter. One can argue that this makes the research more qualitative, not quantitative, as tweets containing links tend (there is no guarantee) to discuss more pertinent, news-based topics rather than the regular Twitter minutiae.
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