World Cup: Ghana tops social supporters
All 32 teams at the World Cup have now played their opening games, with fans venting their frustration, praising passes and criticising referees like an army of armchair analysts. But which country leads the table for the most socially active pundits?
Unsurprisingly the World Cup is having a big effect on post volume, with average Twitter activity in participating countries increasing by 35% on matchdays. We took a look at how this plays out across the multitude of teams taking part to identify the most socially vocal World Cup nations, specifically looking at the increase in tweets in each country against a corresponding daily average.
The results are not necessarily what you would expect. The biggest country cheer came during Ghana v USA, and it was Ghana that had the biggest percentage increase in social conversation despite losing 2-1. Ghana saw an increase of 166% compared to its average tweeting volume, versus 7% for USA.
Of course, the USA has a much bigger volume of tweets overall, but when looking at the percentage growth the Ghanaians clearly came out on top, despite a last minute goal giving the all-important tournament points to team USA.
The second biggest surge also came from West Africa, with Côte d’Ivoire seeing an increase of 93% on the day of their match against Japan. Interestingly the Portuguese were also very vocal, which could be linked to an impassioned response to their defeat at the hands of the German team. A poor defeat can obviously prompt a vociferous response as much as a rousing result.
This analysis demonstrates how football, particularly the World Cup, really inspires people all over the world to take to social media to share their views. These countries may not be the most active on social media on a daily basis, but the World Cup has driven them to Twitter en masse to lend their support to their national team.
We’ll be keeping an eye on the Twitter pundits throughout the tournament, as well as keeping you updated on the key World Cup moments in social media.
Methodology
We calculated the average volume of all tweets from people in each of the competing countries – by day – across 1st March to 30th May. We then compared the volume of all tweets from the competing countries on their match day vs. their average for that day. We used data from Sysomos