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Twitter TV Buzz Christmas 2013

January 1, 2014 — by

This project involved producing a league table and an article for Guardian online.

ITV’s Downton Abbey festive special proved to be the most popular Christmas Day show on Twitter, despite only managing seventh spot in terms of TV audience, according to new figures.

The drama topped a league table measuring the buzz on Twitter about Christmas Day TV shows based on a combination of sentiment, social engagement and volume of tweets.

Downton Abbey’s Christmas special managed a Blurrt Score of 49.17, derived from an analysis of 20,840 tweets, 39% of which were positive and 18% negative, according to a scale developed by Twitter analytics company Blurrt. The Blurrt scale theoretically runs from zero to 100, with 50 considered a good score and 30 relatively low.

Seven million viewers tuned in to watch the show on ITV on Christmas Day, making it the seventh most popular programme of the day by overnight TV ratings figures.

Twitter buzz Christmas 2013

Twitter TV buzz Christmas 2013 (click for larger image). Source: Blurrt

 

BBC1’s Mrs Brown’s Boys won the TV ratings battle, with 9.4 million viewers, but in terms of Twitter buzz it could only manage sixth spot.The comedy managed a score of 41.17 based on 14,920 tweets, of which 30% were positive and 14% negative.

“It’s always about volume in the annual TV ratings war, but these results are showing who’s won the battle for hearts and minds,” said Blurrt managing director Jason Smith. “Audiences have also turned to social networks in huge numbers to engage, share and discuss. The fact that a short mini-episode like Sherlock was only broadcast via the red button and iPlayer makes number two on the Blurrt list, yet doesn’t feature in the TV ratings, is a great example of this.”