By Joe Hughes

Yomego has been analysing the reputations of each leader through the first two leader’s debates, and the reputational shifts are charted in the graph below, as are the social media reputation scores of each leader. The data in this report is related to the changes in the day after the debate.

Yomego’s Social Media Reputation (SMR) audit analysed discussions from 12,000 online sources to attribute a Social Media Reputation score to each leader. The system creates an index that scores (out of 100) the popularity of a brand (or person) on social media, compared to its competitors (in this case, other party leaders). The index takes into account: volume of ‘noise’ on social media; how recently the brand or person has been discussed; the tone of social media coverage (where 1 is the most negative and 100 is the most positive); and how recently the brand or person generated positive sentiment. It then applies human analysis to put these scores in context, and identify what the main issues are behind each score.

David Cameron

The Conservative performance has been rather overshadowed by the attempts of several newspapers to smear the Lib Dems. However, on social media this has not worked: the satirical hashtag #nickcleggsfault is still trending massively on Twitter. David Cameron still faces the problem of not getting his message across in the right way, and as the trend on this graph shows, his reputation is suffering as a result.

Nick Clegg

Nick Clegg is still ahead of his rivals on social media reputation. He appears to have real grass roots support in social media (i.e. from sites not created by the political party, but by supporters themselves), in a similar way to Barack Obama ahead of the Presidential election. There are large numbers of people across all social media channels who are getting behind Nick Clegg and this is having a knock on influence on both the volume of noise and the positive sentiment around him.

Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown has seen a lift in his reception on social media after last week’s debate. His policy of substance over style is starting to have an effect on social media users, particularly when compared in social media discussions to David Cameron. However, Gordon Brown and the Labour party don’t appear to have the same kind of grass roots creativity and support that is shown by the Lib Dems’ reputation online.

About the author Joe Hughes is Insight and Research Manager at Yomego (www.yomego.com).