The Debate on Cloned Food is Heating Up. Who’s Leading It?

Posted on August 10th, 2010 by Simeon Ianchev in InfluenceAnalyser

Seemingly straight out of an eighties sci-fi novel, the news which broke on August 1 that we may be eating and drinking products from cloned animals has naturally had media channels in a frenzy ever since.

Given the exotic nature of the resulting debate, it is no wonder that the total number of articles and blog posts covering the topic in global English-language media leaped from 215 in the period from July 12-25,  to a whopping 5,643 mentions between July 26 and August 8,  2010.

Before the story emerged, the blogosphere — which surely harbours more than its fair share of conspiracy theorists — accounted for 59% of all the documents in our sample which mentioned cloned food. Yet as soon as concerns surrounding milk from cloned cows reaching consumers were being more widely aired, print and other online sources quickly latched onto the story.

After that the debate spread like wildfire in the online media, where the volume of mentions soon surpassed both print sources and blogs, reaching 85% of all coverage on cloned animals for the period.

More than 65% of the print articles on cloned food derived from UK publications so we decided to take a closer look using our Influencer Network Analysis (INA) tools to see if we could identify the individuals driving  the discussion.

We analysed a total of 92 articles published by UK print sources in the period between July 12 and August 8,  2010. Having determined our sample, the methodology then proceeds by combining automatic and manual entity extraction in order to identify all individuals and organisations mentioned within it. Step two is the manual assignment of roles to the entities thus identified, before they are mapped against the reporters (and their publications) which mentioned them.

The recent ballooning of this debate was triggered by an article in The Wall Street Journal which claimed that a UK farmer had admitted to raising animals from cloned parents. A subsequent investigation found that indeed there were such animals in the UK, and one of them had already been slaughtered and sold for human consumption.

The INA map above connects the individual influencers who appeared in our sample to the reporters that singled them out.

The color of the nodes indicates the various role categories into which individuals fall, the size of circles represents the total number of mentions each node received, while the thickness of the connecting lines is indicative of the number of articles in which the reporter mentioned the individual.

Where the network is densely structured and almost all participants are connected within a single group, we consider that the debate is intensive and that the participating individuals are considered influential by most reporters showing interest in the topic of cloned food.

The distribution of node colours in our chart indicates that this debate is currently dominated by representatives of interest groups (such as animal rights groups) who are voicing opposition to the raising and sale of cloned food. The most visible representatives of this group were Peter Stevenson of Compassion in World Farming and Emma Hockridge, The Soil Association’s Head of Policy.

Interestingly, politicians and government officials in charge of setting the rules remain absent from the discussion.

Companies involved in the production or sale of food, perhaps with a view to avoiding uncontrollable publicity, left the task of defending their own position to representatives of industry associations. Notably, neither pharmaceutical nor bio-engineering companies (or indeed any other corporate representatives), have contributed to the debate.

Meanwhile, academics have been offering expert opinion on the risks of consuming food from cloned animals or their offspring, and as a consequence have been sought out by reporters wishing to give their articles a scientific angle.

On the organisational level, there is a greater level participation of government bodies, namely the FSA and Defra. Both were criticised for not having a proper record of how many animals on UK farms are cloned or have a cloned parent.

The huge difference between the volume of mentions of the government agencies and the volume of mentions of their representatives suggests that they were being named by other participants in the conversation and were thus not taking the opportunity to defend themselves in detail.

In unison with the Influencer map above, interest groups and industry associations had a strong presence in the conversation. The most active interest groups were Compassion in World Farming, the RSPCA and The Soil Association, while the most prominent industry associations were DairyCo, Dairy UK and Holstein UK.

The major publications showing greatest interest in the topic and covering it from the largest number of perspectives were The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, and Daily Mail. Surprisingly, The Mirror, The Independent and The Times did not pay much attention to developments around the topic of cloned food and mentioned just one or two organisations.

Bearing in mind the vast number of businesses and individuals affected by the production, sale and consumption of food, we can only assume that this conversation will continue to evolve, and that more individuals and interest groups will be drawn into it as this happens.

Size Does Matter in Oil Spills – Media Coverage Grows Proportionally to the Amount of Released Oil

Posted on July 21st, 2010 by Elena Mihalska in MediaAnalyser

It might be a little early to strike a balance, but the current year has already offered us a number of devastating, big ticket media “events” to follow and analyse:

  • The tragic Haiti earthquake, followed by the much stronger quake in Chile, shattered the lives of hundreds of thousands of people
  • The nearly impossible-to-pronounce name of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull may be easily forgotten, if ever remembered, but the flight chaos and the economic ripples were felt worldwide
  • The Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest offshore spill in the US history so far, has stained not only the Gulf of Mexico, but also the reputation of Britain’s largest public company, BP.

This pernicious sequence has prompted Commetric to take a closer look at oil spill incidents in particular over the course of the last 10 years, and their reflection in the global media.

Fortunately, the Web offers both sufficient and easily-accessible statistical data through the Incident News (a website developed and maintained by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Emergency Response Division), CEDRE (the French Centre of Documentation, Research and Experimentation on Accidental Water Pollution) and the Norwegian Mariner Group. Information from these three sources was combined with a quantitative search in the English language print media to explore media reaction to the major oil spill incidents in the last 10 years by measuring the volume of articles touching on this topic.

The world map below shows the location of the biggest oil spills during the period monitored. Although at first glance the geographical spread appears quite even, in truth, 42% of the spills were within US territories (including waters), followed by Brazil (14%) and France (13%).

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=72.395706,-66.09375&spn=167.167972,272.109375&t=h&z=1&msid=117253767136001603932.00048b807b0cedd468142

The chart below, which plots the instances of oil spills and the amount of substance discharged, indicates quite clearly that the number of spills per year has decreased, while the amount of oil spilled has been regular and kept below 100,000 tonnes, up to 2010 when the Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurred:

So we asked ourselves — was there more media coverage on the issue 5-10 years ago when there were 10-20, albeit contained, oil spills per year, or did the sheer volume of the 2010 disaster drive the coverage up?

To answer this question, we looked at the number of oil spills per company, compared them to the amount of spilled oil for each (where data was available) and to the number of English-language print media articles on such spills — where each of these companies was mentioned —  for the past 10 years.  As we suspected, media volumes closely follow the amount of oil spilled in the incidents admitted by a given company, rather than the number of incidents:


Naturally, this attests to the fact that the real damage to a company’s reputation in the sector comes not from the number of times it errs, but from the magnitude of its mistakes. Other noteworthy findings included:

  • An interesting exception is the American company Bass Enterprises, which ranks third in terms of the amount of spilled oil, but has attracted only 6 articles, discussing its 2 oil spills. The reason for this may be that Bass Enterprise’s oil spills were related to Hurricane Katrina, which was in itself a calamitous enough event to focus the attention of the media. So, despite the fact that US media were quite proactive in covering the consequences of the Katrina disaster, the name of Bass Enterprises was rarely mentioned in relation to oil spills.
  • Petrobras, the leader in the number of oil spills during the last 10 years, apparently managed to keep the volume of media coverage relatively low. The comparatively light coverage volumes may be due to the fact that for the purposes of our study we looked into English language media only. However, Petrobras may have another trick up its sleeve: the company is apparently quite consistent and transparent in communicating facts around the oil spills they have caused, suggesting an effective media relations approach.
  • ExxonMobil, which up to 2010 led the field in terms of amount of spilled oil (most notably via the incident which gained notoriety as the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989), this year again stirred the media space with a major oil spill in the Niger delta. ExxonMobil is however one of the companies which has managed to “capitalise” on another disaster – the much bigger Deepwater Horizon spill.  Although it triggered a significant amount of articles associated with that recent mischance, and was severely criticized by the Nigerian government, the salience of its own name has remained overshadowed by the “BP oil spill”.

All in all, this analysis suggests that there is a strong relationship between the public image of oil companies and the extent of the environmental impact resulting from their failures.

This combined analysis of statistical data and media coverage volumes on oil spills during the last 10 years can be further enriched with qualitative insights on media reactions to the various incidents. At Commetric we believe that the study of these parallels could assist oil companies  in developing an effective tool designed to measure operational and communication effectiveness and inform a crisis action plan.

BP’s failures consistently punished by investors since 2006

Posted on July 12th, 2010 by Guy Howard in Uncategorized

On Wikipedia the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is listed as ‘also referred to as the BP oil spill’, an indication how the issue of culpability has focused on Britain’s largest public company. With both its valuation and reputation plumetting,  BP has defended its safety record doggedly, arguing that the Gulf blow-out was a very rare and unpredictable event.

Commetric’s senior analysts Georgi Nalbantov and Elena Iltcheva decided to take a closer look at this record, in particular at how investors have responded to previous mishaps.

Using a methodology which processes millions of media articles and billions of share price movements and which is deemed robust enough to power a successful hedge fund, Georgi and Elena soon found evidence of a serious systemic deficiency: BP has had more operational failures than any other firm in its sector, with investor confidence repeatedly shaken by evidence that the company had disregarded safety and environmental regulations.

The chart below shows how a $100 investment in BP shares — on days with media coverage of operational disruptions — would have generated a cumulative loss of more than $87 between 2004 and 2010,  nearly 10-times more than the loss on an identical $100 investment in ExxonMobil, the worst performer of the other four oil majors.

Up until 2006 news about facility shutdowns did not tend to result in abnormal share price fluctuations for BP.  Then in August of that year, the company was forced to close the Pruhhoe field in Alaska due to an oil leak, and its average daily loss on days with coverage of operational failures jumped from 0.08% to 0.30%.  This compares to a daily average sector-adjusted gain of 0.01% on the days without such news.

BP stockholders were no longer prepared it seems, to perceive announcements about accidents as just a normal part of operations as companies in this sector were driven to explore more challenging and technically-complex oil fields. Instead they responded negatively to media coverage suggesting that many of the specific incidents affecting BP were caused by the neglect of aging equipment, pressuring or intimidating employees not to report problems, or cutting short and/or delaying inspections to reduce production costs.

This table compiled by Georgi and Elena shows how coverage levels on operational difficulties affecting the other four key players in the sector have not been as high, nor have they resulted in any significant volatility or share price impact.

This analysis is robust in both data points and time. It clearly shows up BP’s primary defence that the Gulf disaster was a freak incident and not symptomatic of an underlying trend of operational failure and share price losses.  It also begs the question that had BP executives had access to this data in 2006/2007, it might have informed a refocusing of the organization around the addressing of systematic operational issues.

You can download the full report in our News section.

Eurovision – Vikings brought Germany the Win

Posted on June 2nd, 2010 by Petya Sabinova in InfluenceAnalyser

Writing in The Times last Saturday, just hours before the show started in Oslo, Roger Boyes observed that “the brute reality of the new Europe, if Eurovision is any guide, is that small countries collude and plot to trip up the grandees from Old Europe…Under the present voting system neither the Germans nor the British will win. This is testimony to the failure of these countries to build proper bridges within Europe.”

But then Germany did win. And it did so without the help of Greece, for whom it might be said the Germans have indeed been building bridges of late.

Boyes’s predictions for the fate of Europe’s “old grandees” (and “paymasters“) turned out to be more accurate in the case of the UK, which propped up the leaderboard in twenty fifth place. They derived from the published thoughts of Eurovision analyst Derek Gatherer, who believes the modern competition is dominated by three major voting alliances: The Balkan Bloc, The Vikings and The Warsaw Pact.

So how did Germany’s Lena Meyer escape this now dependable geopolitical stitch up? Using the top three votes from each participating nation, we went about mapping out this year’s voting patterns, and then applied Gatherer’s bloc-taxonomy to see what role it played in 2010.

What we discovered was that although regional preferences do indeed play some role in structuring the result, there are other factors affecting the pan-European political mood.

In spite of Germany’s rather fragile political state right now, its song was significantly boosted by votes from the Vikings and the Balkan Bloc.  And second-placed Turkey, whose EU accession plans have been repeatedly frowned upon in the Balkans, received the biggest push from that very grouping, as well as from the Big Four.

Of course ex-pats could well have played a major role in this. Perhaps one way to look at the Eurovision results is as a migration map for the continent:

Overall top votes distribution in the Eurovision Final (click on map for larger view)


Viking Empire: A Group of Traitors

Interestingly, the Viking Empire bloc appears to be the least strictly loyal, as they all left Iceland in the dry, refusing it any of the top points. Most of the Viking countries cast at least one of their top votes for Denmark and, perhaps uninspired by the other offerings from within the Nordic region, 7 out of 8 Viking countries looked just a little bit further afield, seemingly rewarding Germany with ’satellite’ status, with 6 of them giving  the song of that name 12 points.

Indeed it’s clear that the Vikings were instrumental in securing the win for Germany. Focusing all their might in voting for a Big Four country, they were the only group that did not cast any of their top three votes Turkey’s way, and a tendency to selectively ‘betray’ other alliance members meant that overall, their contribution was more flexible than that of the other two major geopolitical dispositions. In the end Satellite received 12 points from 8 countries, 6 of them in the Viking group.

Top votes for Germany in Eurovision Final (click on map for larger view)

Big Four: Infatuated with the Balkans

Although the UK did not get more than 5 points from any country, its own voting patterns turn out to be quite interesting, with the three top scores being allocated to countries from the Balkan group, thereby disregarding other members of the Big Four.

The UK was not the only nation won over by the Balkan group, however. Germany and France also cast two of their top three votes for a Balkan country and Spain gave its 10 points to Romania. This could partially be the result of migration in the past several years.

As a whole, the usual vote-swapping between the Big Four did not take place this year, with the exception of Spain, which supported Germany with 12 points.

Top votes for Turkey in Eurovision Final (click on map for larger view)

Balkan Bloc: United for Turkey

Balkan voters would appear to be a bit more inclined to inclusivity, with only one of their number – Croatia – sticking doggedly to voting only within the group. However, they still showed strong overall mutual support, as 55% of the countries in the group cast two of their top three votes for other Balkan states.

Supported by the Big Four, Turkey’s second place was largely achieved with a big push from the Balkan countries. Out of the 12 countries that gave top votes to Turkey, 6 were fellow Balkans.

Warsaw Pact: True to the Cause

The Warsaw Pact countries seem to be the most partisan as 30% of them (3 countries) exclusively rewarded other group countries with top marks. These were Georgia (voted for Belarus, Armenia and Azerbaijan), Russia (voted for Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) and Armenia (voted for Georgia, Russia and the Ukraine).  As a whole, interconnectedness within the Warsaw pact is high, with another 44% (4 countries) giving top votes to two song offerings from the Pact.

In spite of this apparent coherence however, they dispersed their votes among themselves instead of focusing on one country, thus failing to secure a win for their region.

Slovakia was one notable exception to the pact mentality, as it voted for songs from three unrelated regions. Slovakian citizens apparently voted by conviction (or, dare one say it, taste) rather than by a sense of neighbourly obligation, as they gave their top points to the eventual winner Germany, to runner-up Turkey and to Belgium.

All in all the results from this year’s Eurovision prove that relationships of proximity plus cultural and linguistic bonds continue to prevail in the Eurovision Song Contest, but with continued migration across the EU and the participants’ varied song selections, there are likely to be cracks between the major voting blocs through which surprise winners may continue to emerge.

The Appeal of the 2012 London Olympics Mascots: Traditional Media and Twitter in Opposite Camps

Posted on May 21st, 2010 by Maya Nikolova in MediaAnalyser

Soon after the official unveiling of the mascots for the London 2012 Olympic Games, the two characters, Wenlock and Mandeville, became a trending topic in Twitter. This is why we decided to see what the attitudes towards the mascots are.

We tracked about a thousand English-language tweets published after the unveiling. We also analyzed articles from print and online media (traditional media) from the UK, published in a one-week period. Interestingly, the two different types of media presented completely different points – while the personal opinions shared in Twitter were mainly negative (52%), journalists from traditional media commented on the mascots in positive light (56%).

Restricted by the character limit, Twitterers tended to go directly to their point, which in most cases was made by comparing the new mascots to various creatures and objects. The social media discussion was very negative and more than 20% of the comments were openly ironic.  Furthermore the analysis showed that:

  • Many users tweeted that Wenlock and Mandeville resemble cartoon characters – including the smurfs, Mike Wazowski and the Teletubbies;
  • Almost 20% of all tweets included comments that the mascots look “scary”, “creepy”, “like aliens”, “like monsters”. More than 10% of the posts associated the mascots with phallic symbols;
  • 7% of tweets suggested an alternative mascot for the London Games – ranging from other invented characters to ex-PM Gordon Brown, London mayor Boris Johnson and socialite Peaches Geldof;
  • 6% of posts joked that the characters’ designers were on “very strong mind altering drugs” and 5% of all tweets declared Wenlock and Mandeville “the worst mascots ever”;
  • On the opposite side, 5% of tweets said they actually like the mascots.

Here is a small selection of what Twitter users said:

By: @Adam_Fish
I think every Olympic mascot has been ridiculous, why stop now?

By: @dabombdgd
can’t believe that the London 2012 Olympic mascot is a one-eyed, no-blinking teletubbie.

By: @threedaymonk
The London Olympic mascots are a sarcastic jab at the city’s obsession with CCTV, right?

The coverage in print and online media showed a completely different picture. Naturally, print and online articles were more descriptive than the short tweets and provided the mascots’ background story, explanation of the two characters’ features, details on the way they were officially unveiled and also a historic outlook on previous Olympic mascots.

  • The vast majority of articles – 72% – stressed that Wenlock and Mandeville are designed to appeal to children and most authors agreed children seemed to like them;
  • 69% emphasized that the mascots are a key revenue source for the Olympics and that the London 2012 Committee counts on the merchandising sales;
  • 18% of the articles focused on explaining the different features of the mascots and on the meaning of their names;
  • Still, 14% of print and online media articles included negative comments on the shape and looks of the London 2012 mascots.

This is how media covered the story:

Cartoon duo unveiled as London 2012 Olympic mascots
London Evening Standard, 20 May 2010
Two alien-like creatures called Mandeville and Wenlock were unveiled as mascots for the London 2012 Games. Going all-out for child appeal, London 2012 organisers created a cartoon and signed up best-selling children’s writer Michael Morpurgo to build a background story for the abstract characters.

London Olympics 2012: Meet Wenlock and Mandeville, drips off the old block
Owen Gibson, The Guardian, 20 May 2010
In the end they were neither animal, vegetable nor mineral. Nor, as some cynics had predicted, did they resemble white elephants. Instead, Wenlock and Mandeville, the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic mascots, elicited mostly baffled reactions as to just what they were at their unveiling yesterday.

London 2012 unveils futuristic one-eyed mascots
Yahoo! UK and Ireland, 20 May 2010
Two ultra-modern one-eyed creatures have been unveiled as the mascots for the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics in the hope they will adorn millions of items of merchandise.

In essence – whether people like Wenlock and Mandeville or not – the unveiling campaign undoubtedly managed to accomplish one of the main targets of such initiatives – to draw attention.

Or as Twitter user @Schafernaker put it: Just think how memorable they will be. Isn’t that the point?

And if you still haven’t had a chance to see how the two look like, here’s the story of their inception:

London 2012 Mascots Backstory

“People” is top of mind on final UK elections debate

Posted on May 4th, 2010 by Simeon Ianchev in InfluenceAnalyser

In the aftermath of the last of the three-way TV debates before the May 6 election in the UK, we’ve undertaken a follow-up to our ‘words of influence’ analysis.

This time it seems, Want was toppled by People as the term that came most readily to all three party leaders. We also detected a greater overlap in the vocabularies each deployed, such that when the questions focused on the economy, words such as Money, Banks, Tax and Work were put to use by Brown, Clegg and Cameron. Economy and Credits were also used extensively.

In spite of this new coincidence in usage, the words which were used by just one of the leaders still reveal important differences of perspective. For example, of the three, Gordon Brown was apparently looking ahead the most, using Child, Future and Will with greater frequency. He questioned the ability of his opponents to continue finding a way out of the economic crisis and was the only one to use those heavy-hitters Jobs and Recovery.

Brown appeared to regard Cameron as the bigger threat and used both David and Conservative when addressing audience questions. As in the previous debate, the PM did not find it necessary to utter either Think or Need, both Cameron and Clegg favourites.

Should we be that surprised that the Conservative leader used Tax the least? Nor did he mention Credits that often. In this debate he also talked less of Change, and more of Stop. That David Cameron was targeting Labour in particular was perhaps indicated by the fact that Brown’s party was the only one he named.

Perhaps still more inherently aware of the ‘presidential’ nature of the debate format, Nick Clegg addressed both of his opponents directly by name, but did not name their parties, thereby keeping the focus on individual personality which has served him well in this campaign so far. He differentiated himself in Birmingham by speaking more of Problems than solutions.

None of the media’s favourite words in the last days seemed to come through: neither Bigot nor Unfair being used with frequency. But who knows whether they will crop up on Friday when the dust settles and a clear winner has emerged. (Or indeed has not…)

“Want” is UK party leaders’ favourite word

Posted on April 29th, 2010 by Simeon Ianchev in InfluenceAnalyser

With the last of the live televised debates about to be broadcast (and with Prime Minister Gordon Brown perhaps still fretting about one ill-judged adjective in particular) Commetric conducted an experiment to determine which words the party leaders most adhered to in their last encounter on SKY TV.

Using published transcripts, we totted up the totals for each word used by the three men and mapped the results using our INA (Influencer Network Analysis) tools.

The first big surprise was how little overlap there was between each party’s political vocabulary; proof perhaps that an electorate seemingly indifferent about the prospect of a hung parliament has in fact been presented with three quite distinct and carefully nuanced approaches.

Yet the intersections, such as they are, are revealing. If words were influencers, Want would have the biggest allure for Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg.  People too was an influential term; Make less so, in spite of being used by all three politicians at some point during the debate. Think, Need and Good were repeatedly vocalised by Cameron and Clegg, but not by Brown.

Words that the PM did use frequently (and his opponents did not) were Risk, Economic, Jobs, Europe, Security and Nuclear, perhaps indicating a Labour strategy of tapping into latent voter fears, whilst playing upon the perceived weaknesses of less experienced rivals: the potential threat to the recovery posed by discontinuity, a softer position on the nuclear threat from Iran, and a less collaborative approach to relations with the EU and perhaps also the USA. And in answering a question about whether the Pope’s visit to the UK next September would be welcome, only Brown used the word Abuse.

The lexicon which characterized Cameron’s appearance was designed to provoke discontent with the 13-year-old adminstration and emphasise the Need for Change. He deployed the word Country quite often —
while neither of the others mentioned it more than once — and was the only one to utter the name of his party: Conservative.

Nick Clegg used several words which, while not speaking of change directly, encapsulate widely-appreciated values and ideals which many Britons might like to see more firmly associated with their government , such as  Openness, Values, Union, Talk, Deserve and Referendum.

The second TV debate was notably less convivial than the first. Gordon Brown mentioned both of his opponents by name, attacking them directly for the weaknesses he saw in their programs and plans. Nick Clegg addressed ‘David‘ Cameron during the debate, but the latter abstained from using the names of either of his opponents.

Watch this space for an update on the influential words which make an appearance in tonight’s debate at 19:30 GMT. Will Immigration come to the fore?

Earthquakes: The Media Aftershocks

Posted on March 25th, 2010 by Petya Sabinova in MediaAnalyser

It may have been the amount of news gobbled up over the holidays, or the effect of all the celebrities involved in Haiti fund-raising drives, but to me, 2010 seems to be off  to a very shaky a start. And though scientists are saying that the number of major earthquakes per year remains unchanged, the news volumes speak…well, volumes in favor of the contrary.

So, while tremors continued to shake Chile, Turkey, Japan and Indonesia the team at Commetric decided to check out just how rumbling a topic earthquakes are at the moment.

As tragic as the Haiti quake was, with the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, the much stronger earthquake in Chile may prove to have more lasting and devastating effects, as it resulted in a small shift in the Earth’s axis. But which earthquake-related topics have ultimately held the media attention longer? Our initial expectations were as follows: 

  • That, as with any major disaster, coverage of recent earthquakes will steadily decline as the largely unaffected audience loses interest and the initial shock wears off
  • That despite the potentially more serious consequences of the Chile quake,  Haiti’s tragedy will dominate the discussions throughout, and that reports of new seismic events will be tied back to Port-au-Prince.
  • That the death-toll and destruction will be the most discussed topic throughout, closely followed by reports on international aid and the economic impact of the quakes.
  • That news on the climatic consequences will generally be associated with the first big offshore quake in Chile.

In order to give our hypotheses a proper work-out we ran a quantitative search across global English-language print media for the first 11 weeks of 2010 (Jan 4 – Match 21)  and prepared extensive keyword-based queries to quantify 4 distinct areas of discussion within the earthquake coverage. While some of the results validated our expectations, there were a few surprises:

  • As the graph above shows, the peak of earthquake-related articles can be observed in the two weeks following the quake. It takes about 8-10 days for media to start losing interest in the topic, a finding consistent with our expectations.
  • However, coverage volumes and the rate of weekly adjustments showed another interesting trend: the shockingly high death-toll in Haiti and the subsequent worldwide drive for aid seemed to create a much bigger momentum than the shift of the earth’s axis. This we had also anticipated, but it was strange to note that mentions of the Haiti earthquake did not pick up pace when Chile and Japan were shaking, but continued a path of overall decline.
  • Furthermore the quake in Japan barely registered as a blip in the English-language media, while the one in Chile had a much steeper decline in coverage compared to that in Haiti. At the apex of the Chile earthquake story, it was garnering only about a third of Haiti’s top coverage volume.

  • Although the top earthquake theme overall during the period was the repercussions of disaster, discussions of international aid dominated the Haiti coverage (67%), while they featured in a just over a third of the articles on Chile and Japan.
  • Interestingly, mentions of the climate-impact of earthquakes were more prominent in Japan’s coverage than in Chile’s. (This was partly a result of the tsunami warnings.)
  • Discussion of economic effects were most prominent in the Chile coverage, perhaps due to the country’s proximity to and active trade with the US.
  • Another notable finding was that once initial reports of the death toll in Haiti started pouring in, news on international aid overshadowed them. This trend continued for over a month, only to be disrupted by reports of the Chilean quake. Suddenly the topic of destruction/body count was more salient, but as the victims were significantly fewer, news about aid initiatives gained less prominence.

This small study has helped us understand how, even when it comes to countless lost lives and wrecked homes, the news cycle follows a familiar curve featuring a comparatively steep ascent followed by a more gradual decline. We also found that the immediate consequences to the directly-affected populations tend to attract much more and much lasting attention than effects that could prove serious in the long run.

The worldwide call for help is clearly a powerful engine for the media machine — feeding the news through press-releases on corporate fund-raising, charity concerts or auctions — but it is also a source of inspiring feature articles about the difference one person can make when reaching out a helping hand.

Emerging insights from Equity Prioritiser

Posted on March 16th, 2010 by Guy Howard in Announcements, EquityPrioritiser

“Equity Prioritiser re-writes the rules for managing and measuring corporation reputation. Its secret lies not in the link between media sentiment and share price movement – but in the fact that it is quantifiable. For the first time CEOs, CFOs, IR teams and communication directors can make more informed, collective decisions on how announcements and coverage are likely to affect stock prices. The data quantify how the importance of key reputational drivers change over time and differ between sectors.”

With those words Sally Costerton, Hill & Knowlton’s EMEA CEO announced the launch last month of Equity Prioritiser, a joint offer with Commetric in the region. This service is based on Commetric’s ground-breaking technology: a set of automatic, objective, consistent and fast processes (20,000 articles per minute) which deliver a comprehensive mapping of 350 distinct reputation drivers to stock prices movements, across all types of material corporate news.

The data coming out of this has been robust enough to form the basis of a trading platform for a fund, but the wider insights are also sure to challenge the thinking of professionals within the sphere of corporate reputation research — and provide the basis for a form of strategic communications planning involving far greater integration of the PR function and the C-suite than has hitherto tended to be the case.

One month in and a number of important conclusions have already surfaced — for example, through Equity Prioritiser we have witnessed how coverage relating to lay-offs, pricing, product sales, employee relations and other topics can often be more influential on share price movements than a quarterly financial announcement or M&A news.

Here are some more of the salient findings in three areas where announcements have had a quantifyable impact on market cap — and where the importance of  key reputational drivers can be seen to have varied over time and across different sectors:

Not all CEO statements are created equal: Factoring out background volatility over the period, CEO statements in the pharmaceutical sector are associated with positive stock price movement (20 basis points); in the banking sector they were associated with negative movement (66 bps); and in the technology sector they were associated with negative movement (84 bps on days with high coverage of CEO statements).

Quantifying the impact of coverage on cost cutting: Overall, large cap stocks were twice as sensitive to news of ‘cost-cutting’ in 2009, compared with 2007.  This trend was highly pronounced in the tech industry where it brought about 172 bps higher volatility for the stocks compared to their usual price movement. Sensitivity to news of ‘product launches’ was associated with a sharper decline over the same period.

Banking stocks in the spotlight: Big banking stocks were 300% more sensitive to coverage on ‘company asset sales’ and lay-offs’ in 2009 than in 2007. News coverage of ‘nationalisation’ in 2009 created 500 bps more volatility to the stocks, compared to their usual level of fluctuation.   The data also show the stock much more sensitive to the issue of ‘dividends’ between 2007 and 2009 for the global banks.  In 2007, the movement on the issue was just 23 bps; by 2009 media coverage of the issue was associated with 273 bps higher volatility.

The time for self-control has arrived

Posted on March 12th, 2010 by Guy Howard in iPad News

This morning Apple made the the iPad available for pre-order in the US, with the WiFi version shipping on April 3, to be followed by the 3G version later in the month.

We’ve tracked at over a thousand tweets posted in the first 30 minutes after the online Apple Store online for business,  and this is how their posters’ intentions appear to have broken down:

  • 53% contained the phrases “have ordered,” “on its way” etc.
  • 45% contained either the phrase “iPad now on order” or “will you order?”
  • 24% contained the phrase “will not order”
  • Out of the “have ordered” tweets 10% mention WiFi specifically, while 5% mention 3G only and 5.4% mention both (i.e. twitterers seem to have considered ordering both types).


Here are some that couldn’t resist:

By: Samuelrussell
Pre-order your iPad now before it becomes common place and no one thinks you’re cool! http://store.apple.com/us

By: Andrewdodson
pre-ordered my ipad… my Christmas is in 3 weeks

By: Ram2600
Just pre-ordered my iPad I am such a whore….

By: Mickaelmusic
iPad ordered ! She said I was the very first customer !! Yeah! Do I get a free one ??…. No :( ((

By: Imabuddha
Seeing all the iPad preorder tweets is like playing Nerds with Friends.

Others still need to see in order to believe…though there are waverers:

By: Sproutworx
Avoiding the Internet all day so I don’t accidentally pre-order an iPad.

By: Mburns13
sadly wishing i could be an apple freak with money, cause then i’d preorder the ipad

By: Alanashley
Will not order an iPad until I can play with one, if then. Why would anyone spend the money when they don’t even know the feel of it.

By: Lakitu41
Resisting the urge to pre-order the iPad….

By: Fordan
Holding off on ordering the iPad, since I want the 3G. Not sure I see a reason to preorder, and waiting means I get to handle one first.

By: Champs794
is not mobbing the preorder queue for iPad (Home/3G) (Basic/Premium/Deluxe).

By: Stalebetty
tempted to pre-order an iPad for Beetle but think it would be smart for him to SEE one in person first…

By: Keysie
Feeling incredibly tempted to pre-order an iPad, but I think I’ll hold off until later in the year when the competition is released as well.

By: Jungledave
So far have managed to hold off the urge to pre-order an ipad. Will probably wait for 2.0

By: Jeflnyc
Hoping to get to play with an iPad before committing $$ to the deal. At least, all models, including the 3G ones, are available fr preorder

By: Benfeldman
I’m pretty sure I promised myself I wouldn’t buy an iPad until I played with one, but that pre-order button is looking very tempting…

By: Thinktwice
I did not pre-order an iPad. Must resist.

By: Ytsirklin
Went online to preorder an iPad – total before tax brought it to $976. On second thought will wait for gen 2 and price drop. #ipadoverpriced

Meanwhile, it’s interesting to see how other brands have been pigg-backing on the flow of iPad excitement: