Controversial tennis star Novak Djokovic quickly forgotten as focus switches to Rafael Nadal
It’s a #bartyparty as hashtags flip from vaccine controversy to celebrating champions
The social media buzz around the Australian Open tennis tournament saw a complete turnaround in Week 2, as the focus switched from vaccines to victory, according to analysis by media intelligence company Meltwater.
Data from billions of social media conversations across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Tik Tok, Pinterest, Twitch and Chinese social channels WeChat, Douyin and Red, found that controversial tennis star Novak Djokovic was soon buried in the Most Mentioned rankings by finalists Rafael Nadal and Daniil Medvedev. Australian Open trending conversations moved from “vaccine”, “deportation”, “visa” and “government” to “career”, “moment”, “history” and “champion”.
World Number 1 ranked Ash Barty soared to take top place as the most mentioned female player, as #bartyparty hashtags trended on Twitter and other social channels. Barty also got overwhelmingly positive sentiment both weeks, far higher than all other top-mentioned players.
"It was surprising to see how quickly the conversation changed. After making news headlines for weeks and fueling furious debate on social media, Novak Djokovic was quickly overtaken by more upbeat sentiment and topics in the second week. Instead of #boycottaustralianopen and #australiahasfallen, people were more interested in celebrating #vamosrafa and #bartyparty. We also saw continued concern for Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, with #whereispengshuai trending," said David Hickey, Executive Director for APAC at Meltwater.
Meltwater also tracked the "top emojis", which shifted from a tennis ball, applause symbol and red warning light to a gold trophy, tennis ball and applause.
Interestingly, while the US dominated the chatter in Week 1, talking more about the Australian Open than any other country, Australia overtook it in Week 2.
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About Meltwater
Meltwater helps companies make better, more informed decisions based on insights from the outside. We believe that business strategy will be increasingly shaped by insights from online data. Organisations will look outside, beyond their internal reporting systems to a world of data that is constantly growing and changing. Our customers use these insights to make timely decisions based on real-time analysis.
More than 2000 companies use the Meltwater media intelligence platform across ANZ to stay on top of billions of social media conversations and track hundreds of thousands local and international online news publications. Globally, we work with over 34,000 organisations, with 55 local offices across six continents.
Meltwater also operates the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), a non-profit organisation devoted to nurturing future generations of entrepreneurs.