Fianna Fáil came under significant fire from the general public, via Twitter, in the run up to the interparty agreement for government on May 4th according to a media evaluation report published yesterday.
Newsaccess Media Intelligence undertook an in-depth media analysis of election coverage across Mon 2nd May – Thurs 12th May.
Dublin based Newsaccess was commissioned by the Public Relations Institute of Ireland (PRII) to undertake a Media Analysis of the Formation of the 32nd Dáil. The evaluation tracked all key press publications & websites, alongside all leading social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.) as part of a wide ranging report into the final formulation of the 32nd Dáil.
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were mentioned 11,000 times each on Twitter in Ireland in the evaluation period.
When focusing solely on the water charges issue, Fianna Fáil were mentioned in 75% more tweets than Fine Gael during the analysis period, with both parties receiving in the region of 90% negative tweets for water charges.
In terms of newspaper mentions both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil were mentioned in the press over 900 times each, across the evaluation period, however not all of these articles referred to the election.
Negative press coverage peaked for Fianna Fáil on the 5th May, largely fuelled by reaction to the proposals for water charges and Irish Water that were outlined in the FF/FG agreement.
The Independent Alliance & Rural Alliance understandably did not get as much total coverage as some of the established political parties; however they scored the highest in terms of sentiment from the media with a higher positive percentage than other parties in the running.
Source: www.businessworld.ie
