Valerie Bogus, Nielsen Online
President Barack Obama has reached his 100th day in office amid generally positive sentiment according to a Nielsen Online analysis of online “buzz” surrounding the 44th President. Using our Brand Association Map to plot keywords and phrases, we demonstrate visually how the conversations have shifted between his first 100 days in office, compared to the 100 days before his swearing in.
The economy and the economic stimulus package are the isues most closely associated with President Obama’s tenure, as words like “crisis,” “trillion,” “banks,” and “tax” are nested more closely to “economy” and the President. Aside from new terms like “socialist” and “blame” found in the Map for the last 100 days, there is a surprising lack of emotionally charged or negative content about the President found in this dataset culled from millions of online messages and posts that mention Obama.
What A Difference 100 Days Makes – Other Findings
- Post inauguration, radio personality Rush Limbaugh and former President George W. Bush are now the most closely associated to Obama in online conversations. Previously, Arizona Sen. John McCain correlated most closely to Obama.
- Discussion about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – two topics that produced high-volume, emotionally strong online buzz — are featured more prominently, and closer together, in the most recent sample surrounded by words like “terrorists” and “troops.”.
- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is the only foreign leader whose name emerges in correlation with Obama discussion.
- CNN is the only media outlet that appears on the map
- Obama carries little pre-election “baggage” with him into the White House. Questions about his citizenship and Kenyan roots, for example, all but disappear from the mapped discussion once he takes office.
- Change, the mantra of his campaign, has moved further out on the map.
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