A&E Crisis: Impact of Social Media & Digital Influencers

Hanover and Onalytica were interested to analyse the interactions between influencers and online media when it came to the health policy debate.

The A&E “crisis” at the start of January 2015 appeared to offer the perfect case study to look at how the debate was driven online, how it was shaped by (and how it influenced) traditional media, and who the most important influencers were, as well as identifying the connections that existed between different influencers.

For example, online debate began to spike by 6th January, which was before the national newspaper front pages led with A&E stories on 7th January. However, whilst national newspaper front pages on 8th January led with the Charlie Hebdo Paris shootings of the previous day, online activity around A&E stories (although falling) continued at pre-spike levels for sometime, and continued to be driven by the online presence of traditional print and broadcast media outlets. Moreover and politically-speaking, much of the online debate was led from the Left, as can be seen by looking at the most vocal influencers.

We’ve included a network map below which allows anybody to better understand and analyse the importance of key influencer in the A&E crisis online debate. Click on the map to view a vector file and see all the detail of the online debate.

Who is influential?

Onalytica and Hanover then analysed the debate amongst the top 1350 UK influencers to look at whether the market trend was consistent with key opinion formers.

These 1350 influencers consisted of the top 500 UK influencers driving most engagement on Twitter in the A&E “crisis” debate on 1-10th January 2015 and known key opinion leaders in healthcare.

These influencers have a disproportionate impact on the healthcare sector as they are far more influential than the average consumer. Analysis on this sample represents real signal as to where the debate is moving and the resulting trends and potential implications.

These influencers & stakeholders were then segmented into Bloggers, Campaign Groups, General Public, Government & Political, Health Media, National Media, NHS Org/Professionals, Org/Industry Bodies and Regional Media to assess the relative impact of each of the groups upon the main issues. You can find the top 50 influencers just below:

Rank	Twitter Handle	Name	PageRank (Normalised)
1	@BBCBreaking	BBC Breaking News	100
2	@LabourEoin	Dr Éoin Clarke	41.1
3	@DailyMirror	Daily Mirror	37.77
4	@Ed_Miliband	Ed Miliband	27.44
5	@BBCNews	BBC News (UK)	22.65
6	@angelaeagle	Angela Eagle	21.15
7	@SkyNews	Sky News	20.31
8	@guardiannews	Guardian news	19.19
9	@guardian	The Guardian	18.23
10	@andyburnhammp	Andy Burnham	17.91
11	@MirrorPolitics	Mirror Politics	14.62
12	@marcuschown	Marcus Chown	13.84
13	@ASPHFT	Ashford & St Peter’s	13.56
14	@labourpress	Labour Press Team	13.53
15	@rcolvile	Robert Colvile	13.28
16	@theRCN	The RCN	13.03
17	@Telegraph	The Telegraph	12.97
18	@BBCWorldatOne	The World at One	12.42
19	@GwynneMP	Andrew Gwynne MP	11.37
20	@KailashChandOBE	Dr Kailash Chand OBE	11.33
21	@politicshome	PoliticsHome	10.33
22	@BBCr4today	BBC Radio 4 Today	9.9
23	@itvnews	ITV News	9.5
24	@tobyperkinsmp	Toby Perkins MP	9.47
25	@profchrisham	Chris Ham	8.59
26	@BBCPolitics	BBC Politics	8.13
27	@DavidGilbert43	David Gilbert	8.06
28	@Independent	The Independent	7.61
29	@CharlieCooper8	Charlie Cooper	7.53
30	@UKLabour	The Labour Party	7.47
31	@DanJohnsonNews	Dan Johnson	7.41
32	@dwilliamsHSJ	David Williams	7.26
33	@bbc5live	BBC Radio 5 live	7.14
34	@LBC	LBC	6.96
35	@UsVsTh3m	UsVsTh3m	6.56
36	@TheKingsFund	The King’s Fund	6.47
37	@BBC_HaveYourSay	BBC_HaveYourSay	5.85
38	@ian_beckett	Ian Beckett	5.81
39	@LabourHealth	Labour’s Health Team	5.65
40	@jappleby123	John Appleby	5.48
41	@paulwaugh	Paul Waugh	5.13
42	@stuartpoynor	Stuart Poynor	5.09
43	@suttonnick	Nick Sutton	4.96
44	@ELCworks	Experience Led Care	4.89
45	@BobbyOven	Bobby Oven	4.81
46	@NuffieldTrust	Nuffield Trust	4.73
47	@BenClover	Ben Clover	4.61
48	@mrjnthompson	James Thompson	4.51
49	@drmarielouise	Marie-Louise Irvine	4.37
50	@NHAparty	The NHA Party	4.21

 

Feel free to download the full presentation of the social analysis on the health policy debate between influencers and traditional media.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT

 

About Hanover

Hanover is an independent consulting firm that specialises in advising brands, businesses and organisations on reputation, communications and public affairs. Hanover’s award winning healthcare team delivers campaigns for clients across policy and regulatory affairs, media and corporate communications, and brand market access.

www.hanovercomms.com or follow Hanover on Twitter

 

About Onalytica

Onalytica provide market-leading Influencer Relationship Management software designed to help you understand the influential digital community around your brand or key topics and run effective influencer engagement programmes. Why not follow Onalytica on Twitter?

 

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