Twitter analysis: Nadal causes a storm but Brits most-loved

IBM’s social sentiment index reveals the highs and lows of The Championships through in-depth Twitter analysis. Here are the headlines from the first week...

With this year’s Championships in full swing, followers from across the world have been taking to Twitter to show their excitement, support and frustration around the games. A week into The Championships, almost 1.4 million tweets have been posted and subsequently analysed by IBM, with some surprising results.

1. VOLUME OF REFERENCES

Despite his early exit Rafael Nadal is the most talked about player from this year’s Championships so far, with 108,585 mentions on Twitter since the tournament began. More than 67,000 of these posts occurred on Monday when the No.5 seed was knocked out by Steve Darcis, ranked No.135 in the world. However Nadal’s talkability continued to remain significantly above average for the days following his defeat, resulting in his title spot.

Though second to Nadal by some 24,000 tweets, Roger Federer still clocked up 84,385 social mentions through Twitter, securing him the title of second most-talked-about player. More than half of Federer’s tweets occurred on Wednesday, when he suffered his earliest Wimbledon exit since 2002 to world No.116, SergiyStakhovsky.

Meanwhile, playing on home turf, British hopeful Andy Murray became the third most-tweeted-about player of The Championships, amassing 73,569 mentions on the site.

1. Rafael Nadal	108,585
2. Roger Federer	84,385
3. Andy Murray	73,569
4. Novak Djokovic	48,588
5. Steve Darcis	38,887

Top 5 male players in terms of volume of tweets (shown)

Turning attention to the female players, Maria Sharapova tops the list with 59,240 tweets. Fuelled by her on court upset and defeat by Michelle Larcher de Brito, more than 40,000 of these mentions occurred on the Wednesday and Thursday, following Sharapova’s Wednesday evening demise.

Laura Robson takes second position in the list with 41,896 tweets (NB this is as of Friday). The 19-year-old player, who also becomes the first British woman to reach 4th round at Wimbledon since 1998, was most frequently mentioned on Friday – tying in with her comfortable win over Columbian Mariana Duque-Marino.

Third place is taken by No.1 seed Serena Williams, following a total of 40,110 mentions. The five-time Wimbledon singles champion witnessed more than 14,000 tweets on Thursday, when she not only defeated Caroline Garcia, but also accepted the challenge to take on Andy Murray in a modern-day battle of the sexes.

1. Maria Sharapova	59,240
2. Laura Robson	41,896
3. Serena Williams	40,110
4. Victoria Azarenka	15,213
5. Ana Ivanovic	9,224

Top 5 female players in terms of volume of tweets (shown)

2. POSITIVE SENTIMENT

Through IBM’s social sentiment analysis, we’re not only able to track the volume of tweets but also the sentiment attached to them giving insight into fan feeling and player popularity. So far this year, Britain’s Laura Robson has proved to be the most popular player, based on the percentage of positive mentions from her total number of tweets. An astonishing 44% of all tweets about Robson expressed public support, while 50% remained neutral and just 7% were negative.

Proving it is indeed a good year for the Brits, Andy Murray takes second highest percentage of positive mentions, with more than a third (37%) of all his tweets carrying positive sentiment. Similar to Robson, half (52%) remained neutral and just a tenth (11%) negative.

It’s not just the big names making favourites however, as fans’ love for the underdog also becomes clear. Dustin Brown and Lleyton Hewitt, ranked No. 189 and No.70 respectively, also make the top 5 ahead of big players such as Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams.

	Positive sentiment	Neutral	Negative sentiment
1. Laura Robson	44%	50%	7%
2. Andy Murray	37%	52%	11%
3. Maria Kirilenko	36%	53%	11%
4. Dustin Brown	35%	57%	8%
5. Lleyton Hewitt	33%	59%	8%
6. Novak Djokovic	32%	58%	9%
7. Steve Darcis	29%	54%	17%
8. Serena Williams	27%	58%	15%
9. Michelle Larcher de Brito	27%	63%	11%
10. Ana Ivanovic	24%	66%	10%

Top 10 players ranked by percentage of positive mentions

3. TWITTER TRENDS

In addition to the attention on the players themselves, a number of Wimbledon’s other unique qualities have been prominent across tweets worldwide. These include the now iconic strawberries and cream, with ‘strawberry’ the second most popular theme amongst Wimbledon related tweets (see graphic above).

Similarly, the infamous British weather has been paid homage with ‘rain’ ranking fourth in list, while the legendary Wimbledon queue line comes in ninth. Outside of the top ten, local Wimbledon celebrity Rufus the Hawk enters the list at number 26. This year sporting green and purple headwear finished with leather and gold plume, Rufus continues to keep SW19 pigeon free in style and it seems his efforts are appreciated by fans on Twitter.

	No. mentions
1. Ball	7618
2. Strawberry	7342
3. Scream	6313
4. Rain	5899
5. British	3652
6. Upset	3518
7. Roof	2989
8. World	2828
9. Queue	2615
10. Grass	2349

Top 10 key words associated with Wimbledon tweets

Lastly, looking at a day-by-day breakdown, Wednesday proved to be the day fans were most vocal. Fuelled by shocking turns of events – including Federer’s defeat by world No. 116 Stakhovsky–more than 440,000 Wimbledon related tweets were amassed throughout the 24 hour period.