Research from NM Incite reveals new findings about how the Occupy Wall Street movement is playing out in social media. NM Incite tracked buzz volume related to “Occupy Wall Street” in blogs, boards, groups, and video/images beginning on September 10th. Buzz volume remained steady throughout September with peak periods of activity occurring over the weekends. However, buzz volume reached its peak on October 6th with 13,133 messages being posted in one day. Research shows that this surge in conversation was spurred by the mass arrest of protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge. Buzz levels peaked again on Monday, October 10th when people commented on the news that GOP candidate Buddy Roemer as well as the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream brand expressed support of the movement.

NM Incite manually scored and analyzed tweets including the #OccupyWallStreet hashtag in order to understand which topics were driving the conversation. General support for the cause was the most prevalent theme, comprising 22% of all #OccupyWallStreet tweets. However, 11% of tweets used the hashtag to voice their complaints against the movement. As it relates to who people feel is responsible for social inequality, the research shows that the majority of social media users indicate that they feel the government is responsible, although many point to President Obama and capitalism as other sources responsible. Opinions and participation discussion also ranked high comprising 19% and 11%, respectively.

As the movement spreads to locations outside of Wall Street, NM Incite used its new real-time engagement and analytic tool BuzzMetrics Exchange to sort #Occupy tweets by state. Looking at 12,409 tweets from October 6 to October 12, the highest percentage of Occupy-related tweets came from the East and West coasts as well as various Midwest states including Texas, Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan. This supports related research from Foursquare showing an increase in #Occupy check-in sites in these same locations.

We used our new real-time engagement and analytic tool BuzzMetrics Exchange for this analysis. If you’re interested in learning more about how you can use our tools to drive sustainable, competitive advantage in social media for your brand, please contact us here.