Measuring the Social State of the Union

Since the State of the Union is kind of a big deal, we decided to take a look at the key topics mentioned during the speech and see which ones were getting the most online traction. Over 240,237 conversations were detected over the past 24 hours using Webtrends Social Measurement. Key Topics An analysis of the primary keywords circling the State of the Union revealed that the key topics being discussed following the speech: economy, education, military, innovation and health care. Of these topics, discussion of the economy held a strong lead over competing points of interest, with 10,249 mentions. Education came in second with 7,081 mentions, while military, innovation and health care all received about 5,000. Foreign Policy In contrast to the key topics above, foreign policy generated far fewer discussions than it has in previous years. Afghanistan was mentioned 1,877 times, compared to 1,813 for Iraq Political Parties Republicans managed to hit 11,301 mentions, which was enough to beat out 7,113 mentions for the Democrats. The Tea Party trailed with just 5,360 mentions of Michele Bachmann's rebuttal. Other Points President Obama's smoked salmon joke might have gotten laughs and dominated NPR's poll of what people remembered from the speech, but it generated just 1,546 mentions. More substantive comments such as achieving a "sputnik moment" and "win the future" logged 5,155 and 2,924 mentions respectfully. And finally, Michelle Obama's dress, always a hot topic during presidential events, was mentioned 311 times.