Archive for May 20th, 2010

Benchmarking: Jason Akermanis on Facebook and Google

Posted by Laura on Thursday, 20 May, 2010

This is a quick data dump post.  I know who Jason Akermanis is because I saw him play this past weekend in Canberra.  I’ve been told he has a tendency to open his mouth and speak frankly in such a way that his previous club didn’t like him.  Thus, it was apparently not that surprising that he opened his mouth and offended people today.  I may or may not be interested in writing about him and the response to his comments at a later date.  It will come down to time and interest.  Still, benchmarks in case I do and data dumping now for those who might want to write an analysis that I’m not keen to write right now.

Google data

This data was retrieved between 6pm and 7pm on May 20, 2010 Canberra time.   It was retrieved using manual screen scraping.  (I visited each page and copy and pasted the number.)  I was not logged in to any account at the time to prevent my previous searches from influencing the numbers.  The API was not used.  The SE stands for search engine that was used to get the number.  (There are sometimes differences between .com and .com.au.) The Jason story is beginning to circulate but doesn’t appear to be widely picked up outside the metro areas so far. I added a by city component because I find geographic patterns interesting.

SE Date Full search term Search term + City State Total results
news.google.com 20-May-10 Jason Akermanis Jason Akermanis 78
news.google.com.au 20-May-10 Jason Akermanis Jason Akermanis 78
google.com.au 20-May-10 Jason Akermanis Jason Akermanis 62500
video.google.com.au 20-May-10 Jason Akermanis Jason Akermanis 148
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Geelong Jason Akermanis Geelong Victoria 269000
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Mackay Jason Akermanis Mackay Queensland 170000
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Melbourne Jason Akermanis Melbourne Victoria 47000
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Brisbane Jason Akermanis Brisbane Queensland 45100
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Sydney Jason Akermanis Sydney New South Wales 42500
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Adelaide Jason Akermanis Adelaide South Australia 37800
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Richmond Jason Akermanis Richmond New South Wales 35200
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Ballarat Jason Akermanis Ballarat Victoria 34500
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Bendigo Jason Akermanis Bendigo Victoria 31400
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Gold Coast Jason Akermanis Gold Coast Queensland 30100
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Perth Jason Akermanis Perth Western Australia 23500
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Bunbury Jason Akermanis Bunbury Western Australia 22300
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Palmerston Jason Akermanis Palmerston Northern Territory 21900
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Mandurah Jason Akermanis Mandurah Western Australia 21400
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Tweed Jason Akermanis Tweed New South Wales 20400
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Warrnambool Jason Akermanis Warrnambool Victoria 18100
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Launceston Jason Akermanis Launceston Tasmania 12600
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Wollongong Jason Akermanis Wollongong New South Wales 12600
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Bathurst Jason Akermanis Bathurst New South Wales 10200
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Toowoomba Jason Akermanis Toowoomba Queensland 9960
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Canberra Jason Akermanis Canberra Australian Capital Territory 9460
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Rockhampton Jason Akermanis Rockhampton Queensland 7030
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Newcastle Jason Akermanis Newcastle New South Wales 6320
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Albury Jason Akermanis Albury New South Wales 6130
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Geraldton Jason Akermanis Geraldton Western Australia 5800
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Murray Bridge Jason Akermanis Murray Bridge South Australia 5760
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Shepparton Jason Akermanis Shepparton Victoria 5190
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Cairns Jason Akermanis Cairns Queensland 5000
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Tamworth Jason Akermanis Tamworth New South Wales 4950
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Melton Jason Akermanis Melton Victoria 4590
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Lismore Jason Akermanis Lismore New South Wales 4570
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Nowra Jason Akermanis Nowra New South Wales 4290
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Gawler Jason Akermanis Gawler South Australia 3610
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Sunshine Coast Jason Akermanis Sunshine Coast Queensland 3210
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Strathalbyn Jason Akermanis Strathalbyn South Australia 3080
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Naracoorte Jason Akermanis Naracoorte South Australia 2930
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Dubbo Jason Akermanis Dubbo New South Wales 2640
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Orange Jason Akermanis Orange New South Wales 2490
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Bundaberg Jason Akermanis Bundaberg Queensland 2370
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Devonport Jason Akermanis Devonport Tasmania 2370
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Kalgoorlie Jason Akermanis Kalgoorlie Western Australia 2250
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Darwin Jason Akermanis Darwin Northern Territory 2160
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Queanbeyan Jason Akermanis Queanbeyan New South Wales 1980
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Mildura Jason Akermanis Mildura Victoria 1800
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Windsor Jason Akermanis Windsor New South Wales 1720
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Hobart Jason Akermanis Hobart Tasmania 1580
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Wodonga Jason Akermanis Wodonga Victoria 1520
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Hervey Bay Jason Akermanis Hervey Bay Queensland 1510
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Maitland Jason Akermanis Maitland New South Wales 1360
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Townsville Jason Akermanis Townsville Queensland 1300
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Port Pirie Jason Akermanis Port Pirie South Australia 988
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Boulder Jason Akermanis Boulder Western Australia 800
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Loxton Jason Akermanis Loxton South Australia 786
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Clare Jason Akermanis Clare South Australia 697
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Burnie Jason Akermanis Burnie Tasmania 650
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Port Augusta Jason Akermanis Port Augusta South Australia 626
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Berri Jason Akermanis Berri South Australia 545
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Gladstone Jason Akermanis Gladstone Queensland 482
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Alice Springs Jason Akermanis Alice Springs Northern Territory 439
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Whyalla Jason Akermanis Whyalla South Australia 348
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Coffs Harbour Jason Akermanis Coffs Harbour New South Wales 273
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Wagga Wagga Jason Akermanis Wagga Wagga New South Wales 253
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Mount Gambier Jason Akermanis Mount Gambier South Australia 246
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Victor Harbor Jason Akermanis Victor Harbor South Australia 245
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Goolwa Jason Akermanis Goolwa South Australia 219
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Port Lincoln Jason Akermanis Port Lincoln South Australia 179
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Millicent Jason Akermanis Millicent South Australia 177
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Renmark Jason Akermanis Renmark South Australia 176
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis La Trobe Valley Jason Akermanis La Trobe Valley Victoria 174
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Port Macquarie Jason Akermanis Port Macquarie New South Wales 135
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Mooroopna Jason Akermanis Mooroopna Victoria 128
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Bordertown Jason Akermanis Bordertown South Australia 117
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Wallaroo Jason Akermanis Wallaroo South Australia 95
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Ceduna Jason Akermanis Ceduna South Australia 85
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Tanunda Jason Akermanis Tanunda South Australia 71
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Roxby Downs Jason Akermanis Roxby Downs South Australia 28
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Moonta Jason Akermanis Moonta South Australia 8
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Nuriootpa Jason Akermanis Nuriootpa South Australia 7
google.com.au 20-May-10 ‘Jason Akermanis Bomaderry Jason Akermanis Bomaderry New South Wales 4

Facebook

Before I did Google, I looked at Facebook.  This was done between 5:30 and 6:00pm Canberra time on May 20, 2010.  The Jason situation had already hit Facebook as there was a Facebook group dedicated to being unhappy with Jason by that time.  I found these fan pages by searching for him.  I did not include people or groups in this sample.  None of these pages appear to be officially connected to either the AFL, the Western Bulldogs or Jason Akermanis.

Name Url Total members Type Date checked
Jason Akermanis https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis/107712129252191 56 Page 20-May-10
Jason Akermanis https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis/105738419448658 6 Page 20-May-10
Jason Akermanis https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis/373300971735 0 Page 20-May-10
Jason Akermanis https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis/376142636801 62 Athlete 20-May-10
Jason Akermanis https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis/301148780410 307 Athlete 20-May-10
Jason Akermanis Biography https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis-Biography/106142142741832 2 Page 20-May-10
Jason Akermanis Autobiography https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis-Autobiography/106446502709782 2 Page 20-May-10
Jason Akermanis, you are a MORON! https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis-you-are-a-MORON/109009685810123 22 Page 20-May-10
The Battle Within by Jason Akermanis https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Battle-Within-by-Jason-Akermanis/110570445624262 2 Page 20-May-10
Jason Akermanis: Homophobe and complete fuckwit! https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis-Homophobe-and-complete-fuckwit/105067262872425 118 Page 20-May-10

I’m going to speculate that two of those are likely to see an increase in membership over the next couple of days.  How large an increase, I do not yet know and do not feel comfortable speculating about.

After that, it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to benchmark the Facebook groups. These can be easy to create. When I looked, there turned out to be a number of them dedicated to Jason, some of which were created in response to the situation. As I have no previous benchmarks, I can’t tell when some of the larger groups were created. Still, this is where the groups about Jason stand now.

Name Url Total members Type Date checked
Jason Akermanis https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=124872100865630 2 Group 20-May-10
Jason Akermanis is a homophobe. https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118380594866779 146 Group 20-May-10
Jason Akermanis is a dick https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118537708183794 14 Group 20-May-10
Jason Akermanis Is Totally Gay https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118573961511057 1 Group 20-May-10
jason akermanis is amazing! https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=344061166761 12 Group 20-May-10
The Jason Akermanis Appreciation Society https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=20900401086 454 Group 20-May-10
Jason Akermanis is a legend https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10308061363 201 Group 20-May-10
Jason Akermanis handstand appreciation society https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=19647855868 88 Group 20-May-10
Only Homophobes think Jason Akermanis is a homophobe! https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=128825660465576 1 Group 20-May-10
Jason Akermanis for Brownlow 2008 https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16522463154 9 Group 20-May-10
Jason Akermanis for Brownlow 2008 https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16522463154 9 Group 20-May-10
Jason Akermanis should be locked and gagged in a closet! https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=109095775801131 10 Group 20-May-10
Jason Akermanis is a F*ckwit https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18564050741 26 Group 20-May-10
Jason Akermanis to win the Coleman medal. https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21877556009 9 Group 20-May-10
Jason Akermanis Can’t Drive A Race Car https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=123972501889 2 Group 20-May-10
JASON AKERMANIS’S IQ OF A PLANT https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=107444465957654 8 Group 20-May-10
Anything To Do With Footy. https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=46374304132 1041 Group 20-May-10
for people who wanna see Jason Akermanis shove his head up his own Ass https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=38642639632 42 Group 20-May-10
Akermaniacs!! https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=13979751018 87 Group 20-May-10
It’s All Good – in memory of Andrea Louise Bell 11-4-78 to 19-9-03 https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=33117363124 97 Group 20-May-10

Related Posts:

Online Activity in the Wake of the Melbourne Storm Controversy

Posted by Laura on Thursday, 20 May, 2010

A copy of this can be found in PDF form at : ozziesport.com/storm.pdf .  The pdf version that includes footnotes that explain the methodology used and contain additional links.


Online Activity in the Wake of the Melbourne Storm Controversy

By Laura Hale, University of Canberra

On April 22, 2010, the news of salary cap violations on the part of the Melbourne Storm broke online in such publications as the Fox Sports, on television including ABC news and on multiple social networks including Facebook and Twitter. By April 23, the news was available in various print publications including The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald. During the news coverage, NRL fans learned that the team had been fined $1.8 million, stripped of two premiereships and were not eligible to earn points towards 2010’s premiership. (“Melbourne storm stripped,” 2010) The team was being punished for salary cap violations over the past five years, where the total cap violation in that period was $1.7 million with $400,000 of that total cap violation occurring in 2009. (“Melbourne storm stripped,” 2010)

Early in the coverage of the Melbourne Storm, several issues were discussed including the impact this would have on the fan base for the team, the subsequent economic fallout for Storm and other clubs in the league, and if the players would try to leave the club or lower their performance level. The consequences that people feared have yet to bear out: The fan base for the Melbourne Storm has grown, attendance has not fallen, membership is up and players have not left the team and the team continues to win.

This article will examine the online response to the Melbourne Storm controversy. Specifically, it will look at the interest patterns on several networks, follow patterns on Twitter and Facebook, and activity levels on 43things, wikis and Yahoo!Groups. It will prove that, on the whole, the controversy has not eroded the online fanbase for the team and has resulted in an increased profile for the team in ways can have a net positive for the team and their sponsors.


Profile Interest

One way to quickly gage online interest for a team is to check the number of people who list them as an interest on social networks that include that option. The level of interest on a network will, in general, increase over time. Including an interest is a rather passive activity that most people do at the time that they signup on a service. They may update their interests once a year when they do an overhaul on their profile. Other factors may result in an update of interests, most notably a desire to associate or disassociate with certain people and organizations. The latter can generally require a certain amount of rage and disillusionment and does not happen that often. For adding interests, it can require a certain degree of wanting to stand in solidarity with some one or thing in the face of perceived oppression. Adding or removing an interest will generally require a large emotional response in people to motivate them to change their interests on social networks where an individual has not been active in the past six months. These conditions mean that numbers for interests are relatively stable or increase. A big shift downward is possible but unlikely.

Did the Melbourne Storm controversy result in people being motivated to update their interests to include or exclude the team? Yes and no, many people added them as an interest on Facebook but the numbers remained level across several other networks.

As of January 9, 2010, 17,020 had listed the Melbourne Storm as an interest on Facebook. By May 9, 2010, this number had increased to 41,240, or 24,220 new people. From January 9 to May 9, 2010, there was also an increase of roughly 120 fans within fifty miles of Hobart adding the team as an interest, going from less than 20 to 140. Canberra saw a similar increase in fans, going from 140 on January 9 to 1,020 by May 9, 2010, an increase of 880 new people listing the team as an interest. For fans within fifty miles of Cranbourne, there was an increase of 5,540 fans going from 7,140 fans on January 9 to 12,580 fans on May 9, 2010. Some of this increase on Facebook can be possibly attributed to a change in Facebook in mid-April, where people were encouraged to add their interests as likes of fanpages and vice versa. (Albanesius, 2010) It cannot entirely explain the shift as the official Melbourne Storm page is a user page, not a fan page so the interest to liking will not be automatically converted. At the same time, the number of people listing the team as an interest is roughly ten times as many who follow the Storm’s official Facebook profile and suggests that interest listing is independent of following the official team presence.

In addition to the Melbourne Storm interest on Facebook, there have been two new interests related to the storm created in the wake of the controversy: “Shame On You Melbourne Storm” with fewer than twenty people listing it as an interest, and “Sucked In Melbourne Storm Haha” with 3,240 people listing it as an interest. The latter definitely connects to a Facebook fanpage with the same name, which has 8,432 people who like it.

While Facebook saw an explosion in growth of people listing the team as an interest, other sites allowing interest listing on profiles remained stagnant or saw limited growth. This includes bebo, where there has been no change as of April 28 and May 9 from 402 people that was originally recorded on March 18, 2010. Blogger saw some growth for the number of people listing the team as an interest. As of January 18, 2010, four people had listed the team. By May 9, 2010, six people had listed them as an interest. As the time frame is wider than that of bebo, it might be possible to account for the increase as a pre-season boost, rather than in response to the controversy. Either way, this was an increase of fifty percent for new people listing the team as an interest.

LiveJournal saw no growth in people listing the team as an interest between January 10 and May 9, 2010. Of the 25 LiveJournal accounts listing the Melbourne Storm as an interest, only five have updated since the controversy broke. LiveJournal’s clones including Dreamwidth, Blurty and DeadJournal also saw no growth as of May 9. This contrasts to the Brisbane Broncos on LiveJournal, where one person removed the team as an interest during a similar period. Dreamwidth had two users listing the team as an interest as of January 9, Blurty had one user as of January 9, and DeadJournal had one user as of December 23, 2009. None of the people on LiveJournal’s clones who list the Storm as an interest have updated their journals since the controversy happened. The most recent updates occurred on Dreamwidth, taking place in early March 2010. The other account last updated in April 2009. The Blurty account last updated in November 2005 and the DeadJournal account last updated in January 2006.

One or two smaller niche networks have limited interest for specific teams or where people only list the NRL as an interest. This includes BlackPlanet, generally targeted at African Americans inside the United States. There was one person who listed the NRL as an interest on the network as of February 15, 2010. This has not changed as of May 9. Care2 is a social networked targeted at people who wish to make the world a better place. As of March 20, 2010, no one had listed the Melbourne Storm as an interest. This changed by May 9, when three people listed the team as an interest. Given the names, limited profiles and join dates, it is possible that these accounts are all tied to one individual. Gaia Online is a small, niche network for role players. As of March 11, 2010, no one had listed the Melbourne Storm as an interest. There is interest in the NRL on the network as people listed the Brisbane Lions, Canberra Raiders, Parramatta Eels and Sydney Roosters as interests. There has not been any change for any of these teams as of May 9. The limited growth and lack of pull back could suggest that larger interest in the NRL has not been diminished on smaller networks as a result of the controversy.


Wiki Activity

Wikis are, at their most basic, web sites where visitors can easily edit the content of the site. Sometimes, there are limits to who can edit put in place by the creator of a wiki. These include requiring users to register or confirm an e-mail before they edit, or to get their account approved by the admin before they can edit. Some wikis have policies when breaking news happen or an article gets trolled to lock down the article so only registered users can edit or wiki admins can edit. The culture of editing on specific wikis thus develops around the who can edit process as locking down wikis to prevent edits can effect the frequency that an article is updated.

For comprehensive wiki articles, the ideal is to have to have editors who approach the topic from different perspectives, where there is inherent conflict in the content and perspective being presented. If this situation does not exist, an article can be highjacked by one or two editors who seek to push their own perspective. The more edits and people involved in contributing to the article, the less likely the article will be biased. This also makes vandalism less problematic as people are incentivized to quickly remove that material.

Wikis can be a good tool for gauging interest in a particular topic over time as most wiki software keeps a record of all edits to a page. For some of the big wikis, like Wikipedia, data also exists for how many views an article has over a certain time period. This can help track more passive community interest in a topic.

Wikipedia’s English language article about the Melbourne Storm is probably the most visited wiki article about the team and appears third in Google’s search results for the team. The article, found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Storm , was created on May 23, 2004. As of May 9, 2010, the article had 1,732 total edits made to it. The controversy involving the Melbourne Storm broke on April 22, 2010. 1,471 of the edits were made prior to that. In the period between the article’s creation and the day before the controversy broke, an average of .681 edits per day were made to the article. In the eighteen-day period since the controversy broke, an average of 14.5 edits per day were made to the article. The vast majority of these edits were made in the first three days, with 90 edits made on April 22, 56 edits made on April 23 and 69 edits made on April 24. On April 24, in response to repeated vandalism, the article was semi-protected; this meant that only registered users who had confirmed their e-mail could edit the article. The protection had the effect of reducing the total number of daily edits to the article. After that, peak editing days included April 26 and May 3 with seven edits, and April 25 and May 5 with six edits. There were zero edits on April 28, May 6, May 7 and May 9. The controversy certainly caused an increase in the number of edits. If the day that the controversy broke and the next two days are excluded, the average number of daily edits is 3.06 edits per day. This is still higher than the period prior to the controversy and the trend will probably continue at least until the end of the season.

The article views per day mirrors the total edits by day. Based on data provided by Henrick (2010, May 1 and May 9), there is a correlation of .904 between the total daily edits and the total daily page views. According to Henrick (2010, May 1) during April 2010, the article was viewed a total of 49,540 times. Of these views, 40,355 views were between April 22, when the story broke, and April 30. The peak day for visits was on April 22, when the article was viewed 14,800 times. The average page views between April 22 and April 30 was 4,482 views per day. If this period is extended out to include data provided by Henrick (2010, May 9) for May 1 to May 8, the average views per day is 2,700. If the three days around when the controversy first broke are excluded, the average edits per day drops to 1,143. This stands in contrast to the period between April 1 and April 21 where the average page views per day was 438. The above average page views trend appears to be continuing. There has not been a decrease in overall interest in the Melbourne Storm on English Wikipedia.

In addition to the English language article about the Melbourne Storm on Wikipedia, there are articles in two other languages: French and Italian. The French language article, http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Storm , was created on March 1, 2006. Since the controversy started on April 22 and May 8, there have been 35 total edits to the article. Unlike the English language article, total edits per day peaked on April 24, 2010 with 19 with the second highest editing day occurring on April 23 with 7. The average total edits per day during this period was 2.1. In April, prior to the controversy, the average edits per day was zero. Also unlike the English language article, it was not locked because of vandalism. According to Henrickhe (2010, May 1) peak views per day happened on April 23 and April 24 with 59. The next day with the greatest number of views in the period between April 22 and May 8 is May 8 with 34. The average viewed per day in the April 22 to May 8 period was 17.4 and the average viewed per day in April prior to the controversy was 3.4. The correlation between the total edits per day and views per day in the period between April 1 and May 8 is .7740. The French Wikipedia article saw an increase that was proportionally bigger than the English article but the total views and edits were much smaller on the French article.

The Italian language Wikipedia article, http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Storm , was created on December 21, 2007. The article had two edits in 2008 and one in 2009. Since the controversy broke on April 22 and May 8, there have two edits to the article. These two edits are the only edits made during 2010. According to Henrickhe (2010, May 1) , the total number of article views from April 1 to April 21 was 30. According to Henrickhe (2010, May 8), the total number of page views per day was 58. The day with the most views was April 23, with 14 views. The next day with the most views was May 3, with 8 views. The Italian Wikipedia article saw an increase in the total number of edits and page views as a result of the controversy. It might have been larger but the Italian interest in the team is much smaller to start with than the French or English language communities.

Outside of Wikipedia, there are a few small wikis that focus on the NRL and Rugby League. These wikis generally lack detailed information on the daily total page views but still provide information on the editing history. One such wiki is the NRL Central Wiki that is hosted on Wikia. It has an article about the Melbourne Storm located at http://nrl.wikia.com/wiki/Melbourne_Storm. The article was created on August 13, 2009 and was last updated on October 10, 2009. It has not been updated since the controversy. The wiki the article is hosted has only had three non-bot edits in the past 30 days so the lack of updates is not surprising. A few other wikis have articles that mention the Melbourne Storm. Most of these are institutional wikis where article histories are not available or where content is posted by its creator and never intended to be edited by a wider audience. There does not appear to be a movement by wikis to create additional content in response to or to try to capitalize on interest in response to the controversy.


Twitter

Twitter is a microblogging service. Users can post 140 character messages , called tweets, that are shared with anyone who chooses to follow them. Twitter is one of the most well known and popular social networks in Australia.

There are two main ways to measure Twitter activity. The first is to keep track of the total followers an account has. The second way is to monitor the total number of daily tweets posted about a topic posted across the whole network and by specific accounts.

The Melbourne Storm have an official Twitter account at @MelbStormRLC . There is an unofficial Melbourne Storm Twitter account run by a fansite at @MelbourneStorm_ . As of March 9, 2010, the official account had 458 followers. This contrasts with @MelbourneStorm_ which had 605 followers as of March 8, 2010. By May 10, about nineteen days after the controversy broke, the official account had 1,037 followers and @ MelbourneStorm_ had 720 followers. That was an increase of 579 and 115 followers respectively. The situation has not hurt growth for either account and people are still interested in keeping up with the team and what they are doing.

When compared to the official Twitter accounts for the NRL, Gold Coast Titans, Manly Sea Eagles, North Queensland Cowboys, Parramatta Eels, Canberra Raiders, South Sydney Rabbitohs and New Zealand Warriors, the follower growth for the Melbourne Storm suggests a potential connection to the controversy creating additional interest or a fanbase that has become much more interested in Twitter in a short period of time. (Table 1) The only account with a greater increase in total number of followers is the NRL, which picked up 942 followers. The Melbourne Storm saw a fifty-five percent increase in the new followers. The next closest team of the aforementioned in the same period was the Canberra Raiders who saw a forty-two percent increase. In this context, it reaffirms that additional interest in the team was likely generated by the controversy.

Table 1

Twitter Follower Counts by Official Club Accounts and Date
Team Account
9-Mar-10

10-May-10

Difference

% increase
Gold Coast Titans GCTitans
1,616

1,950

334

17.13%
Manly Sea Eagles manlyseaeagles
888

1,073

185

17.24%
Melbourne Storm MelbStormRLC
458

1,037

579

55.83%
North Queensland Cowboys northqldcowboys
1,403

1,588

185

11.65%
NRL NRL
4,231

5,173

942

18.21%
Parramatta Eels parramatta_eels
618

780

162

20.77%
Canberra Raiders RaidersCanberra
202

349

147

42.12%
South Sydney Rabbitohs SSFCRABBITOHS
761

1,139

378

33.19%
New Zealand Warriors thenzwarriors
434

507

73

14.40%


Detailed statistics regarding the total number of references for the Melbourne Storm by day on Twitter are not available. It makes it harder to determine the total daily volume of conversation involving the team in the days surrounding the news leaking about the salary cap violations. People were interested in the Melbourne Storm as the team was briefly trending on Twitter when the story broke. Manual counting can be done but Twitter search only goes back around one week What can be more easily tracked is the posting volume per day of specific accounts related to the Melbourne Storm to compare their activities before and after the controversy broke. In the case of the @MelbourneStorm_, the account does not update regularly with about twenty tweets made during the past year. Their last tweet was on March 24, 2010; they have not posted since the news broke. @MelbStormRLC has posted several tweets since the controversy and has mentioned it. From April 22 to May 9, eighteen days after the story broke, the Storm have made eleven total tweets. Prior to that, the team had made thirteen tweets. The difference in tweet totals is inconsequential. Neither account made changes to their Twitter posting in response in to the controversy.

Searching through Twitter, it is very clear that people are still tweeting about the team and, as of May 10, are tweeting about them at a comparatively higher rate than other teams in the league. One popular way of indicating a tweet is about a certain topic is to include a hashtag in front of a word. This makes the whole phrase easily searchable on Twitter. For example, a person who is tweeting about the Melbourne Storm may include #melbournestorm to indicate the tweet is about the team. There generally fewer of these tweets as a great many accounts on Twitter come directly from RSS feeds. These feeds were not originally created for Twitter and are absent some of the cultural practices and do not use coding tools to help make finding posts easier. Thus, tweets tagged with a # are fewer and more readily countable in search. This allows for comparisons to be made between teams over a short period. For the period between May 3 and May 8, 2010, #melbournestorm beat out all the other teams that were sampled for most the most discussed NRL team. (Table 2) There were twenty-one references for the team on May 5. This is sixteen more than #manlyseaeagles on the same date and the only other team with five or more tweets with a hashtag on a single day. The controversy can likely be seen as the cause for the increase in the number of tweets when compared to other teams in the league.

Table 2
Hashtagged Marked NRL Team Tweets
Team Keyword
3-May-10

4-May-10

5-May-10

6-May-10

7-May-10

8-May-10
Brisbane Broncos #brisbanebroncos
0

0

0

0

0

1
Canberra Raiders #canberraraiders
0

0

0

0

0

1
Gold Coast Titans #GCtitans
0

0

0

1

0

0
Gold Coast Titans #goldcoasttitans
0

0

0

1

0

0
Manly Sea Eagles #manlyseaeagles
0

0

5

0

0

0
Melbourne Storm #melbournestorm
0

2

21

2

3

1
Newcastle Knights #NewcastleKnights
0

0

0

0

0

0
North Queensland Cowboys #NQCowboys
0

0

0

0

0

0
North Queensland Cowboys #NQldCowboys
0

0

0

0

0

0
North Queensland Cowboys #NorthQldCowboys
0

0

0

0

0

0
North Queensland Cowboys #NorthQueenslandCowboys
0

0

0

0

0

0
Parramatta Eels #ParramattaEels
0

0

0

0

0

0
Penrith Panthers #PenrithPanthers
0

0

0

0

0

0
Sydney Roosters #SydneyRoosters
1

0

0

0

0

0
Wests Tigers #WestsTigers
0

0

0

0

1

0



Facebook

Facebook is one of the largest social networks in Australia and it arguably has the largest population of Melbourne Storm fans online. Outside of interest monitoring, the easiest way to monitor the activities of fans is to examine the fan community’s growth on official pages and groups, and activity levels on these groups.

The Melbourne Storm has an official user profile on Facebook. The profile is for their mascot, Storm Man. It has a limited profile view so only people who have friended the account can view posts and interact with content posted by Storm Man. When the profile was checked on April 6, 2010, the account had 3,203 friends. Checked again on April 28, the account had 4,154. On May 9, the account had 4,401 friends and on May 10, it had 4,494 friends. While the total new friends for their account was fewer than other clubs such as the Brisbane Lions over the same period (Table 3), the team had the largest percentage increase in: 28.7% versus 13.5% for the next closest team, the North Queensland Cowboys. The controversy did not cost the team any friends and resulted in a higher percentage gain when compared to other teams. It has resulted in a net momentum gain that continues almost three weeks after the controversy first broke out.

Table 3
Facebook Fan Counts by Club and Date
Official Facebook account
6-Apr-10

10-May-10

Difference

% increase
Melbourne Storm
3,203

4,494

1,291

28.7%
North Queensland Cowboys
2,428

2,806

378

13.5%
Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles
14,895

17,044

2,149

12.6%
Wests Tigers
14,078

15,911

1,833

11.5%
Gold Coast Titans
18,032

20,204

2,172

10.8%
Sydney Roosters
12,204

13,570

1,366

10.1%
Newcastle Knights
12,766

13,774

1,008

7.3%
Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks
9,502

10,229

727

7.1%
Canberra Raiders
2,583

2,775

192

6.9%
Brisbane Lions
45,327

48,228

2,901

6.0%


Facebook Fan Pages are created by teams and by fans. The person who created the Fan Page can post to the wall, control else who can post to the wall, control the type of content posted to the Fan Page and create a unique landing page. Members of a Fan Page can comment on wall posts and indicate they like the post. There are many Melbourne Storm fans that have created Fan Pages and many more have joined, commented and liked posts made to these Fan Pages. A quick search on Facebook for Fan Pages dedicated to the team using the keywords “Melbourne Storm” results in over 500 pages about the team. By looking at a sample of the individual Fan Pages to check the daily posting volume of wall posts and the number of likes and comments to those posts, an idea of how the controversy effected fan interests can be determined.

For this, three Fan Pages were chosen. These were the top three Fan Pages in search that were not created in response to the controversy. They are Melbourne Storm, Best team in NRL.. Melbourne Storm ! and melbourne storm :) . The total posts per day by the person who runs the Fan Page, and comments and likes per post associated with the post for the day were recorded for the period between April 1 and May 10, 2010. (Table 4) When comparing the total posts in the period between April 1 and April 22, 2010 to the period between April 23 to May 10, two of the three Fan Pages had more posts made by the maintainers before the controversy. (Graph 1) Two of the three groups saw an increase in the total comments made after the controversy. For Melbourne Storm, a Fan Page with over 40,000 members, the increase was massive going from 54 comments to 803 comments. The increase for Best team in NRL.. Melbourne Storm !, a group with 281 members as of May 10, was much smaller. It went from 252 to 257 comments. For all three groups, there was an increase in the number of likes after the controversy took place. While posting levels by Fan Page maintainers may not have increased, the level of engagement and interest in the team for the fan population did. The controversy has created a climate where fans are more engaged with posts.




Mailing lists

During much of the 1990s, mailing lists were one of the most popular tools for fans to use in order to communicate with each other. The creation of mailing lists became much easier when sites like egroups, coollists, topica, Yahoo!Groups and Google groups were created. They largely automated the process of creating mailing lists, provided web based archives and removed barriers of having to understand majordomo syntax in order to join a list.

Australian sports fans actively used these services to participate in their team’s fandom. Some leagues and teams were more popular than other leagues and teams. Amongst the fan communities utilizing mailing lists were Melbourne Storm fans. Most of the lists dedicated to team were on Yahoo!Groups, where there are currently eight lists. These eight lists include melbournestorm2, melbournestormrugbyleague, melbournestormsupportersclub, Storm_Squad, StormSupporters, MSSC-Storm-Mailouts and melbourne_storm_supporters. Many of these lists are no longer active. There are a variety of reasons for this including absent list owners, large volumes of spam content posted on list, people switching to different services in order to express their fondness for the team or fans losing interest in a team. If spam content is not counted in total posting volume by month, the peak posting month was February 2001 with 59 total posts across all eight lists. January 2001 had the next highest posting volume by month with 50 posts. Given the always small and inactive community, it is not surprising that there have been zero posts on these lists since the controversy broke out. These lists have also seen zero growth in membership since their totals were last checked on February 20, 2010. The controversy had no effect on the Storm’s mailing list community.


43things

According to Robot Co-op (2010), 43things “is the world’s largest goal-setting community.” Members of the site set goals for themselves that are published on their profiles and on lists of others who share the same goal. Members are also encouraged to blog about their efforts in trying to complete their goals. Other members are encouraged to cheer people on as they work to complete a goal. When a goal has been completed, people change the goal status to “I did this” and it appears as completed on their profile. This site is relatively popular; according to Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010), the site is ranked the 2,549th most popular website in Australia.

There are a number of people who have set Australia related sports goals on 43thing. This includes playing for certain clubs to attending the finals to seeing the team they barrack for play. On April 1, 2010, the site was searched for any goals that connected to the Melbourne Storm. Only one goal related to the Melbourne Storm was found. It is “Go to a Melbourne Storm Game.” Two people, erynne and mmcpharlane, had listed this as a goal they were working towards completing. When checked again on May 10, no one had added any additional goals related to the Melbourne Storm. No movement had been made towards completing the existing goal: Both individuals still listed themselves as working towards it and neither had updated their blog to indicate they were any closer to accomplishing this goal. The controversy has not had any measurable impact on people’s goal setting and efforts towards accomplishing their goals as they pertain to the Melbourne Storm.


Conclusion

The controversy involving the Melbourne Storm’s salary cap violations and the subsequent punishment of rewarding them zero points for the season has not resulted in a loss of people interested in the team or resulted in a drop in activity level on the part of fans. Across smaller and less popular services and web sites, there has been no behavior change; the controversy has had a null effect in that no one removed content or interests, nor created content and added interests. For larger sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia, there has been a gain in followers, viewers and interactions. Eighteen days out from the initial incident, a long tail increase in views and interactions exists when compared to the period prior to the controversy. While some of the initial burst of activity and interest could be a consequence of negativity publicity, the long tail interest two to three weeks out is much harder to attribute to solely to wanting to watch a controversy for the sake of entertainment. If interest continue to stay elevated, the club should be able to leverage to increase club membership and sponsorship deals, especially as they apply to their online presence, because they have successfully used the controversy to grow their fanbase. The behaviors of fans demonstrate that have been incentized to express their loyalty and solidarity with the team.

References

Albanesius, C. (2010, April 19). Facebook makes ‘connections,’ adds community pages. PC Magazine, Retrieved from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362825,00.asp

Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, May 10). 43things.com – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/43things.com

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 1). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 49377 times in 201004 . Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/en/201004/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 1). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 276 times in 201004. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/fr/201004/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 1). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 276 times in 201004. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/it/201004/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 9). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 5561 times in 201005. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/en/201005/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 9). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 91 times in 201005. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/fr/201005/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 9). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 19 times in 201005. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/it/201005/Melbourne_Storm

Melbourne storm stripped of two premierships for salary cap breach. (2010, April 22). Fox Sports, Retrieved from http://www.foxsports.com.au/story/0,8659,27022196-5018866,00.html

Robot Co-op. (2010, May 10). List your goals on 43 things. Retrieved from http://www.43things.com/

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