The #ijf14 crowdfunding campaign ended in a success beyond expectations. Now, we can retrace the whole story through an analysis of the online media involved.
The numbers
Timeframe: 15 October 2013 – 04 February 2014
Starting from the day of the public meeting in Perugia, we registered more than 16,600 contributions. Since then, more than 3,500 people (unique authors) wrote about the Festival and the crowdfunding campaign, a movement which coalesced around the festival founders, Arianna Ciccone and Chris Potter, and the event itself, considered to be an essential element of cultural dissemination in Italy. This is very significant figure since it is rare that movements born on the web are able to achieve a complete success as happened to the festival. The festival is about journalism and journalism is more and more identified with Twitter which dominates the scene. It is the first amplifier of press releases, events and results even if it is not yet a tool of mass dissemination such as Facebook. Twitter is characterized by a more advanced user profile. The activity on Facebook was, of course, a back-up tool.
The contribution of the media channels to the conversation
Twitter reached its peak on the day of the press conference and then dominated a long line of conversations which continued for all the activities. In the first two weeks there were absolute peaks with about 8,500 tweets when there was the announcement that the festival would not take place and the announcement of the crowdfunding campaign.
While Facebook followed a similar path, highly integrated with that of Twitter, the contribution of the other channels was diluted along the way without recovering, even with the announcement of the achievement of the goal.
As we can see through the performance of the PTA analysis made by Socialbakers, the peaks of interaction on Facebook are aligned with the peaks of Twitter and the general performance of the communication of the campaign.
For further confirmation it can be noted how the contributions of newspapers have had a very significant social sharing. In this graphic you can read the data for a single newspaper / single article.
The words
The following two tag clouds, one for Twitter and one for other contributions, show a substantial homogeneity in semantics. We emphasize the prevalence of themes such as Culture, Media, Challenge which characterize the whole operation.
The Twitter tag cloud adds significant issues like Future, New, Success.
It is clear how the language used by all commentators tended towards an enthusiasm and a renewal of the organizational models of the events, a strategic and appropriate use of available technologies (the choice of the fundraising platform), and a more international and entrepreneurial vision.
The authors
There was a wide range of people who contributed to the conversation, sometimes with critical voices, almost always motivated by a sincere desire to be part of a new situation in the Italian scenario: an event which chose crowdfunding, declaring itself independent from external pressures.
The interconnections
The Main Nodes confirmed the quality that emerged from the contributors and the driving forces of the operation, whether they were journalists or communication and social media specialists.
