The highest peak of mentions on the different social media channels monitored was recorded during the fourth day of the International Journalism Festival. The hashtag #ijf17 was mentioned almost 10 thousand times (9888), 27.5% more than the previous day. Around 30 thousand mentions, for a total of 381 potential impressions, have been reached since the beginning of the event.
The highest peak in terms of intensity was reached around 11am, when there was a concentration of events that attracted people in Perugia as well as the those following the Festival on streaming.
The event about digital-born and start-up news organisations, with the Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the co-founder of De Correspondent, where editorial models of distribution and funding for digital journalism in Europe were discussed, was among them. The workshop on how data influenced modern newsrooms, and the panel about a controversial and debated topic among those responsible of “brand journalism” also received a big success.
There is no doubt that, among the numerous topics of great interest, with high-level speakers, the discussion on the search for truth about Giulio Regeni’s case was the decisive moment of the day. During the panel the audience in Sala dei Notari stood up when Regeni’s parents entered the room. ENI, which has substantial presence in Egypt, received a request to get involved in the case, and the Director for External Communication, Marco Bardazzi, picked it up.
This aspect clearly comes out from the analysis of the clusters of the different conversations on social media, as the image below shows:
Journalism is the most employed word in the mentions related to #ijf17: it appears 1139 times, equal to 12% of the daily mentions, exceeding the official one, which received 8% of the total mentions during the fourth day.
The top 5 most mentioned accounts were: @journalismfest, with 834 mentions; @PaolaDeffendi, with 208 mentions related to Regeni’s case @evan_greer; @eni and Repubblica’s @carlobonini, in most cases also related to #veritàpergiulioregeni. Besides #ijf17, mentioned 9800 times, the most used hashtags were #veritàpergiulioregeni, #energytelling, #pernoinonseizero and #fakenews.
Even though Receni’s incident fired up the audience, the emotions expressed on social media were generally positive, with a predominance (64%) of joy and positive messages.
This feeling is summarized by this tweet that mentions @jeffjarvis’ words: «We can only inform the public if we first learn to listen well».
The tweet that received the most engagement among the Festival’s official social media accounts was the one related to journalism after Snowden, whereas the most popular post on Facebook was the one related to Gazebo live.
The “topic wave” below sums up the flow and intensity of conversation throughout the day, related to all the mentions of the Festival.
