Todd Akin’s rape and pregnancy comments make him a national phenomena overnight. That's how it looked over the social web...

1. Who is gunning for you?
a mini case study presented by:

2. Todd Akin’s rape and pregnancy comments
make him a national phenomena overnight
• Congressman Todd Akin was
virtually unknown on the social
web in mid August.
• His comments drew an avalanche
of condemnations nearing 150,000
daily posts.
• Beyond individual posts, are there
epicenters amplifying the rebuke?

3. Individuals and entities shouted in their
channel of choice and the public responded
Posts Interactions Conversations
Twitter 85,527 57,805 7,942
Blog 51,423 48,208 5,505
Facebook 6,912 155,081 2,848
News 5,635 153,534 67
Tumblr 1,129 1 -
Forum 540 15,878 341
Aug 15-27,2012
Posts: Any initial content submitted to a social networking site - a blog post, Facebook status update, a
tweet, video upload to YouTube or photo upload to Flickr, etc.
Interactions: Any action that is performed on the initial post on a social site. This will typically include comments,
likes, re-tweets, etc.
Conversations: A post with at least one interaction is considered as conversation. For example, a single post with 25
interactions is one conversation.

4. 7 out of 10 original tweets got a response with
people like Rob Delaney leading the charge
Top seven twitter activists ranked based on combined posts + interactions volume
Avatar Name Posts Interactions Followers
Harvey Edwards 183 - 1,025
Nancy Mitchell 17 90 450
Matthew K 91 1 14,818
Rob Delaney 16 73 571,132
sexxybeast1973 50 35 291
Kevin 62 22 1,222
Gus 41 30 430
Aug 15-27,2012

5. The News Media’s Facebook pages became
a stage for the angry public
Top seven Facebook arena Aug 15-27,2012
Posts Interactions Conversations
Planned 64 Huffington Post 41,352 Planned 54
Parenthood Parenthood
CNN 44 Planned 18,937 Huffington Post 28
Parenthood
Huffington Post 28 CNN 8,955 CNN 23
Piers Morgan 13 ABC News 7,123 Piers Morgan 7
Tonight Tonight
Ron Paul 6 NBC News 5,826 ABC News 6
Christian Science 6 BBC World 2,220 Christian Science 6
Monitor Monitor
ABC News 6 The View 2,122 BBC World 4

6. Liberal and conservative blogger alike
dismissed and rebuked Akin’s comments
Aug 15-27,2012
Top blogs Top bloggers who
(conversations) commented on Akin
(reach)
Bullusa 94 Michelle Malkin 964,253 “It was ignorant,
garbled nonsense”
Ballot2012 40 Max Keiser 60,399
Dailynewser 39 Ed Morrissey 27,783
Mediaite 38 Sunny Hundal 25,721
Thegatewaypundit 38 Juan Cole 18,892
Stlouis.cbslocal 36 Robert Stacy McCain 14,269
CNN Political Ticker 30 Hermant Mehta 13,623
Dashingguy 27 David Badash 13,047 “Truly disgusting”