ATLANTIC CONVERSATIONS

PUBLIC RELEASE | FREE

5TH ANNUAL REPORT ON SOCIAL MEDIA USE IN ATLANTIC CANADA

//2013
Halifax | Ottawa | Calgary | Vancouver

2012 MediaBadger Public Affairs Ltd. All Rights.

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Note on Usage Rights

MediaBadger makes a good portion of its annual research into how Atlantic Canadians use Social Media free for use by corporations, government and non-prots. Our intent is that this information can help foster ideas and advance understanding of how these new technologies are impacting our economy and society. Feel free to use this information as you see t. We do ask that you provide attribution to MediaBadger. If you have any questions, please contact us via email at info@mediabadger.com and well do our best to respond.

About This Report - a Societal Focus for 2012

In this, our 5th report, we wanted to provide insights more societally focused. The objective being to yes, look at social media usage in the region, but focus more on what are the social issues that Atlantic Canadians are discussing. We think this can help community groups, governments and businesses understand the important role that social media is playing in how we shape our community, provinces and region today. Much of our ndings can be translated to regions across Canada and the United States. We Canadians share much in common with our good friends in America and sharing together helps us realize the value we bring to each other.

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In Support Of
We would like to dedicate this report in support of Peace Geeks, a non-prot organisation based in Vancouver that is looking to open a Halifax chapter in 2013. The organisation is a registered charitable group. They bring together technically skilled people to help grassroots organisations in developing nations leverage the power of technology. PeaceGeeks partners with grassroots non-prot organisations working on peace, accountability and human rights to provide them with access to technology, training and tools that build internal capacities, strengthen community impact and raise operational visibility. Find out more and how you might help through donations or volunteering at www.peacegeeks.org today.

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Table of Contents //
1.0 Overview of Report ! 1.1 Executive Summary
! 1.2 Approach & Methodology

2.0 Key Findings & Analysis ! Key Data & Graphs 3.0 Appendices ! A - Overview of Search & Analytics Software
! ! ! B- Glossary of Social Media Terms

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Statement of Information Validity, Privacy, Expiry & Usage

All information reviewed and analyzed at the time of this report is considered to be accurate and veried. MediaBadger cannot be responsible for second and third party services offered by companies or individuals that it may use to search for data or validate data. Some services are subject to close without notice, certain content may be deleted or issues occur with data collected beyond the recourse of MediaBadger Public Affairs Ltd. Incidents that impact data may occur such as acts of God, natural disasters, conict or changes in policy of the services MediaBadger is monitoring or researching. Some citizens may delete their content online at any time, make content changes or revise their proles and content between the time of research and issuance of a report. Government policies in some countries, regarding content online, are subject to change at any time and MediaBadger has no liability in such a circumstance. This report is accepted as is, in its entirety. The content herein is the property of MediaBadger. MediaBadger reserves the right of re-use where applicable but will not disclose the originating client and must make every endeavor to protect this information. All information collected, stored and analysed was publicly available at the time of collection and is collected in accordance with the Canadian Protection of Information Privacy and Electronic Documentation Act (PIPEDA.) Some services may change their privacy rules after information is collected and MediaBadger is not liable for these changes. At no time is any personal information collected, stored or analysed whereby an individual may be identied in a report unless with the express permission of an individual. The MediaBadger logo, identifying badger head and typography are trade marks of MediaBadger Public Affairs Ltd. (Canada) and MediaBadger Ltd. (United Kingdom). All Rights. 2013. The information herein is for informational purposes and MediaBadger is not liable for any other usage or purpose a reader may intend or apply personally, for business or anything else. All data retained by MediaBadger for ongoing analysis is the property of MediaBadger and is not made available for review and is considered to contain trade secrets. Creative Commons - If referencing this report, please provide attribution.

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section 1.0 //
OVERVIEW OF REPORT

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1.1 Executive Summary

Overview
In early 2008 we began monitoring social media use in Atlantic Canada using our proprietary search engine and text analytics software combined with human analysis. We wanted to understand how social media was being used, by whom and what was happening. In January of 2009, we released the rst public report containing highlighted information. This report provides some of the data and analysis on social media use in 2012 in Atlantic Canada. A more detailed report with additional insights is available for $995.00 plus taxes.

About MediaBadger Based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, we are a cyber research and intelligence rm. We extract intelligence from social media and other online channels for, inter alia, public policy, risk analysis, marketing and business intelligence applications. Today, the company provides intelligence and analytics reports to clients around the world. We bring together our own analytical software with experienced consultants and analysts - a unique approach that sets us apart from traditional research and intelligence rms. Some of our clients include:

Sharing Our Report

Social Media has become so popular because of the tools, technologies and services that make up what is known as Social Media or the Social Web. Social Media is all about sharing and community. So we decided to share most of what weve come to learn about how Atlantic Canadians are using the Social Web and why. So that businesses, governments and academics will have a common ground for developing strategies programs and opportunities for engagement with key audiences.

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1.2 Approach & Methodology Approach

Our approach to this research was to set a dened period of time in which we would analyse a set of parameters using our own search engine and software, to monitor social media channels. In addition, we incorporated publicly available statistical data from recognised resources (cited as required). Additionally, we have continued to monitor traditional media sources with an online presence. Our objective was to understand who is using these tools, how and why.

benchmark point of online demographics within the region. A specic challenge arose with monitoring certain newspaper sources in the region who delete public comments and the originating article after several days, thus eliminating a valuable resource tool for social anthropologists, sociologists, behaviorists, public relations practitioners and market researchers in both academic and commercial settings. The resulting data were then analysed over a period of weeks and compiled into this report.

Methodology
Primary monitoring was completed using our proprietary software and manual methods. This Web-based software uses a complex system of proprietary search algorithms with an integrated layer of Articial Intelligence to help analyse and sort the vast amounts of collected information. We dened a set of parameters to help us build a comprehensive listed of blogs, microblogs, photo and video sharing accounts and publicly available social network information. Information was then vetted by an analyst. Selected blogs, microblogs, photo and video accounts could then be monitored for usage rates and content volume during the collection period. In addition, comment elds were analysed on major industrial media sites (i.e. newspapers) in selected cities around the region. We also applied the use of several other monitoring services as additional validation of the results and information. Publicly available statistics on Internet usage from recognised sources such as Statistics Canada and Ipsos-Reid were used as the
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section 2.0 //
key ndings

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2.1 Overall Social Media Use by Province

Without a doubt, 2012 saw the largest growth in social media usage since 2008-2009 and the largest growth overall since we began monitoring in 2008. NL saw the most signicant growth of all provinces. Since 2009, PEI had been the slowest growing province in terms of usage. The graph is based on average usage by 2,000 people per province. Average use is activity on 2 or more social media channels, 3 times per week. Newfoundland and Labrador came in second for most signicant growth while Nova Scotia and New Brunswick remained the leading provinces. We have adjusted for a per capita overall population basis. Accuracy is +/-5% in all instances. Our view is that this tells us a) social media are not a fad and b) citizens are becoming increasingly engaged and largely through the use of smartphones and tablet devices as subsequent data show.

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2.2 Social Media by Age Group

When it comes to youth, they love video; creating it, sharing it, video commenting and tagging. While YouTube remains the top video channel, we are seeing signicant increases in the use of Vimeo. Those 30 and above seem to engage more with Vimeo, a similar situation as Flickr is more popular with adults for photo sharing. But the hottest social media apps for youth 12-19 is clearly music, from music videos on YouTube to services like Cloud.fm. There is some engagement in Apples Ping service, but adults are not using Ping.

For social networks, its the place of the young professional. Women tend to be more active users than men. If youre looking to reach young moms, then Facebook is the place for families. Use of microblogs like Twitter is surprisingly high in the 40-49 bracket. Youth tend to gravitate toward more closed networks where they can better control the conversation and mitigate exposure. Sample size in this instance was n=5,000.

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2.3 Gender Engagement

When it comes to social media, women are more engaged and more social...which is quite a change from 2008 when men passed overall engagement at 57% compared to women. As we can see, women today lead overall engagement. They are also more active in social media. Women are three times more active on a weekly basis compared to men and eight times more likely to share content. What men and women do share in terms of content is that they share images (photos, cartoons etc.) more than text or video. Men are also 27% less likely to write text, such as a blog. When men do write, they write 18% less text on average in a blog post than women. Overall, men prefer to create, watch and share video. These are distinct patterns emerging through current usages of social media technologies. This is important for marketers creating content in cyberspace.

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2.3 Local Conversations

When it comes to the things we talk about locally, women would appear to be more engaged than men. When we say local matters we mean things like municipal laws, economics, shopping, and eating. Women are very engaged with community matters, especially around education, healthcare and politics. Men seem to focus on business, politics and sports.

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2.4 Channel Increases by Percent

LinkedIn and Google+ pushed to the top in terms of percentage increases. The growth in LinkedIn usage far surpassed our forecast of around 25% in 2011 with the increase coming from not just the number of users, but regular engagement through discussion groups and information sharing. The use of Google+ surprised us with an unexpectedly large number of academics, photographers and artists using Google+. Most popular for sharing on Google+ were photography enthusiasts. Surprisingly, Pinterest did not grow as much as we had forecast last year. While it was certainly a leading channel, it seems to have

attened out towards the end of 2012. While YouTube saw the slowest growth in terms of popularity, Facebook still saw growth and mostly in the 40+ category with a decline in the under 20 category....after all, who wants to hang out where you parents are? While Twitter saw signicant growth, we were surprised by the high volume of politically oriented tweets passed around through the year. We did account for municipal elections where they occurred.

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2.5 Images & Video

Images, moving and xed, are playing an ever-increasing role in social media content. In past research, we have seen the average text blog post go from 800 words in 2008 down to 200 in 2012. With the signicant increase in the use of smartphones, tablet devices and the ease of uploading visual content to the Web through services such as Instagram, it is little surprise that images are playing an increasingly important role in our communications; perhaps, in 2012 a picture became worth a million words? In Atlantic Canada, we enjoy eating and this fact shined in that about 19% of the images we shared through social media were pictures of food we ate, were about to eat or were buying. Over 12% of the videos we uploaded in Atlantic Canada and about the region have to do with events such as weddings, vacations in the region and activities we were doing with a large number around sports events (local football or hockey.) of the shots we took and shared, over 70% were local...in our backyard, community or another part of the region. Marketers and professional photographers...take note! 2012 was denitely the year of the photo! Of the 150,000 tagged photos we analysed, over 65% used some form of lter effect either from an in-phone app or software and over 75% were from a mobile device.

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2.6 Urban Development

Urban growth is a major issue across Atlantic Canada. We looked at key cities in the region where the highest volume of discussion was taking place and measured volume of discussion on a sample size of n=1,000 per city accounting for a per capita comparison. We looked at which city was the most supportive of development within its urban core, not suburbs or industrial parks. What we found is that Moncton and Fredericton were the most supportive

in regards to developing their urban cores with major projects such as convention centres or ofce towers and residential complexes. Halifax ranked last in terms of support for urban development. In each city this is a primary concern of citizens.

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2.7 What Were Our Push Button Topics?

This graph shows the % of conversation taking place out of a sample size of 30,000 people across the region where we looked for topics of discussion that ranged over a period of 180 days, had a high number of hashtags in Twitter and were blogged about. As can be seen, energy got us talking a lot, mostly to do with the Muskrat Falls project and fracking, followed by discussions around political transparency at municipal and provincial levels of government. Healthcare costs gured in at 18% which was lower than expected given our aging population.

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2.8 Headline Topics

These data capture the primary news media headline topics that drove the most conversation in social media through the year. Although the Idle No More movement was later in the year, the volume of conversation was signicant and sentiment analysis shows that 75% of non-Aboriginal Canadians supported the efforts of this First Nations campaign. In regards to Muskrat Falls, we found 62% of Atlantic Canadians do not support the project, with most stating a lack of transparency from government in regards to costs both short- and long-term and understanding the benets. The issue of a merged region for Atlantic Canada also came to the forefront in the latter half of the year, but discussion was fast and furious and we found that only 15% of those talking online supported a regional merging of the Maritime Provinces. Total sample size was 75,000 individuals across all provinces with a margin of error of +/-4%.

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2.9 Political leanings in cyberspace

Politics are a key part of Atlantic Canadian society. Outside of key election periods we dont see much political polling, just the odd check-up. The advantage of monitoring and analysing discussions in social media is that the political discussion in Atlantic Canada is always on. At any point we can dip our toes into the fast owing social media river across multiple streams, cast our net and collect a great catch. In this case, we looked at sentiment through text analytics of over 300,000 tweets on Twitter, 4,500 public Facebook posts, 38,000 posts on news media sites commentary sections,

850 blog posts and over 15,000 comments made on those blogs posts and other social media channels. We delete trolls and astroturfers from our analysis to ensure we obtain a more balanced sample size. Right now the Liberals in terms of the federal parties, lead in Atlantic Canada with the NDP in second place with other parties or views ahead of the Conservatives. This is the annual aggregate average over a 12 month period based on positive mentions of a party. Monthly variations occur depending on issues and events.
NB: MediaBadger does not provide services to any political party in Canada or other countries.

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2.10 Global Engagement

6 2 5

When it comes to the other countries around the world that were chatting with, perhaps its no surprise the USA ranks as #1 and the UK as #2? But, Germany tops out over France now and India sits at number 5 followed by China in last place of the primary conversations between countries. This is measured by a) volume of native language spoken and b) those identifying themselves with a family or business connection to the country indicated; these are likely countries engaged between. Data are aggregated and weighted to account for per capita population across the region.

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2.11 Societal Issues

As this chart shows, were getting quite red up about trade between provinces and other countries as well as healthcare and transparency in political discourse. This is a ranking where a 9 means most popular for discussion. Although fracking lowered in terms of discussion, it is still a key topic and relates to water quality. The driver for energy discussions, as we showed earlier is renewable energy and Muskrat Falls, which fed into the the transparency issue. This is key data for those involved with public policy decisions since it often reects societies views and perceptions and today we live in a world where perceptions play a vital role in public diplomacy and discourse.

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2.12 Sharing Food

We love, absolutely love, to talk about food in Atlantic Canada...and beyond. Sharing pictures of what we are about to eat at a restaurant or even at home, is a popular trend and well, not one we think will die down soon. In fact, sharing images of the food we are about to eat at a restaurant may be a key rating factor in years to come. Restaurateurs take note...poor presentation can have a direct and immediate impact on your sales. In Canada, EU and USA over 80% of your patrons have a mobile phone with a camera and they are ready to share what you just put in front of them. Never before have restaurants faced such intense and immediate evaluation o f t h e i r p ro d u c t . G o o d c h e f s k n o w presentation is the key rst part in an overall dining experience...social media and smart phones just upped the ante on presentation.

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2.13 Content Preferences

Men, it would seem, are all about visuals while women like to write more. We cant exactly explain this but men are known to be more visual past research indicates. Seems this holds true into cyberspace, further pointing out that cyberspace is often a direct translation of what happens in the real world. This is important for marketers or organisations planning to engage in public communications through social media.

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2.14 Urban Engagement

These data show engagement by the primary cities in Atlantic Canada. While PEI has greatly increased its overall social media presence, unlike other provinces in the region, Charlottetown isnt singled out as a primary city for engagement - yet. Halifax leads the way while St. John, NB comes in second with Moncton and Fredericton tying second. Taken in the context of engagement by city, New Brunswick is a leader in the use of social media through urban centres, but overall use of social media still resides within Nova Scotia. Truro saw the most signicant growth for urban centres in Nova Scotia and for Newfoundland it was St. Johns.

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2.14 Reasons for Engagement

Its one of the rst questions anyone seeking to understand social media usage asks - why do we engage? What we found in 2012 is that while 2005-2011 were more entertainment focused and commercial for reasons for engagement, in 2012 people moved more towards community, family and politics or local issues as a reason to engage. More and more, people are either connecting with their personal connections or discussing issues of local or regional interest. Atlantic Canadians are also increasingly looking outward from the region and exploring the world we live in through cyberspace. As people increasingly become comfortable with the technologies available to them, they are starting to move beyond the novelty of the experience to applying them in more meaningful ways - it is crucial that businesses and government ensure they are aware of these changes and possible implications in business and public policy.

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section 3.0 //
Appendices

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Appendix A - Technology

To nd the relevant data to analyse, MediaBadger uses a proprietary search engine and an Articial Intelligence Engine for analysis of text. Search Component The search engine collects as a metacrawler from Tier 1 consumer search engines Google, Yahoo and Bing and searches where these engines dont to increase the collection capability and provide a larger sample size for text analysis. Articial Intelligence Engine The AI Engine analyses text for sentiment, gender, education levels, sentiment and other indicators that we may program based on the project at hand. Essentially, these are algorithms that have been and are developed by the development team. We include this information to aid in the understanding of how we collect then process and package the information we nd.

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Appendix B - Glossary of Social Media Terms

Social Media: Social means human behaviour in terms of communicating and organizing while Media means the channels used to communicate and organize. UI: User Interface. These are the buttons and the design of a website or software tools. SEO: Search Engine Optimization. A set of best practices use to help a website be found by people using search engines. SMO: Social Media Optimization. A way to ensure your content is found in targeted Social Media channels. Microblog: A service like Twitter but you have only 140 characters for a message. You can build networks of followers. Blog: Contraction of Weblog, meaning an online type of journal. There are over 300 blog platforms and 500 Million blogs worldwide, both personal and professional. Video Sharing: Services like YouTube, users can upload their own video and rate videos as well as comment. Newsgroup: Early Social Media tool that enables people to share news and discuss issues. Forum: Similar to newsgroup, but usually moderated and sponsored by a company. Social Network: Services like Facebook that allow people to connect based on social networking theory (the sociological concept.) There are over 200 different types of Facebook services, often reecting a culture or ethnic group. Includes LinkedIn a professional networking service for business. SMS/txt: A service on mobile phones to send text only messages to other mobile phone users. Augmented Reality: A service that blends software with mobile devices to enable sharing of information in new ways. Chatroulette: a video conferencing service where people randomly connect to other people. IM or Instant Messaging: Software that enables people to communicate 1-1 or as a group in a chat style. This includes MSN Messenger, Gmail Chat and iChat. Email: Oldest Social Media tool that allows messages to be exchanged between computers, including les. Chat Room: A service similar to IM, but in a dedicated website, topic specic and usually moderated. Deep Web: Services that enable people to share ideas and les, often specic websites that include newsgroups and forums. These are no searched by search engines and require special tools to search. Meme: a trend that emerges from a TV show or something someone says online that later represents a concept. Example is bexting where teens bet on sports using SMS/txt messaging on their mobile phones. Or Clint Eastwoods famous line go ahead punk, make my day carries an inference of being cool and taking no guff from someone. MMOG: Massively Multi-Player Online Game, such as SecondLife or World of Warcraft where people assume identities and act out a life in an online game that simulates real-life. Avatar: An image that represents what a person would like to look like in a MMOG. Crowdsourcing: Harnessing the skills of professionals or citizens outside the business or organization. RSS: Really Simple Syndication, ability to subscribe to a blog and have the content appear in your inbox or a special reader. Astroturng/Sockpuppeting: Pretending to be someone you arent and/or seeding content as an impostor - usually politically motivated.

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Senior Contacts Michael MacKinnon, Ph.D.

Vice President, Public Policy & Research mike@mediabadger.com

Giles Crouch, MM

President & CEO giles@mediabadger.com

Cyber Research & Intelligence //

David Beer, MA Director, Ottawa Bureau dbeer@mediabadger.com

Chief Super. (Retd)

// Public Policy Practice

Contact Information 888.867.7610 info@mediabadger.com W: http://www.mediabadger.com Halifax | Ottawa | Calgary | Vancouver

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