CBS News/TNS Campaign Real Time Pulse
The Pulse below displays the volume of total Tweets about all the Republican candidates in real time. Tweet volume is measured and displayed second-by-second in real time shown horizontally along the bottom of the chart below (time displayed is Eastern Time). The vertical axis represents the actual number of Tweets posted in any ten second interval -- and the scale shown along the left side adjusts depending on Tweet volume. The daily Tweet counter at the top is set to zero and restarted at midnight Eastern Standard Time each day.
Below the Pulse at left, you can view the stream of Tweets about the candidates. At right is a tracker of positive and negative Tweets about each candidate.
The word cloud at the bottom the words most often associated with Tweets about the candidates. Words that are larger are mentioned more often. You can also click a word in the word cloud to see the related Tweets below.
CBS News/TNS Campaign Social Media Tracker
Methodology
The CBS News/TNS tool measures and evaluates the Twitter conversation about the Republican presidential candidates on a daily basis. It provides the volume of Tweets per candidate and the proportion of positive and negative non-informational English-language Tweets. Tweets are categorized based on a text mining algorithm developed by TNS and Vigiglobe, specifically designed to analyze online political discussions, and that extracts the sentiment contained in each Tweet. This allows second to second monitoring of people's opinions on Twitter, providing instant reads on the current Twitter conversation about political candidates.
TNS has a presence in over 80 countries, and advises clients on specific growth strategies around new market entry, innovation, brand switching and stakeholder management across every cultural, economic and political region of the world. TNS is part of Kantar, one of the world's largest insight, information and consultancy groups.
Graphical displays are powered by Vigiglobe, a company that analyzes how the social web impacts the image and reputation of private companies, public institutions and political leaders.