A look at the data captured from the SOPA saga.

1. SOPA
A saidWot Case Study Stop Online Piracy Act
9 – 18 January 2012
Based on English mentions
only.

2. "It’s a dangerous and troubling development when
the platforms that serve as gateways to information
intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in
order to further their corporate interests.“*
*quote from Hackernews

3. How one legislative act can impact the
Internet as we know it

4. Facts & Figures
This Case Study is based on comments received from the 9th of
January until the protest commenced on 18 January 2012.
It is based on English comments from around the world and
from all online media sources available.
It is based on the most popular hashtags #SOPA and
#BlackoutSOPA (not including #PIPA etc.)
This case study was compiled to showcase how one legislative act
can unite the world.
If you would like us to do this for your brand or for something you are
passionate about, please contact us:
www.saidwot.com | infosa@saidwot.com

5. How many people were talking?
Over a period of 10 days,
we tracked more than
2 112 000 comments about SOPA,
spreading the message to over
6 192 545 251 people.

6. How many people were talking?
At its peak 11 000 English mentions
were posted every 5 minutes

7. What was said?

8. Where did the conversation take place?
99% on Social
Media Platforms
1.48% of the coverage was
posted on Websites and
0.06% on News Sites
0.06% Blog posts
0.01% discussions
on Forums
0.06% Wiki articles

9. Where in the social media landscape?
85%
0.46%
14%
0.15%
0.72%
Keep in mind that most people have set their privacy settings on Facebook to ‘friends
only’. These comments cannot be monitored or tracked.

10. Who was listening?

11. How much was it worth?
6 192 545 251 people.
were potentially exposed to comments and
opinions about SOPA
In marketing terms, this translates to
R836 523 578 worth of free advertising.

12. Detractors
Commentary was negative and mainly encouraged
people to join the protests along with Reddit, Wikipedia,
Google etc.

13. Creativity
Protests took on a creative form

14. Avatars
Avatars on Twitter were changed and hashtags
were used incessantly

15. Memes
And humour was used to spread the message even
further

16. Protests
A list of SOPA supporters was released (and
tweeted), further encouraging the boycott of these
brands.
Companies such as Google were against it & strongly
advised visitors to phone their senators' offices to
protest the bill.
Mark Zuckerburg even posted a status update
denouncing the act.

17. Threats
Hackers from Anonymous are planning to
attack Sony for its support of SOPA next
Monday (23 January 2012), according to a report
from SC Magazine, which claims that both
Sony.com and the Sony Music store are the targets.

18. Hashtags
*8% of all the SOPA
tweets used the
hashtag
#BlackoutSOPA.
*25% of the SOPA
tweets used the
#SOPA hashtag used
*All other tweets either included a
different hashtag, or no hashtag at all.

19. However…
Despite all the effort, some people still didn’t get it…

20. More information
This case study highlights the trends as identified in the analysis of
the data around SOPA.
If you would like us to share the remainder of the analysis, as well
as the extensive tracking on this topic with you, please feel free to
contact us.
Additionally, for a free demo account, queries or requests for
information, please don’t hesitate to contact us on the below
information.
South Africa: United States:
Tel: +27 11 021 8738 Tel: +00 (1) 704 450 2403
Email: infosa@saidwot.com Email: infous@saidwot.com
Web: www.saidwot.com