On the 15th April 2010 a UK first happened where we saw the 3 main political party leaders engage in a live TV debate - much like US guys have been doing for many years.

While the debate had 70 or so ‘rules’ that the leaders had to abide by it has to be said that the debate lived up to it’s billing drawing in a huge audience of nearly 10million people doubling the size of the usual ITV audience.

So, if nearly 10million people watched the debate what did they think?

We used Social Radar to find out.

First stop was to look at the volume of conversations, be they on Twitter, blogs, forums, etc that each of the leaders and parties attracted over the coming days.

It is very evident from the above chart that the dominance of Nick Clegg and his approach to the debate has catalysed online conversation around him as the leader of the Liberal Democrats and also his party. Surprisingly David Cameron managed to gain more conversation online than Gordon Brown but as always was this conversation of a positive or negative persuasion?

As we can see from the above chart the online conversation volume around David Cameron, whilst being larger in volume than the other two leaders, was almost 20% more negative towards him and the Conservative party proving that in this scenario more is definitely not better. Amazingly Nick Clegg steals a sentiment score of or around 75% positive which, to his credit, seemed quite deserved from the way in which he came across on the night.

We then took a look so see what the major topics were that people were aligning with the Leaders Debate over the following 48hrs.

We cross tabbed the most popular terms / words being used in the discussions with sentiment to achieve a holistic view on how the debate was received in general but also to see what the most discussed themes were and whether these were agreeable with the audience or not.

The Leaders Debate was received very well indeed across Twitter as a general theme. Nick Clegg, as we know, was received very positively and was discussed frequently. However, David Cameron as the most discussed topic, second only to the actual debate itself, was simply received well. Diving deeper into this area we were able to see that the online public just did not understand the position he took on the night, didn’t like the way in which he seemed to be ‘buddying up’ with Nick Clegg (Hung Parliment springs to mind!) and overall his Angry Dad persona was just not liked.

Last week, the U.S. House passed very new, very controversial bill over health-care. This new legislation transforms rules governing the medical industry to ensure that tens of millions of uninsured Americans get medical coverage. While the topic is blatant big talk on television and in the papers, it’s still hard to get a grasp on how ‘we the people’ are actually reacting to this historical milestone. To gain better insight as to how the public actually feels, we look turn to the trusty internet & social media to provide us with some answers.

First, lets look at overall buzz. Below we see that there were over 30,000 posts in the days around the date the reform was signed into law. Obviously, people were very opinionated on the topic and felt the need to say so on the internet. Next, lets look at content.

This word cloud shows the most frequent terms associated with the posts, and are then classified by sentiment. Green depicts phrases with highly positive sentiment, red shows negative references, and grey lists neutral ones. As usual with government battles, the Democrats and Republicans find themselves in a battle.

Peeping into overall user sentiment, Social Radar tells us that a hefty 59% of posts directly related to the health-care reform were positive.

Here we see the most popular words associated with each emotion, along with the percentage of posts the terms appeared. We are able to dissect and determine the underlying issues that the public is conveying on the social web (Turns out that a lot of it has to do with the country’s deficit).

So the million dollar question that I’m sure everyone knows the answer to. Where are these conversations happening?

And you guessed it. Twitter was the favorite platform, with blogs falling into 2nd place. What do you think about all this? Feel free to leave a comment.

Last week the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that they would be presenting U.S. President Obama the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” As expected, directly after the announcement, there was an influx in media coverage and reactions; here’s a look at what was going on in social media.

Blogs, tweets and comments piled up, with everyone giving their two cents on the happening. This next chart shows that a hefty 25% of related content felt negatively about Obama’s selection.

Once again, the majority of volume reigned from Twitter, where multiple hash tags were sprouting up around the conversations.

So what exactly are people saying?

Well, people are saying a lot of things, and to our convenience, Social Radar is able to categorize the conversations for our easy comprehension. Achievement and expectations set the tone for most of the chatter, but it is interesting to see that almost 4% of content is categorized into the term “price“, which in this case, is referring to possible repercussions of the designation of this award. Do you feel the U.S. will have to “pay” for anything? Keep a keen eye out on your Tweet feed.

Last Friday U.S. House leaders outlined a $1 trillion health care overhaul that would provide insurance for more Americans and give them new rights in dealing with insurers. The reform plan could ultimately lead to coverage for 95 percent of Americans and create a new government-run insurance program.

President Obama has made health reform a priority and has said that continuing with the status quo will bankrupt the country. The reform bills promise more affordable insurance and relief to those with large out-of-pocket health costs. But high-income people and some businesses would face new taxes.

How do Americans feel about the legislation?

A USA Today/Gallup poll finds 56% of Americans in favor and 33% opposed to Congress’ passing major healthcare reform legislation this year. However, support is sharply split along party lines, with 79% of Democrats in favor, compared with only 23% of Republicans. President Obama urged Democratic senators to keep trying for a bipartisan deal on health care reform, but left open the possibility that they might have to pass a bill without Republican support.

We used Social Radar analytics to measure sentiment around health reform. Social Radar analyzed billions of online messages and provided in-depth analysis specific to references of health reform as the subject of conversation to get key sentimental insights of the masses. Overall results show 56% of health reform references were positive, mirroring the Gallup poll results.

We further analyzed these conversations throughout the month of July to determine key topics discussed, and in what context. The word cloud below displays these key topics used in health care reform conversations online, with colors from green to red representing positive/neutral/negative tone of each topic.

There certainly appears to be some negativity around this plan directed toward Obama, tax and cost.

The chart below displays the data in another way, showing a trend of the sentiment/tone and total conversation volume around health care reform over the last month.

As the conversations continue to grow, we are starting to see a slight increase in negative tone. We will be keeping an eye on this topic as the Obama administration works toward achieving major health reform this year.

One of the biggest stories of the week has been Iranians’ use of social media to communicate with each other and the outside world during the Iran election crisis. Protesters used Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Wikipedia and blogs to disseminate information and help people take action.

The Iran crisis has literally given journalistic power to the people, as individuals spread news of developing events in the country. Twitter users adopted the hashtag #CNNfail to proclaim that “new media” (individuals using Twitter) had provided better coverage than “old media” (CNN) throughout the early stages of the crisis.

We decided to use Social Radar to analyze and compare the reach of messages posted by individuals with low influence vs. high influence. Social Radar tracks influence based on the number of links to a specific blog or account. For example, most average Twitter users or bloggers would be considered low influence, while sites like Engadget or CNN would be considered high influence and major media news sources.

The chart below provides interesting results. We measured the number of posts over the last few weeks for low influencers vs. high influencers on the topic of Iran or Iran election. Iran election conversation among low influencers is spreading twice as quickly as conversation among high influencers. The Iran crisis has proven that individuals can report relevant news quickly. What does it mean for “old media” in the future? Will we continue to see more and more examples of individuals using social media to beat established journalists to news stories?

President Obama has been busy during his first 100 days in office — confronting an economic crisis, addressing rising healthcare costs, promoting clean energy innovation and restoring confidence. Nearly two out of three Americans approve of the job Barack Obama is doing as president. We decided to measure web chatter volume for the biggest issues during President Obama’s first 100 days. Not surprisingly, chatter around the stimulus package led all topics overall. But at the moment, healthcare is the hottest topic.

With AIG bonuses dominating the headlines and President Obama being the first sitting president to appear on a late night talk show, how are Americans feeling? The chart below shows that nearly half of all Obama posts this week have been positive. 16% of all Obama posts contained a reference to AIG and 14% contained the word Leno. Here are some other interesting words mentioned in Obama posts this week:

• Plan 18%
• Economy 15%
• Financial 9%
• Tax 8%
• McCain 7%
• Picks 7%
• NCAA 5%
• Iran 4%
• Teleprompter 4%