Troy Davis, whose case drew international attention, was put to death by lethal injection for the 1989 killing of an off-duty police officer in Savannah, Georgia, prison officials announced Wednesday night. The public expressed disgust and outrage online Thursday – Casey Anthony even became a trending topic as many expressed dismay over Anthony being deemed innocent in the death of her daughter while Davis was executed.

Troy David conversation topic cloud

Rarely do we see a topic in the Social Radar database so overwhelmingly negative.

Content breakdown

This week 93% of Troy Davis mentions came via Twitter. The word ‘Georgia’ appeared in 32% of all Troy Davis posts, and was 90% negative, as many questioned how the justice system in the state of Georgia could execute a person who may have been innocent.

The country stopped to remember the 10th anniversary of the World Trade Center tragedy yesterday. Family members, President Barack Obama, former President George W. Bush, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and other political leaders visited the new National September 11th Memorial. NFL games across the country paid tribute to Americans who lost their lives. Many used social media to pay respects and remembered where they were when terror struck 10 years ago using the Twitter hash tag #on911.

We used Social Radar to measure conversations around September 11, 9/11, #on911, etc. online.

9/11 mentions

9/11 was mentioned in an unprecedented 1.7% of all Internet conversations yesterday, making it one of the most discussed topics online ever. Since we built our Social Radar database in 2007, we rarely see conversation topics pass even 1% of all conversations.

Content distribution

Approximately 93% of mentions came via Twitter. 61% of posts were made by males. For further analysis, visit www.infegy.com/socialradar.

The U.S. military is in outrage over rapper Soulja Boy’s new song “Let’s Be Real”, in which he raps “f**k the army troops.” Soulja Boy has since apologized. Is the apology too late? Has the rapper negatively affected his reputation? We used Social Radar to find out.

Soulja Boy mentions

Soulja Boy mentions shot up 400% following the incident.

Soulja Boy sentiment

Nearly all conversations around Soulja Boy mention the military incident. Sentiment around Soulja Boy is currently more than 70% negative overall.

Has Soulja Boy done permanent damage to his reputation?

How quickly can the Seychelles recover from the negativity created following two fatal shark attacks in August?  Social Radar looks at the worldwide buzz surrounding the query ‘The Seychelles’ since the beginning of August to assess the situation.

In the last 30 days there has been 34% less positive sentiment surrounding the Seychelles.  Social Radar has calculated that on 17 August  – the day after British honeymooner Ian Redmond was killed – there were 81,032 social universe mentions for the Seychelles, 71% of which were classed as negative.  Less than two weeks before on 2 August, one day after Frenchman Nicolas Virolle was killed by a shark, there were only 7,234 social universe mentions for the Seychelles with 18% negativity.

The topic cloud for the last 30 days shows how social media has focussed on the shark attacks with only 5% of the posts referring to the Seychelles as ‘paradise’.  In the period 1 January to 31 July 2011 ‘paradise’ was mentioned in 27% of all posts.

The sentiment tracking graph shows positive sentiment remained high following the first attack at the beginning of August and only started to fluctuate with the second attack.  Now that the funeral of Ian Redmond has taken place it will be interesting to see how quickly positive sentiment returns.

With hurricane alerts piling up as Hurricane Irene moves toward the East Coast in an unusually broad path that could affect 55 million people, we decided to use Social Radar to analyze conversations online compared to this week’s earthquake.

Hurricane Irene vs. earthquake chatter

So far the minor earthquakes this week generated significantly more chatter online than the impending hurricane. At one point the word “earthquake” appeared in more than 1% of all Internet conversations! We will monitor hurricane chatter over the weekend. Please everyone on the East Coast stay safe.

An unusual earthquake startled millions of people from Colorado to New York on Tuesday. Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from office buildings in Washington, D.C. and New York City. According to @Twitter, within a minute of Tuesday’s earthquake, there were more than 40,000 earthquake-related Tweets. People were seeing tweets before they even felt the quake. Another small earthquake shook San Francisco later that night.

Also on Tuesday, triumphant rebel fighters and thousands of ordinary Libyans stormed Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s fortress compound in Tripoli, Libya, carting off mementos of his 42-year dictatorship. The capture of Col. Gadhafi’s complex stands as one of the rebels’ highest moments in their six-month battle to topple the world’s longest-tenured current ruler. The whereabouts of Gadhafi himself were unknown.

We used Social Radar to analyze conversations around both topics.

Earthquake vs. Tripoli, Libya buzz

Both topics were mentioned hundreds of thousands of times on Tuesday, but ‘earthquake’ was mentioned 34% more times than ‘Tripoli’, ‘Libya’, ‘Qaddafi’/'Ghadafi’ combined.

Our buzz study back in July reported on UNICEF’s call to social media to raise awareness of the famine in Somalia and encourage more people to donate.

Looking at the trends from July 20 until August 16, the volume of conversation on the famine in Somalia has increased by 53% as determined by Social Radar’s social universe results. However UK media, both online and offline, has been dominated by domestic news – mainly the riots that took place across England last week, which has diminished the overall impact of this increase in mentions.

This is reflected in the chart below which shows conversations from July 20 until August 16 about the famine compared to those about the riots:

The media being used to spread the message about the plight of those affected by the famine is evenly split between Twitter and other blogs as shown in this pie chart.

The volume of mentions fluctuated between Twitter and other blogs with a repeating pattern emerging over the 27 days of monitoring, as the graph below shows.

With celebrities and actors now taking up the mantel to raise more awareness about the famine it is likely that conversations will continue: but the question remains, how do they create impact amongst all the other online noise?

Wall Street had its worst day since the 2008 financial crisis, as fearful investors reacted to the United States losing its coveted AAA credit rating. All three major U.S. stock indexes sank between 5% and 7%, pushing the Dow below 11,000 for the first time since last November.

We reported on Friday that Jersey Shore was sadly generating more buzz on line than Obama and debt ceiling agreement. Though Jersey Shore buzz subsided over the weekend, the American public’s focus still does not seem to be on the economic crisis.

Stock market buzz

Neither the Dow nor stock market showed a significant spike in mentions despite today’s plunge resulting from the S&P’s downgrade of the United States’ credit rating by one notch to “AA+” for the first time in history.

As the stock market continues to crash and America is on the verge of default, what’s on your mind? I’m hoping its not Jersey Shore.

Jersey Shore buzz

Sadly, Jersey Shore buzz is at an all time high. MTV premiered Season 4 of Jersey Shore last night, filmed in Italy.

Surely with President Obama’s 50th birthday this week and all of the news surrounding the debt ceiling agreement, Obama generated more buzz than Jersey Shore…right? Wrong.

Obama vs. Jersey Shore

Jersey Shore buzz easily surpassed Obama buzz following the Season 4 premiere last night.

Jersey Shore sentiment

I guess we can at least take solace that the conversations around Jersey Shore last night and today have been primarily negative.

With less than one year to go until the London Olympics, the buzz surrounding the games has definitely shifted up a gear. But how does chatter around the London games compare to chatter leading up to the Beijing games in July 2007?

We used Social Radar to compare conversations in July 2011 around the London Olympics vs. chatter in July 2007 around the Beijing Olympics.

Olympic Games Beijing chatter July 2007

Olympic Games London chatter July 2011

Conversations surrounding the Beijing Olympics in July 2007 were 0.012% greater than those currently taking place around the London Olympics.

Beijing Olympics topic cloud and sentiment

London Olympics topic cloud and sentiment

Conversations around the London Olympics are 12% more positive than those that took place in China in 2008. Negative comments around the Olympics next year are focused on the difficulty in obtaining tickets and disruption to residents living near the main arenas.

No doubt we’ll see a surge in traffic as the countdown continues and the promotional activity involving big named brands and partnerships both online and offline increases.