Top 10 Hottest Topics on Societal Issues in Social Media

Social Media is nowhere near being used braodly for bigger social change in developed nations, like it is in Iran or Sudan or the Ukraine. Eventually it will be. We wanted to look at what were the hottest societal topics in Social Media channels.

But it seems that for Social Media to be the underlying technology that enables broader social change, as a society, we aren’t mad enough about a major topic; it’s just too fragmented. Yet. The undercurrents are there. Here’s a look at the largest social issues we see trending in Social Media channels (Sept. 2008 to March 2010);

1. Financial Crisis: It remains top of the list across the U.S., Canada and UK (where we conduct our research.) A number of sub-topics feature in here (i.e. lending practices, citizen and government debt.)

2. Corporate Greed: Ties into #1 but is more related to issues around corporate leaders, their bonuses and making too much money; perception or otherwise. The volume of discussion was high enough to warrant it’s own segment.

3. Aid Relief: Over the past two months this has mostly been focused on Haiti, but China’s recent earthquake trended upwards for a few days.

4. National Politics: It’s hot, but not that hot. In the U.S. it’s Tea Party related, in Canada it was Proroguing Parliament and ongoing scandals and in the UK it was MP expenditures followed by the election. Debt related we placed into the financial crisis.

5. Iraq & Afghanistan: Perhaps this can also be said of foreign policy of U.S., Canada and UK. But it mostly focuses on Iraq and Afghanistan – in a negative manner. Broad public support is not there.

6. Energy: This is trending upward. Discussions revolve around alternative energy sources such as solar power and are negative towards our reliance on fossil fuels.

7. Healthcare: While this ranked very high in the U.S., Canadian and UK discussion is there but brought the overall ranking down.

8. Food: We see a lot of discussion going on around food, namely the source of our food and then as it relates to our health. This is fairly equal across the U.S., Canada and UK.

9. Climate Change: Could be categorized with energy, but we see this as a separate issue since it covers energy, industrial pollution, foreign and domestic policy and the G8. While discussion goes on across Social Media channels, it is surprising to us it is not higher up the list.

10. Privacy: It’s out there, perhaps on the low side, but the launch of Google Buzz and other apps has kept it simmering in the background.

Methodology:

Using mediasphere360, we looked into the blogosphere, newsgroups, forums, microblogs, social networks (10) and 256 non-profit websites for traffic rankings. We used a set of common keywords around the issues above. Keywords were identified by using Google Insights. We then filtered out celebrity discussions and entertainment properties. The search methodology and analysis as it relates to our technology are proprietary to MediaBadger. Searches were refined to U.S., Canada and UK (colonies and territories excluded.)