Fifa bribery story dominates social networks in SA

Johannesburg – Discussion of the Fifa bribery scandal has made its way into one in every three social media posts in South Africa, beating Eskom, xenophobia, and Africa Day, media monitoring company ROi Africa said on Thursday.

A day after the story broke, 33% of local social media posts were about “Fifagate”, beating Eskom at 25% and Africa Day at 10%, the company’s Tonya Khoury said in a statement.

In the South African media, the story was however only fourth on the chart, with 8% of all reporting. Xenophobia was first, at 23% of all news, followed by Eskom, and Africa Day.

This was according to data gathered over the last seven days from “thousands” of printed publications in South Africa and the rest of Africa, and 76 South African radio and TV stations.

In the international news media, the Fifa story made it into second place, with 11% of all stories. US Memorial Day was number one, with 41%.  

The research was compiled from 60 000 online newspapers worldwide, and 206 million social networks.

Websites like Facebook and Twitter each count as one network. The bulk of the social network figure consists of blogs.