#SONA klaps #Budget2016 in social media showdown

While most South African news organisations were heavily focused on Pravin Gordhan’s first budget speech since his return to the post, social media was a lot less interested than it was in the State of the Nation Address (SONA) earlier this month.

That’s according to figures from social media insights company YouKnow digital, which shows that there were around 43 680 conversations around the speech. That’s not bad. It was certainly enough to make it a top trending topic in the country, but it’s nothing compared to the 345 964 conversations that took place around SONA. That’s understandable. SONA does have a much wider scope and, over the past couple of years, has included heightened theatrics. And while SONA generally takes place after working hours, the budget is announced during the middle of the working day.

As was the case with SONA, much of the social media conversation took place during the actual speech and had died down almost completely by late evening.

Leading up to the Budget Speech, YouKnow says, there was some fluctuation in the sentiment towards the speech itself. On the day of the speech, 18% of the conversation was positive, 21% was negative and the bulk (62%) was neutral and just sharing of information.

Interestingly, sentiment towards the speech seems to have become increasingly polarised year-on-year. According to YouKnow, the predominant trend is that of growing positivity (11% growth trend) and a small (2%) growth in negativity. Neutral conversation has declined 12%.

Looking specifically at the speech topics discussed by the community we see the biggest topics were taxation as well as the Minister’s firm approach to parastatals (both 14%).

Read more: This sign language interpreter had the best time during #SONA2016

Job Creation (12%) received the next most online conversation due to the Ministers focus on SMME being the mechanism through which jobs will be created.

Despite increased investment in the sector, education only received 6% of the overall conversation. Similarly, the Minister’s steps to tighten financial management and sound financial practices also received a fairly low 6%.

Outside of topics from the speech itself, we see that Minister Gordhan himself was the biggest topic of conversation (at 17% of the total). The majority of this discussion was related to his speech quality (positive) and small mannerisms noticed by the community.

When looking at the broader interests of those contributing to the Budget Speech conversation there is a clear interest (and bias vs the rest of South Africa) in Financial Services, Financial Markets and Personal Finance.

Geographically, Gauteng was the largest driver of conversation (at 65%) followed by the Western Cape (19%) and KZN (8%) – an important point given their relative financial importance to South Africa as a whole.