Last night, August 19th 2013, the first half of the 2013 Rose of Tralee took place. 16 of 32 finalists were interviewed on stage by host for the evening Dáithí Ó’Sé, in front of a live audience in The Dome in Tralee, Co Kerry. As people around Ireland tuned into the live broadcast on RTÉ One, people took to Twitter to share their thoughts and opinions on all aspects of the evening.
Olytico monitored and analysed the conversation around the hashtag ‘#roseoftralee’ and the phrase ‘Rose of Tralee’. The other common hashtag on the evening was ‘#rot’, but this term brought back large volumes of non-Rose related content, so it was omitted for the purpose of the following analysis.
Key numbers
Based on tweets published between 8pm and 11.35pm (duration of broadcast)
Total: 21,424 tweets
Peak of 434 tweets per minute – following the live proposal
Top words included proposal and beard.
Minute by Minute
The graph below provides a minute by minute breakdown of tweets published during the show (click on the icon on the top right of the chart to view in full-screen):
Peak 1 – 8:06pm
The broadcast began at 8pm, and there was an immediate spike in conversation online, with the frequency rising to over 200 tweets per minute by 8.06pm.
Peak 2 – 8:57pm
The average then steadied to less than 100 tweets per minute up to 8.40pm, and the arrival on stage of the New Orleans Rose, Molly Molloy. What followed was the highlight of the evening, a proposal on live television, which caused the biggest spike on Twitter, with the tweet rate rising to a peak of 430 tweets per minute at 8.57pm.
Peak 3 – 10:26pm
Brittany Killion, the Philadephia Rose, caused the third biggest spike in tweets on the night, with her version of ‘Part of your World’ from Disney’s The Little Mermaid.
Peak 4 – 10:48pm
Bridget Haines, the Darwin Rose, caused the second biggest spike of the evening on Twitter, as she read a bedtime story to Dáithí Ó Sé on stage.
Word Cloud
When we remove the terms ‘Rose of Tralee’ and ‘#roseoftralee’ from the results, we’re left with the most commonly occurring words used yesterday evening:
Picking the winner
Several bookmakers – PaddyPower and Boylesports – have Edwina Guckian – the Leitrim Rose – as second favourite, but the conversation on Twitter suggests she may go one better. Leitrim is the most frequently occurring Rose, and her talent – Sean Nós – also features in the cloud above.
Part Two
The second part of the Rose of Tralee airs tonight on RTÉ One at 8pm, with 16 more contestants taking to the stage. It will be hard to match the excitement and drama of a live proposal, but with the announcement of the winner, expect another busy evening on Twitter.