Miah, A. (2013) London 2012 Cultural Olympiad Social Media Data Analysis, Institute of Cultural Capital.  

The top findings are:

  • The #London2012festival Twitter hashtag was a gateway for over 500 cultural
  • organizationsto promote themselves during 2012.
  • The key drivers of London 2012 Festival social media activity were LOCOG Twitter
  • accounts (organization and individual).
  • Some of the smallest arts organizations(in terms of social media presence) in the UK
  • produced some of the largest amount of social media traffic eg. Lakes Alive.
  • Ruth Mackenzie was the second-most mentioned individual on #London2012Festival,
  • after Yoko Ono, demonstrating the value of personalized leadership in social media
  • relations.
  • Across the social media assets, @London2012Fest reached the same degree of influence
  • as Arts Council England (each had 66 Klout1
  • score) and exceeded them in terms of
  • absolute followers (over 42,000, which was more than Jonnie Peacock’s Twitter account
  • by the end of the Paralympic Games.
  • The @London2012Fest twitter account was the largest Cultural Olympiad brand on
  • social media.
  • The primary London 2012 Twitter assets (eg. @London2012 or @SebCoe) worked well for
  • London 2012 Festival in advance of the Games, but were not optimally sharing content
  • for Festival during the Games.
  • Collectively, projects associated with London 2012 Festival created new communities of
  • arts audiences, though Festival was not always visually ortextually associated with the
  • project.
  • Outdoor, mass spectacle events were the most successful in terms of social media traffic.
  • With the exception of the Guardian, traditional media did not do very much to promote
  • London 2012 Festival through social media.
  • The @London2012Fest twitter account was the second most followed LOCOG identity,
  • after @London2012, exceeding the follower count of both mascots.