Social Media Interest Lowest for Third Debate

By Steve Safran 

Screen Shot 2016-10-20 at 11.27.06 AM

The third debate was the least social of the bunch, according to Nielsen, which is out with its Social Content Rankings. In fact, social interactions dropped off after each debate. The first debate saw 83 million interactions across Facebook and Twitter. The second debate scored 61 million. And Wednesday’s third debate saw another dropoff, getting 53 million interactions.

Here are some of Nielsen’s findings:

Advertisement
  • 16.9 million people in the U.S. interacted with social media in some way related to the Presidential Debate.
  • Activity was hottest between 10:15 p.m. and 10:29 p.m. ET. That’s when the candidates were talking about accepting (or not) the outcome of the election, among other things.
  • Each person tweeting about the debate did so an average of seven times.
  • Facebook uniques strongly skewed female: There were 41.5 million interactions on Facebook. 62% of people who interacted with the debate were women.

Nielsen defines interactions as “original social media posts related to a linear TV episode and the engagement with that original content.

 

 

Advertisement