Fade Street – Social Media Reaction and Interaction

Cici, Vogue, Louise and Dani from Fade Street

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On Thursday 11th November, RTÉ broadcast the first episode of a new reality drama TV series, Fade Street. The series follows the lives of four young Irish women who live and work in Dublin. According to the RTÉ website, “The cast are not actors and do not deliver lines from a script nor provide emotions on demand”.

Central to the success of the show has been the buzz surrounding its launch, much of which has taken place in social media in Ireland. O’Leary Analytics has looked at the coverage surrounding the first episode of the new series, which provides an insight into the role social media now plays in how we consume more traditional media.

Building Momentum

For the last couple of weeks, rumour, gossip and conversation about the new television series has been growing in social media in Ireland. The graph below illustrates the coverage Fade Street has generated on a day-by day basis since the 1st November.

The first peak emerged on 5th November, as RTÉ released a promo clip for the show, which was quickly shared online, and lead to the first trench of tweets and blog posts about the show.

Conversation continued to build in the days leading up to the show, but it peaked on the day of broadcast, with over 670 comments/tweets/posts published all mentioning Fade Street or one of the popular tags, such as #fadestreet or #fadest.

Where the conversations are taking place:

As the bar chart below illustrates, Twitter dominates all other forms of social media coverage in relation to Fade Street. The show itself has a Twitter account as does the aftershow presenter, Conor Behan and while the show was broadcast, hundreds of people joined the conversation, discussing everything from the soundtrack to some of the more interesting quotes.

Second to Twitter, two of the most popular forums for discussion of the show were The People’s Republic of Cork and Beaut.ie

What are people saying:

The cloud below is an illustration of the most frequently occurring words within the conversations involving Fade Street. Of the characters, Vogue features the most often (101 mentions) followed by Louise (47), Cici (28) and Dani (28). Myhome.ie, sponsors of the show, also feature in the coverage (21 mentions). The show clearly divides opinions, but overall the sentiment is far more positive than negative, with Love (53 mentions) beating Hate (21 mentions), and Great (37 mentions) outnumbering Shite (23 mentions).

The Global Aspect

With more and more young people emigrating, it is perhaps not surprising that the conversations about Fade Street have spread far beyond Ireland. The map below illustrates the global spread of coverage the series has enjoyed; the larger the pin, the greater the volume of coverage from that area. Across Europe, the US, Canada and Australia, people are talking about the new series.

Conclusion

Twitter is changing the way we watch television, and this tweet from Sinead Ryan at Presence PR sums it up pretty well – “#xfactor so much more fun with twitter. It’s like watching with a crowd. But having the couch to yourself”. Across Dublin, across Ireland, and across the world, people are tuning in to television shows on their own, but via Twitter, watching together. By using a hashtag – in this case #FadeStreet and #FadeSt were the most popular – they can take part in a stream of consciousness around a television show, with people they may never meet in real life.

The second episode of the series airs tonight at 9pm on RTÉ 2, and the aftershow, Following Fade Street, is available online from 9.30pm.