Peyton’s Presser and the Sheriff rolling back onto Rocky Top for one last dance
by Aman Misra
Fall semester at the University of Tennessee is always a vibe. This year 2023, the anticipation was even more than just cozy weather and coffee on Rocky Top. Former College of Communication and Information (CCI) Speech Communications ’97 graduate Peyton Manning announced that he would be joining CCI as a professor of practice.
CCI Instagram post announcement: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cv7Sat7OPI3/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
It sparked off quite a buzz on August 14th 2023 when the news broke on CCI’s website, later to take off on Sport Media channels across the country. At the Adam Brown Social Media Command Centre (ABSMCC), we wondered if we could use our handy Sprinklr tool to track some of that data on a busy August day when the Sheriff rolled back into town for one more dance. It isn’t hard to tell when CCI went live with their Peyton presser as indicated by volume trend of this topic below!
Sprinklr’s stat attack was just warming up. Manning’s announcement across social media had a whooping 257.26 M reach on August 14th.
Of course it would be worthy to also talk about what were the top themes of discussion in the context of this news report. Alma Mater, CCI, NFL History, Omaha Productions (his media company) all figured prominently in the discussion as illustrated by the pie chart below. Think back on anything you may have posted at the time. Recognize your discourse on the Peyton presser?
Further, drilling down on the most used content type for this story as illustrated below: Photos took the lead with over 65% of the content and it wasn’t surprising to see shared links come in second given that this was a news piece about a national NFL star beloved in Tennessee.
It’s likely that some of those photo shares ALSO included the news link from CCI such as this example from CNN below. On the other hand, Bleacher Report shows a photo only report.
Having said that, it’s also interesting to note that the most important domains which covered the story were news websites. Sounds logical enough, but sometimes these vary based on what you are searching for. The beauty of Sprinklr is it allows you to make tweaks based on specific searches. Highlighted below are the news media which covered the story prominently.
This naturally transitions to the next question that asks: who is sharing these posts across America? Hint: it’s a state with Volunteers and lots of orange. You would expect the east coast media to also pick up on a story like this hence New York figures prominently though behind Texas, California and Florida. Additionally, Professor Manning’s former NFL team towns Indiana and Denver could be buzzing with the news (though curiously enough the latter is not on the state distribution below):
Having looked at content and demographics, it would also be worthwhile to explore how hashtags were used on social media during this communicative event (as we like to refer to it in academia).
It comes as no surprise that Rocky Top related hashtags dominate variations of #VolforLife, #GreatBigOrange, and #Vols. The NFL figures prominently just behind Vols which takes top spot. Curiously, there is a #respond which on closer look really didn’t signify anything in the data.
As Dr Pittman explained in an earlier ABSMCC blog post on stats from THAT Tennessee-Bama game, the algorithm isn’t perfect so take that with a pinch of salt.
While platform vernaculars continue to dictate how we post something, this word cloud below gives a hint of what we post when we think of Peyton’s Presser from 14th August 2023. You might recognize a word or two if you engaged with the communicative event online. This analysis used simply the hashtags #peyton, #manning drilled down to the specific date and times. Imagine using it for a larger data set to help engage immersive storytelling around sporting events nationwide. Another similar story that comes to mind is the famous Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce duo taking the country by storm. Stay tuned for more from this space.