Some have called him the man of perestroika, some the man who destroyed communism and some still the man of peace.
Whatever the case may be,
Gorbachev
's death has had a wide media coverage all over the world, either because he was the last leader of the Soviet Union or because of the current situation linked to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
DataMediaHub and ANSA
analyzed the online conversations (social platforms, online news, forums and blogs), in Italian, relating to the death of the former Russian leader, to understand the emotional impact on people of this event.
From the day before yesterday to midnight of yesterday August 31, a total of almost 34 thousand citations for Gorbachev, by more than 5 thousand unique authors, whose contents involved (like + reaction + comments and shares) around 249 thousand people.
The maximum peak was recorded between 22:34 and 23:00 on 30 August when the news began to circulate, as shown by the “virality map” of the diffusion of the ANSA article on the subject.
Volume of conversations that generated a potential reach, the so-called “opportunity to be seen” of over 161 billion.
Potential reach that is reasonably estimated to be an effective reach of over 8 billion impressions, of exposures to Gorbachev-related content, gross of duplications.
The emotion
for his death was strong and almost unanimous.
And in fact 31.5% of negative sentiment, of emotions and, in fact, negative feelings contained in online verbalizations by people, is to be understood for the sorrow linked to his disappearance.
This is not the case, however, for the provocative declarations of Marco Rizzo who tweeted a bottle of champagne to celebrate, stating that "It was since December 26, 1991 that I had waited to uncork the best bottle I had", only to then backtrack partially saying that it had been "A Dadaist provocation."
However it was overwhelmed by thousands of negative comments and, as the word cloud shows, the word cloud with the 120 terms most associated with online conversations on the subject, the subject of much debate, with widespread negative connotation of disdain for his words, online and on social networks.