Following the sudden death of Boyzone singer Stephen Gately, a subsequent article written by Jan Moir of the Daily Mail, was criticised by the social masses, had advertising pulled and saw a record number of complaints received by the Press Complaints Commission for a single article.
We used RBH Radar to provide some data on the reactions prior and post Jan Moirs article ‘A Strange, lonely and troubling death’ (Here on referred to as the article) for the Daily Mail.
In the week leading up to the article, Jan Moir had received a total of 4 comments in relation to articles she had written.
However, following the release of the article on the Daily Mail website, this one article saw an explosion of comments, totalling 1,363. An increase of 33,975%.
Sentiment prior to the article was relatively positive, with subject reference around ‘Daily Mail’ and ‘Jan Moir’ receiving 51% positive comments.
Post article, Jan’s view saw negative sentiment by subject refere nce rise to 77%, an increase of 26% with key topics of discussion including ‘homophobic’, ‘complaints’, ‘disgusting’ also seeing negative sentiment.
Source’s of the backlash to Jan’s article saw Microblogs such as Twitter leading the way as readers flocked to get their thoughts across, as well as the increase in comments on blogs including comments left on the actual article itself – which has since seen the Daily Mail suspend any further comments from being left!
Maybe in future Jan Moir will think twice about how she expresses her view on topics of a sensitive nature, or maybe not. But one thing that is certain, we will be there to report on the effects it has in the social sphere!
