Twitter on Poland at the Euro 2016 - some statistics - part 1 - group stage

05 Aug 2016.7 minutes read


A few days have passed since our representation ended its journey in the
European Football Championship. Just as millions of Poles in front of
their television sets, so did the programmers from SoftwareMill become
emotionally engaged in the performances of Robert Lewandowski and
his teammates. An additional effect of those emotions, was what happened on Twitter
in the context of the performances of the Polish team during the Euro.

We have divided the entire analysis, due to its length, into two parts:

  1. The first part discusses the matches of the Polish team during the group stage

  2. The second part describes the knockout phase

In short about the method

We have created a few programs which collected tweets marked with
hashtags related to the matches of the Polish team (for example for the
Poland-Portugal match these were #POLPOR, #PORPOL, #POL #POR) during five
days surrounding the match.

Due to Twitter’s API limitations, we do understand that the data may not
be 100% precise, but it does show the most important and interesting
moments on Twitter in the context of the matches played by the Polish
team during the Euro 2016.

We have adopted the following approaches in listing the most popular tweets for each match:

  • We count the sum of RTs and likes for a given tweet

  • We divide the top 5 tweets into Polish tweets and other, in order
    to avoid a situation in which tweets in the English language would dominate in the collective list

  • Tweets by official club or organization accounts (UEFA, ZPN, etc.) are not taken into consideration

Poland - Northern Ireland 1 - 0

Top 5 most popular polish tweets about the match

1

2

3

4

5

Top 5 most popular tweets from the abroad about the match

1

2

3

4

5

Here, as you can see, the fans’ singing clash with, a surprising inclusion
of the song about the green cucumber, referencing the color of our first
rival’s sportswear during the Euro, has been the most exhilarating moment.
Even foreign Twitter users appreciated the behavior of the fans of both
teams prior to the match.

Abroad, Matt Pokora - a French singer which has roots in our country - clearly
declared himself as rooting for our representation during this match.
Celia Jaunat, the partner of Grzegorz Krychowiak, also found herself on
our list. I wonder, for whom would the pair root, if it were a match
between Poland and France.

Number of tweets during the match

tweets-about-Poland-games

(each rectangle shows the number of tweets within a three minute period: 0-3, 3-6 minutes of the match and so forth)

This graph shows us the reactions of Twitter users during the match. Comparing the highest fluctuations with the events on the field, we can easily notice that these correspond to:

  • The beginning of the game

  • The 51st minute of the match when Arkadiusz Milik scores a goal

  • The 95th minute, when the referee whistles for the last time and the match ends with the first historical victory of Poland during the European Football Championship

Germany - Poland 0 - 0

Top 5 most popular polish tweets about the match

1

2

3

4

5

Top 5 most popular tweets from the abroad about the match

1

2

3

4

5

After this match, the happiness of the Presidential Pair has been as enormous
as if the Polish team had won. And that is because the rival was, after all,
the current world champion. Although, as it can be seen in other popular tweets,
some fans even optimistically bet on the Polish team winning the match.

The ranking of foreign tweets has been dominated by those of the German players
themselves. Which just shows how popular they are in the world, and how popular
is Twitter with our western neighbors. Thomas Mueller right after the game
acknowledged the hard to achieve tie in the match with the Polish team.

Number of tweets during the match

tweets-about-Poland-games 

(each rectangle shows the number of tweets within a three minute period: 0-3, 3-6 minutes of the match and so forth)

Because there were no goals, there were also lower fluctuations of activity on Twitter than during
the match with Northern Ireland. But after comparing with the match report,
there is some correlation with what happened on the field:

  • Beginning of the match

  • 5th minute: Goetze shoots above the crossbar after a cross by Draxler

  • 45th and 46th minutes: the beginning of the second half, and the moment in which there were only centimeters separating Milik from putting the ball in the net with this head

  • 68th and 69th minute: first Milik doesn’t land a kick at a ball passed on the ground from the wing, and then Fabiański brilliantly saves Oezil’s shot

  • 94th minute: the end of the match and we have 4 points after 2 games!

Ukraine - Poland 0 - 1

Top 5 most popular polish tweets about the match

1

2

3

4

5

Top 5 most popular tweets from the abroad about the match

1

2

3

4

5

This match was of a much lesser importance, so the Polish fans were less emotionally engaged
in the events, and thus mostly humoristic tweets appeared on Twitter. Moreover,
because of the still fairly small popularity of Twitter in Ukraine,
there very little foreign tweets. Even more so, at the same time a match
between two much more “tweetable” countries took place – Germany and Northern Ireland

Number of tweets during the match

tweets-about-Poland-games 

(each rectangle shows the number of tweets within a three minute period: 0-3, 3-6 minutes of the match and so forth)

Because there were no goals, there were also lower fluctuations of activity on
Twitter than during the match with Northern Ireland. But after comparing with the match report,
there is some correlation with what happened on the field:

  • The beginning of the match

  • 4th minute: Lewandowski doesn’t score just a few meters from the goal

  • 17th minute: Yarmolenko shots right next to the post

  • 54th minute: Błaszczykowski scores a goal and we are winning 1-0

  • 95th minute: the end of the match and we finish the group stage in second place

Summary

At this point we end the first part of our analysis of tweets and we
invite you to read the second part,
concerning the knockout phase with the Polish team.

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