March Madness is here and it’s already leading to plenty of social media conversation. The Univ. of South Carolina’s Social Media Insights Lab has debuted its “College Sports Pulse” rankings for men’s college basketball on the heels of Selection Sunday. The rankings are being generated through a partnership between South Carolina and Sports Business Journal and will be featured in SBJ throughout the tournament.
The Pulse analyzes millions of posts across major social media platforms to measure how much attention each team is generating in the national social media conversation and how fans are reacting to it (positive or negative).
Three key measures -- net sentiment, volume (number of posts) and engagements (likes, shares, etc.) -- are gathered through the process before being run through a proprietary formula that determines overall influence on a 0-100 scale.
A score of 100 does not represent a “perfect score,” but reflects the school that generated the strongest overall performance in the dataset for that window -- not because it represents a maximum or perfect value. The index is scaled so that the No. 1 team each week is set to 100, and all other teams are scored relative to that leader.
“Championship wins, seeding debates, bracket reactions and even tournament snubs can all shape the social media narrative,” said Clay Owen, professor of practice in the University of South Carolina’s College of Information and Communications. “The Pulse helps capture those moments and quantify which teams are capturing the attention of fans nationwide.”
This week’s Top 10, which included data compiled between March 10 and 16, was topped by Duke by a wide margin, followed by Liberty, St. John’s, Gonzaga and Houston.
- Duke -- 100.0
- Liberty -- 87.8
- St. John’s -- 82.2
- Gonzaga -- 80.4
- Houston -- 79.7
- Santa Clara -- 76.9
- UConn -- 73.8
- Virginia -- 70.0
- Utah State -- 68.1
- UCLA -- 67.4
Duke’s first-place slot was fueled by its ACC Championship win over Virginia, followed by its earning the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament.
Liberty, meanwhile, generated significant discussion following the Flames’ loss to Missouri State in the Conference USA Championship game as fans debated their NCAA Tournament chances. The team did not make the field and will head to the NIT with a 25-7 record.
Other nuggets in this week’s rankings included:
- St. John’s generated its share of traffic and discussion largely centered on the Johnnies’ selection as a No. 5 seed despite throttling UConn in the Big East title game.
- Houston fans were highly optimistic about the Cougars’ chances of a run after falling to Florida in last year’s national championship.
