Media Monitoring Africa and Code for South Africa’s School of Data have partnered to create an interactive tool that tracks the top Twitter trends among political parties.

Political party campaigns in the run-up to the 2016 Municipal Elections have been as intense on social media as they’ve been on the streets. All major parties have had robust Twitter, Facebook and Instagram campaigns with hashtags and Twibbons (a frame you can use in your profile photo) being the most popular.

The interactive tool looks at each political party’s main account as well as those of all its branches, leaders, spokespeople and key people.

The Agenda Setter tool tells us whose tweets have been retweeted and favourited the most, which hashtags have been tweeted the most and who are the top tweeters by number of followers, favourites and lists.

The stats look at tweets posted six months ago, 3o days, a week ago, 12 hours ago and an hour ago.

Retweets and favourites

Retweets and favourites over the last six months have practically been painted red with the EFF leader, Julius Malema and spokesperson, Mbuyiseni Ndlozi dominating the lists.

If you’re wondering what the story behind the yawning baby is, it has to do with the 2016 South African Music Awards and a bit of beef between hip hop artist AKA and the EFF. Malema was referring to the fact that AKA didn’t win a single award that evening.

Stats remained the same over the last one month.

My hashtag is bigger than yours

Whether you follow anyone who is a staunch party member or not, you have probably seen a few political hashtags popping up on the Twitter Trends list.

Among the three major parties, these are the official main hashtags:

ANC: #Asinavalo, #ANCEverywhere, #SIYANQOBA

DA: #ImVotingDA #VoteforChange, #VoteDA

EFF: #EFFWayaWaya, #OurLastHope

The DA has dominated on the hashtags front, with its #MashabaForMayor, #VoteForChange and #ImVotingDA taking the top three most tweeted hashtags over six months spot.

Over the past month, #ImVotingDA has by far dominated the trends list, followed closely by #VoteForChange and #SIYANQOBA.

Most followed accounts

Julius Malema leads the pack with over 1.13 million followers, followed closely behind by Helen Zille, with over 979 000 followers.

Leader of the United Democratic Movement (UDM), Bantu Holomisa, has accumulated 3 622 favourites on his account.

You can check out the interactive tool, as well as more data on which journalists and media houses have been leading Twitter trends on NewsTools.

[Image – EFF]