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The purpose of this piece of research, realized in partnership with MS&L Group, is to shed light on the impact the financial, economic and social crisis that emerged in 2008 has had on the reputations of corporations, banks and governments.

Over a period spanning from November 2009 to February 2010, our research reveals perceptions that have the online opinion leaders from six countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and China.

Key findings:

- A state of ruptured trust: banks and Corporations are seen as reckless, fraudulent and disconnected from reality whilst Governments around the world are blamed for their inaction or their inability to rein in wrong-doing financial corporations.

- Banks are (still) to blame: in all countries surveyed, banks are chiefly blamed. Their actions and policies are designated as direct causes of the crisis. Moreover, they are criticised for keeping the bad habits (lack of transparency, over-sized bonuses, etc.) that led the world to plunge into its worst crisis since second world war.

- Corporations stand in the shadow of trust: although corporations, with the exception of banks, are not particularly distrusted, they are not particularly trusted either. Moreover, whereas different categories of non-corporate individuals are trusted to help economies and societies move out of the crisis, CEOs are almost never.

- Governments did not & do not act appropriately: when Governments are blamed (in some countries more than corporations, i.e. FR & US), it is mostly for the blind eye they turned on the bank’s actions and for their continued inability to enforce new and efficient regulations.

- Governments standing “between banks and the pitchforks”, for how long? In this context, Governments around the world may end up heeding Barack Obama’s word and siding with public opinion against banks.

- Back to the basics of trust: all in all, it appears opinions leaders are expressing a need for more conservative behaviours and more personal relationships (through individuals such as community managers or stakeholders managers) with corporations or governments.

- Trusting whom? Individuals such as experts, political leaders, peers or civil society actors such as NGOs are more easily trusted than corporate entities (along with their CEOs) or governments. Furthermore, corporations and governments are going to be judged upon their ability to play their roles (e.g. Regulating for governments or Fuelling the economy for banks).

You would like to learn more? Download the research report and contact us

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For everyone attending (in the flesh or via Twitter and other means) the PDF Europe, here’s linkfluence’s presentation about the European political web, its structure and dynamics, and the level of interest of different national political communities for the designation of the first President of the European Council. More explanations and details coming today as an update to this post…

UPDATE  & DETAILS (21/11/09)

Let’s get to the bottom of things, shall we.

First, what exactly is included in the map of the Eurosphere. Inside each of the spheres included in this preliminary piece of research (which rests on the analysis of 4 European countries, namely France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands and a specific European-affairs sphere), there are communities of political bloggers and portals (i.e. communities whose members are affiliated to a given party or clearly advocating a political platform, represented in shades of blue), communities of journalists and experts (shades of green), communities of political pundits commenting on public issues without a clear or distinctive party line (under the label “opinion”, shades of red), media websites (shades of orange), trade unions (shades of purple), think tanks (light blue), institutions (websites of public bodies or international organisations, brown), NGOs and activists (grey).

Second, how do we explore and segment the social web and build maps of online communities in general, and of the political Eurosphere in particular. According to theories and concepts drawn from sociology and the social graph field (see this research paper we published at ESOMAR for a lot more details), we use proprietary web crawlers and algorithms to reveal clusters of websites (blogs, social networks, forums, etc.) that flock together and form true communities whose members listen to and influence one another, mainly around their shared topics of interest (politics in a broad sense for the Eurosphere). The distance between websites (in a given community) and between communities (on a given map like the Eurosphere) simply reveal the density of their interactions. The closer they are, the more they engage each other (or engage the same websites around them, meaning that two websites or two communities may not engage each other but may interact with pretty much the same websites around them), the further away they are, the less they engage each other in conversations. We base ourselves on these concepts to draw conclusions as to the dynamics of the social web and the Eurosphere in particular.

Finally, we also conduct opinion research by way of monitoring all the public conversations happening inside the communities we have mapped. This is how we are able to measure quantitatively and analyse qualitatively different items of perception, interest or judgement.

All the findings of our preliminary piece of research (which will be updated in the coming months) can be found in the PDF file below. Here’s a summary:

Map & Analysis of the European political web

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