Pew: Pope’s getting good buzz on Twitter

It’s been nearly a year since the election of Pope Francis, and he’s enjoyed a welcome reception on Twitter.

Between March 2013 and January 2014, 84 percent of conversations about the pope on Twitter were positive in tone, versus just 16 percent negative, according to a new analysis by Pew Research Center.

That’s far better than the man he replaced, Pope Benedict. In the final year of Benedict’s papacy, just 30 percent of Twitter conversations about him were positive, and 70 percent were negative.

So far Pope Francis is also more of a media darling than his predecessor was in his final years of service.

Between March 13 of last year and Jan. 31 of this year, Francis was mentioned 47,738 times in the top 25 most-visited U.S. digital news sources, No. 4 among the world leaders examined by Pew and behind Barack Obama (203,413), the late Nelson Mandela (127,972) and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad (88,417).

That placed the pope ahead of the likes of Hillary Clinton, Vladimir Putin and David Cameron.

By comparison, during the final two years of Pope Benedict’s run he averaged just 18,317 media mentions per year.

For more from Pew on coverage of Pope Francis during his first year, click here.

Tags: pew, pope, pope benedict, Pope Francis, pope twitter, social media, studies, twitter