It’s been difficult to escape the furore over the last week or so surrounding the sexism scandal involving TV presenters Andy Gray and Richard Keys. Compared to previous TV scandals the one thing that has surprised me is the speed at which the scandal developed.

The scandal broke on last Sunday, and both Gray and Keys were out of jobs by Wednesday evening. When compared to other high profile scandals, this was quick, even by the standards of the savage British press.

So what was different about this scandal? Why did the scandal develop so quickly?

It’s easy to see what the difference maker was…. Social Media!

Before the advent of Social Media, the first video, which showed Gray and Keys discussing the appointment of lineswoman Sian Massey for the Wolves-Liverpool game, would have been ‘leaked’ to a newspaper (usually the News Of The World). They would then create a ‘sensational world exclusive’ article about the video. The second video, which resulted in Gray being sacked, would have been released as a second ‘exclusive’ a week later and the third video released another week after that.

Instead of releasing the video to a newspaper, the video was uploaded to YouTube and quickly came to the attention of users. One of the numerous versions of the video has been viewed more than 777,000 times!

There were three key videos featuring Gray and Keys, which were uploaded to YouTube over three days. These videos were then embedded in news articles, linked to from Twitter, Forums and Facebook users, which meant that there was no exclusive for a newspaper, who had the same timeframe to create a story as Social Media users.

What really sparked my interest in this story was when I was sat in the office last Wednesday using the Twitter app TweetDeck to monitor mentions of Richard Keys to see if any new stories came to light. I was amazed at how many updates there were of Keys, especially when he went on to Talk Sport Radio to defend his role and attempt to save his job. The feed I was watching on TweetDeck went absolutely crazy!

Who Were Social Media Users Talking About?

So from this I decided to have a look into the story using our social media monitoring tools. To begin with, I decided to look at five people who had been mentioned in the story during the week. These were Andy Gray, Richard Keys, Sian Massey, Jamie Redknapp, and suspended pitch side reporter Andy Burton.

Surprisingly,  the results showed that Andy Gray has the majority of mentions in the last week – 136,223 (58.2%) and Keys only had 71,533 mentions (30.5%), with minimal mentions for the other parties. The share of these mentions can be seen below:

Looking further into these mentions over a 10 day period helps you to understand the peak in interest in the individuals, as different videos were revealed and the scandal develops into different stages.

As we can see, when the story initially broke on 23 Jan, there is a sharp increase in the mentions of Gray and Keys. The huge increase in mentions for Gray on the 25 Jan relates back to the release of the third video involving Gray, and the confirmation of his sacking by Sky.

What surprises me the most about the number of mentions was the difference between the peak in mentions for Gray’s sacking and the relatively low number of mentions for Keys on the 26^th Jan, when he made his now infamous appearance on Talk Sport. From watching my TweetDeck feed go crazy at the time, I was expecting to see this prove to be the most popular time for mentions during the week.

The results also prove the old adage of today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapper, as we can see from how the number of mentions rapidly decreased after Keys resignation.

So where were Gray and Keys being mentioned on the Social Web?

The pie chart below shows the impact that Twitter now has on the Social Web. Whereas previously it would have been a handful of journalists creating the story and acting as judge, jury and executioner, individuals now have the opportunity to play journalist, and pass a 140 character judgement with 88% of mentions of Gray and Keys being on Twitter.

Before Keys made his appearance on Talk Sport, both Keys and Gray stayed silent. I believe Keys only went on the radio to defend himself due to the huge level of criticism on Twitter. Gone are the days when a star can sit out the storm and hire Max Clifford to spin the story a week later in the papers.

So to all the stars out there, Social Media has moved the goal posts. If you are going to be caught up in a scandal, beware of the Social Media beast!