Shannon Eastin made history Thursday night as the first woman ever to referee an NFL game. She threw five penalty flags in the preseason matchup between the San Diego Chargers and Green Bay Packers. Her hat and whistle from the game will now be shipped to the Pro Football Hall of Fame to immortalize her achievement.
But how did the Twitter peanut gallery take to seeing the first female ref prowl NFL sidelines?
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To find out, we tapped the social analytics firm Topsy to track the volume and mood of Twitter chatter before, during and after the game. The term "Shannon Eastin" was mentioned about 2,700 times during that span, according to the data, with mentions peaking near the game's kickoff. We can see how the buzz ebbed and grew in this chart:
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Positive mentions consistently outpaced negative sentiment, but negative sentiment increased over the course of the game. The chart below shows the overall sentiment score for "Shannon Eastin" during the game, and we can see that it decreases from just above 80 to just below. But that doesn't mean tweeters soured on her; sentiment remained overwhelmingly positive despite the relative dip.
This chart sheds a little more light, showing how positive and negative mentions compared over the course of the game. We see the gap decrease as the overall sentiment score for "Shannon Eastin" dips.
Why the decrease? We're not entirely sure, but one hypothesis is the tweeting masses transitioned over the course of the game from exalting Eastin as a groundbreaker to critiquing her performance and reacting to her calls as they would with any other ref. And we all know referees aren't always Mr. (or now Ms.) Popularity.
No matter the slight shift in sentiment, though, Eastin grabbed a significant share of the Twitter conversation during the game -- especially for a non-player. At one point, Eastin accounted for eight percent of the total conversation including the terms "Shannon Eastin," "Chargers" and "Packers." In the chart below that tracks the entire game, the light green top section represents "Shannon Eastin," the darker green middle section represents "Chargers," and the blue bottom section represents "Packers."
Did people in your Twitter network discuss the NFL's first female ref? What was that conversation like? Share with us in the comments below.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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