
The double triumph of David Popovici, the 20-year-old Romanian swimmer who won gold in the 100m and 200m freestyle events at the World Swimming Championships in Singapore, triggered a high volume of online reactions, with praise in the local specialized press, enthusiastic reports and waves of emotion in social media, as well as technical comparisons in international publications. According to the data identified and analyzed by NewsVibe, an AI media monitoring platform, in the last 10 days there have been more than 4000 references to David Popovici in influential Romanian web and social media sources, a quarter of them (1,094 mentions) being published only on July 31, when he won the gold medal in the 100m freestyle. The cumulative impact of the mentions is estimated at over 76 million views.
Graphic NewsVibe. Evolution in the number of mentions of David Popovici and their total impact over the last 10 days
Pdominate sources
The top of the sources that have published the most online content about David Popovici is authoritatively dominated by sports-specific sources, among which the Facebook page Fanatik.ro and the websites Prosport.ro and Digi Sport, all with over 100 mentions, stand out. The extra-sporting impact of its performance is also visible through the news or generalist sources that populate this top, such as G4Media or Libertatea (over 50 mentions each).
Grafic NewsVibe. Top relevant web sources that referenced David Popovici in the last 10 days
Top keywords mentioned
Central descriptive elements pertaining to David Popovici's performance were, as was only natural, the main terminological landmarks in recent references to him: the competition in which he participated, the World Swimming Championships, their venue - Singapore, as well as the main competitors in the events in which the Romanian athlete won medals (Pan Zhanle, Jack Alexy, Kyle Chalmers, Luke Hobson).
Grafic NewsVibe. Top entities mentioned in the context of references to David Popovich in the last 10 days
Evaluating the tone of communication
The NewsVibe platform has created an advanced sentiment analysis system that uses artificial intelligence, specially trained algorithms, and LLM-like language models to detect nuances of tone - favorable, unfavorable, or neutral - in the context of references to entities relevant to an online conversation.
Graphic NewsVibe. Top entities mentioned in a positive (in green) or negative (in red) context when referring to David Popovici, in the last 10 days
In the case of the online conversation about David Popovici, what stands out above all is the overwhelming majority of entities mentioned positively in the context of public references to the Romanian swimmer.
Many of them stand out in terms of frequency, including references to his girlfriend, Taisia Nițuleasa, his parents - Georgeta Popovici and Mihai Popovici, as well as his coach, Adrian Rădulescu. Camelia Potec, former champion and president of the Romanian Swimming Federation, as well as Constantin Popovici, who won a bronze medal in the high jump, and Denis Popescu, another Romanian competitor, also received a positive tone in the online content published.
From the perspective of the negatively-known entities, we note the frequent references to Pan Zhanle, considered Popovici's main rival, who missed the 100m freestyle final. Stefan Ioan Gherghel, a former Romanian performance swimmer, appears on this list with his Facebook post considered controversial and critical of the champion, whom he advises, for example, to participate in relay events. "Suveranistas" are part of this conversation because of the multitude of references in online content about David Popovici to supporters of George Simion who have allegedly posted hostile comments against the athlete because of his voting choice in the presidential election.
Emotional harm
A high volume of social media posts have included emoji illustrations to convey emotions associated with David Popovich's recent performances. Among these, the most visible ones referred to national pride (the tricolor), affection (the heart, in various representations), congratulations (applause), victory (the gold medal). Overall the images portrayed an emotional atmosphere of competition and intensity of feelings.
Grafic NewsVibe. Top emoji used on Facebook in conversations about David Popovich, over the past 10 days
In summary, the online conversation about David Popovici's latest achievements has once again demonstrated the ability of his figure to generate excitement and emotion in the digital space, going beyond the realm of specialized publications.
*****Synthesis realized with the help of a data feed provided by the media monitoring platform NewsVibe Romania. The analysis, data and images presented were enhanced with the help of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence tools.