News Focus: The Catholic Church has a new Pope - online impact
The proceedings at the Vatican after the death of Pope Francis - the funeral of the former Pontiff, the preparations for the Conclave, the presentation of the favored candidates to occupy the Pontifical Chair and, finally, the election of the new leader of the Catholic Church - have received extensive coverage in the international and national media, including the Romanian online space.
According to data analyzed with NewsVibe, an AI-supported media intelligence software, in the most relevant online sources in Romania, in this interval, there were almost 12,000 mentions of the "Pope", generating an estimated 170 million views.
By far, the peak moments for references to the leader of the Catholic Church were recorded at the time of Francis' death and on the day of the Conclave's election of the new Pontiff. A notable spike in mentions was also recorded on the day of Pope Francis' funeral, although the number of mentions was lower than the two aforementioned moments.
Grafic NewsVibe. Evolution in the number of mentions of the Pope and their total impact from April 20 to May 12, 2025
Pdominate sources
The online sources that mentioned the analyzed topic most frequently are exclusively mainstream generalist and news platforms, plus Facebook pages belonging to such media sources. Among these sources, the Facebook pages Antena 3, Stiri Antena 3 CNN, Digi24 and Sinteza Zilei Oficial stand out, as well as the websites Adevărul, stiripesurse.ro, Libertatea, Hotnews.ro and Evz.ro, each with over 120 mentions. None of the sources in the top 15 had fewer than 100 mentions of the Pope.
Grafic NewsVibe. Top relevant web sources that covered the Pope from April 20 to May 12, 2025
Top keywords mentioned
The most commonly included keywords in online content referencing the Pope are: Pope Francis (the late Supreme Pontiff), Vatican (the site of the Papal See), The Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV (the pontifical name chosen by Cardinal Prevost), Robert Francis Prevost (the American cardinal elected the new head of the Catholic Church).
There are also associations with international political figures, such as Donald Trump or JD Vance, but also from Romania, such as Marcel Ciolacu or Ilie Bolojan. These associations are determined either by the messages of those mentioned, by their presence at the funeral of Pope Francis, or by controversial gestures (such as the image posted by Donald Trump on social networks, dressed in papal clothes).
Grafic NewsVibe. Top entities mentioned in the context of mentions of the Pope, April 20 - May 12, 2025
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.
Grafic NewsVibe. Automated assessment of the tone of online conversation about the Pope from April 20 to May 12, 2025
Evaluation of the sentiment score associated with mentions about the Pope over the past three weeks indicates a superiority of positive tone in online conversations compared to negative tone, even though the majority of content on the topic (85%) is categorized as neutral, defined by descriptive or factual terminology.
The fact that mentions with a negative tone are estimated at only 3% can be explained by the appreciative way in which the online conversation around the name of Pope Francis, recognized and appreciated in many areas, has been conducted.
Emoji and hashtags
The most commonly used emoji in Facebook posts mentioning the Pope reflect emotions and attitudes such as sadness, grief, mourning, mourning, peace, prayer, as well as categories such as news or breaking news. It suggests that the use of emoji in social media posts was predominantly associated with emotional reactions to Pope Francis' death.
Grafic NewsVibe. Top emoji used on Facebook in conversations about the pope from April 20 to May 12, 2025
The most frequently used hashtags in Facebook posts that mentioned the Pope are #vatican, #papafrancisc, #papa, #papa, #conclav, #news or #news. They reflect the concentration of posts on news related to the death of Pope Francis.
Grafic NewsVibe. Top hashtags used on Facebook in conversations about the pope from April 20 to May 12, 2025
Local resources
There are about 2,800 mentions of the Pope in the most relevant local online sources. Interest is more pronounced in counties with a higher number of Catholic believers, such as Alba, Sibiu, Satu Mare, Covasna, Iași.
On the other hand, the lowest interest is registered in the sources in the counties located in the South of Moldavia and South of Muntenia.
Grafic NewsVibe. Relevant local sources that mentioned the pope from April 20 to May 12, 2025
The interest shown in online sources in Romania for events at the Vatican underscores the global and emotional importance of the transition in the leadership of the Catholic Church, reflected by extensive mentions and a predominantly positive tone
*****Syndicated via a monitoring feed provided by NewsVibe Romania. The analysis, data and images presented were enhanced with Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence tools.
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