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Today we launch our second tech trends report for Ireland which analyses the moving and shaking of tech trends across leading Irish publications between the period 1st June 2019 to 30th May 2020. Read our analysis below, or head straight to the new report here.
This report highlights the most and least popular trends in tech is aimed at PR professionals and journalists with an interest in technology, innovation and the wider media landscape. It’s been a disruptive year for Irish media, one which included Brexit, a General Election, and a global pandemic. With such a high level of significant stories in the news, it’s not surprising that tech coverage in Ireland has experienced a somewhat modest decline.
Our research reveals the total volume of tech coverage across Ireland has decreased by 1.74% from 42,219 to 41,485 articles across 37 tech topics between the period 1st June 2019 to 30th May 2020 compared to the same period the previous year. The decrease in tech coverage comes at a time when newsroom resources are dwindling with further job losses announced over the past 12 months coupled with a busy news agenda and the closure or scaling back of some major titles.
The ‘COVID-19 effect’ is very visible, with topics such as video conferencing and remote working recording the highest surges in coverage of 274% and 453% respectively along with Virtual Conferencing which largely didn’t feature in any publications in 2018. Outside of COVID-19 influence, the only other notable coverage increase was with respect to Esports which saw an increase of coverage of 67%.
The mix of popular tech trends has also seen a significant shift as the COVID19 effect continues to turn previously unknown companies and topics into household names and issues. Tech trends such as virtual conferencing and remote working have surged since COVID-19 first took hold. It remains to be seen if these trends will remain in the spotlight post COVID-19.
More interestingly, data protection took the top spot as the most popular tech topic in Ireland in 2020, accounting for more than 22% of the share of voice when it comes to tech coverage. Compared to the previous year, coverage of data protection surged by more than 175% from 3,310 to 9,130.
The remaining popular topics this year included gaming (3,410 articles) in second place and artificial intelligence (3,110 articles) in 3rd place with Ecommerce (2,250 articles) and cybersecurity (2,160 articles) taking 4th and 5th place. All of these topics saw a decline in coverage and share in voice due to the COVID-19 effect.
Share of voice has declined for each of the other most popular topics, ranging between 12-20% but it was Artificial Intelligence that saw the largest decline of more than 42% from 5,370 knocking it from top spot in the previous year.
Artificial intelligence, while still ranking as one of the most popular tech topics in Ireland, saw the largest decline in coverage when taking into account the volume of coverage, which was down more than 42%.
Blockchain also experienced a sizeable drop in coverage down 52% from 2,350 to 1,130 articles, while its cousin cryptocurrency saw a drop of 36% down from 1,230 to 792. Other notable declines include drones down 26% from 2,400 to 1,770 and cybersecurity down 20% from 2,690 to 2,160.
If you are interested in trends across other markets, we have recently released additional tech trends reports for Singapore, United Kingdom and Hong Kong. To view all our reports, take a look at our Tech Trend Reports page here, where you can also subscribe to be the first to know when we release another report.
