'Strong' ad generates social media buzz for Perry, mostly negative

Texas Gov. Rick Perry was the most talked-about Republican presidential candidate on social media sites from Dec. 7 through Dec. 13, but most of the attention was negative, according to a report from Fizziology, a firm that measures social media presence.

The company attributes Perry's buzz to his controversial "Strong" television ad, in which he touts his religious faith and bashes gay members of the military.

"I'm not ashamed to be a Christian, but you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know that there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school," Perry says in the ad. "As president, I'll end Obama's war on religion and I'll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage."

 Perry was mentioned 221,296 times on Twitter, Facebook and certain blogs, according to Fizziology.

"Not only did this ad rain negativity upon Perry in social media, it also provided many people with content to create parodies of the video," the company explained in a report. "With this ad dominating conversation, his supporters were quiet, with very few if any signs of encouragement."

The report found 75 percent of the social media buzz was negative and only 7 percent was positive.

The "Strong" ad currently has nearly 700,000 "dislikes" and only about 23,000 "likes" on YouTube.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul had the most positive social media buzz among GOP candidates, with 178,519 mentions. About 59 percent of the mentions were positive and only 8 percent were negative, according to the report.

But negative attention might still be better than no attention; Jon Huntsman was the least buzzed-about major candidate, with only 3,505 mentions on social media sites.

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