via Heat Magazine

Is Simon Cowell more loved than hated? What about Cheryl Cole? Taking a further look at the buzz surrounding the culmination of this year’s edition of The X-Factor saga, we were interested to see the context in which the judges were being discussed.

Dannii Minogue, for instance, generates a lot of benign chat from people who are sympathetic to her as a mother. The terms ‘cute’ and ‘pink headphones’ have been in reference to her son’s appearance at a rehearsal, which has been well received on Twitter. Predominantly, however, conversation has been off the back of her fashion choices. People tend to see her as much better dressed than Cheryl Cole. The term ‘dress factor’ was, overall, the most popular term associated with them both. Tweets containing this tag, linked to a Daily Mail article, breaking down their style performance over the course of the series. According to the article, Dannii has outstripped Cheryl, and we’d be inclined to agree. Cheryl’s dresses are consistently too short, and probably contribute to a public perception that she’s little more than a W.A.G. Other terms revolving Cheryl have also been less than kind. References to her ‘fish face’ have been popular, as well as mentions of her embarrassing ‘mum dancing’ when she was upstaged, literally, by her pupil Cher.

Simon Cowell, almost surprisingly, doesn’t attract a large amount of negativity. In fact, he just seems to draw general contention, with ‘:)’ and ‘:(‘ (happy and sad faces), both making it into the list of top sentiment terms. Half of the traffic relating to the judges is, in fact, merely retweets of articles from The Daily Mail or The Sun. It’s difficult to say whether reposting of these articles constitutes agreement with the sentiment, but at any rate, they are the loudest voices in the discussion. Without much basis, these articles speculate over the moods of the judges, describing either Cheryl ‘looking gloomy’ or an on-camera spat between Cowell and Louis Walsh. Who, incidentally, has been attracting negative attention for a racially insensitive comment. Not only this, but Bruce Forsythe has been laying into him, calling him a jumped up ‘karaoke judge’. News of this celebrity feud has boded badly for Walsh, with Forsythe’s comments bouncing across the Twittersphere, and coupled with harsh comments against underdog contestant Cher, he’s made some detractors in the public arena.

Other issues that have cropped up, involve the usual accusations and subsequent refutations of claims that the show is fixed, the news that the show won’t include a sing-off between the finalists, and speculation over who the special guests in the final might be (the Dutch seem pretty interested!), with rumours centering around an appearance from Rihanna or maybe Christina Aguilera.

These rumours were laid to rest as the celebrity duets were announced yesterday.