The data underlines both the strengths and the risks for the Conservatives in choosing Johnson as leader. His public profile and ability to draw attention are unmatched by any of his rivals. Supporters say he is the only senior Tory with the charisma and following to bring the party together and win a general election.

However, Johnson’s celebrity comes with a big downside, as many voters have firmly entrenched negative views of him based on his controversial personal life, his blunders and indiscretions as a frontline politician, the divisive leadership role he played in the 2016 Leave campaign, and the inflammatory things he has said as a newspaper and magazine columnist.

During the leadership campaign, many Westminster observers shrugged off negative stories about Johnson, arguing that no amount of adverse publicity would dent his popularity among the voters that matter most right now, the Tory membership. However, the heightened media scrutiny of him during the campaign could affect perceptions among the wider public.

The data suggests that recent articles which took a deeper look at Johnson’s record as a politician and journalist, resurfacing some of his most embarrassing and controversial moments, have gained a wide audience.

One example: Max Hastings, a former editor of the Daily Telegraph, who was Johnson’s boss for a while, wrote an article in the Guardian arguing that Johnson was cowardly, morally bankrupt and “utterly unfit to be prime minister”. It was shared 144,000 times.

And an article on the Business Insider website piece headlined “Boris Johnson’s long record of sexist, homophobic and racist comments” was shared nearly 95,000 times.

One of Johnson’s main outlets in the media is his weekly column in the Daily Telegraph, for which he is paid £275,000 a year by the newspaper. Although it is widely followed in Westminster, its influence on social media does not appear to be as great as it is offline.

Although the Telegraph has published eight of Johnson’s columns since May announced she was leaving Downing Street, only one of them made it into the top 200 political articles: a column on June 23 insisting that the UK will leave the EU on October 31.

Nigel Farage’s column for the Telegraph tends to get shared more on social media, the data shows.

Of Johnson's domestic policy proposals, the one which made the biggest impression on social media was his promise to cut income tax for high earners. Four of the top 200 articles were about Johnson’s plan to increase the amount at which salary earners must pay the higher income tax rate of 40 percent.

Jeremy Hunt, Johnson’s rival for the Tory leadership, has generated far less buzz on social media, according to the analysis.

Twenty-one of the top 200 articles were about Hunt, fewer than half as many as Johnson, although the heightened scrutiny around the Tory leadership contest meant that Hunt got more shares than opposition leaders like Corbyn and Farage.

Hunt’s biggest moment of the campaign, according to the sharing data, was when he suggested he would legalise fox hunting if he becomes prime minister, unexpectedly reviving a highly emotive issue that hurt Theresa May among some demographics in the 2017 general election.

One story in the Daily Mirror on July 3, “Tory leadership hopeful Jeremy Hunt admits he wants to bring back fox hunting,” was the 12th most shared article of the leadership campaign and the most viral involving Hunt, with 105,000 shares.