Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A scientific study has attempted to analyse the impact of a recent Leonardo DiCaprio climate speech on Twitter and other social media – and has concluded a DiCaprio speech is better value than a COP conference.
Big Data Sensors of Organic Advocacy: The Case of Leonardo DiCaprio and Climate Change
The strategies that experts have used to share information about social causes have historically been top-down, meaning the most influential messages are believed to come from planned events and campaigns. However, more people are independently engaging with social causes today than ever before, in part because online platforms allow them to instantaneously seek, create, and share information. In some cases this “organic advocacy” may rival or even eclipse top-down strategies. Big data analytics make it possible to rapidly detect public engagement with social causes by analyzing the same platforms from which organic advocacy spreads. To demonstrate this claim we evaluated how Leonardo DiCaprio’s 2016 Oscar acceptance speech citing climate change motivated global English language news (Bloomberg Terminal news archives), social media (Twitter postings) and information seeking (Google searches) about climate change. Despite an insignificant increase in traditional news coverage (54%; 95%CI: -144 to 247), tweets including the terms “climate change” or “global warming” reached record highs, increasing 636% (95%CI: 573–699) with more than 250,000 tweets the day DiCaprio spoke. In practical terms the “DiCaprio effect” surpassed the daily average effect of the 2015 Conference of the Parties (COP) and the Earth Day effect by a factor of 3.2 and 5.3, respectively. At the same time, Google searches for “climate change” or “global warming” increased 261% (95%CI, 186–335) and 210% (95%CI 149–272) the day DiCaprio spoke and remained higher for 4 more days, representing 104,190 and 216,490 searches. This increase was 3.8 and 4.3 times larger than the increases observed during COP’s daily average or on Earth Day. Searches were closely linked to content from Dicaprio’s speech (e.g., “hottest year”), as unmentioned content did not have search increases (e.g., “electric car”). Because these data are freely available in real time our analytical strategy provides substantial lead time for experts to detect and participate in organic advocacy while an issue is salient. Our study demonstrates new opportunities to detect and aid agents of change and advances our understanding of communication in the 21st century media landscape.
Read more: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0159885#ack
I guess we can look forward to jetset climate hero Leonardo DiCaprio being bombarded with even more official honorary climate roles, as well as lavish sponsorship offers from anyone who wants to sell an electric car.
Leotardo Deepcrapio
Jet setting for climate awareness….and publicity. I suppose it beats the Kardashians and Jenners, but not by much.
Searched for tweets including the terms “climate change” or “global warming”
Quick, somebody apply for another Jolly Green Mutant Climate Grant to make sure the Twitterers agree at the 97% level that “CO2 is a greenhouse gas and we’re all gonna die!” Why would their scientific acumen be any different from the “expertise” of the Carboneering Climate Change “Scientists”? QED. And it’s a Consensus of all the “Right People”!
But don’t nobody try to just steal Cook’s and in fact all the Mainstream Climate Scientists’ “proprietary method” above or you’ll face another Frau D charge for trying to be one of the self-anointed Masters Of The Universe – such as the newly inducted Leonardo, hallowed be his name – or at least for Trying To Supplant The King Of The Underworld. [For example, for some Pigs it’s not T-Reason anymore! See James Comey’s new U.S. Code Legal Precedent for being President, ~”Too unsophisticated/not reasonable enough to be Prosecuted.” And credit where it’s due to Saul Alinsky’s teachings. [pbuh] At least ~”Satan got a Kingdom!”]
No, if you want to use the MSCCCS’s and Satan’s Always Short Circuited Method, you’ll be well-greened, but you’ll have to give up your Soul! As even the Pope has responded, “No problem, Naomi.”
What needs to be kept in mind is that one fourth of the kids gradusting have been medicated with psychotropics during their developing years. This is to enable them to sit in rows for tthirteen years in a public school under the teachers’ unions. The rest have also been brain damaged by illegal drugs, and suffer various degrees of mental impairment.
This is largely traceable to the fact that the boomers were listening to an academic Twit named Timothy Leary, and an array of rock Twits who were also pushing drugs.
This is a really critical opportunity for the counter culture to to understand just how top down their movements actually were.
One could suppose the upside of Leo speaking in lieu of COP meetings is a marked reduction in useless travel by world delegates to these annual meetings. Ah, but then what would all these *scientists* do for vacation since they couldn’t possibly go to a nice tropical island paradise on their own dime.
I like it much more when celebs worry climate change and fat people.
Jane Fonda took her work out tape money to fund a campaign with her activist husband, Tom Hayden, to close the nuke plant I worked, Rancho Seco.
I, for one, will never let DiCaprio forget his Chinook gaff. It is beautiful in that it reveals so many levels of lack of understanding about how our atmosphere works. How a Chinook works is a hard question for even seasoned alarmists to explain and incorporate into their understanding.
Hold their feet to the fire.
Stop making stupid people famous.
Every day and in every way, my comparison of modern CAGW alarmists to Scientology becomes more accurate. The Scientologists also use their big celebrity movie star adherents (esp. Tom Cruise) to peddle their influence and recruit new believers. Has Leo DiCaprio become the first Operating Thetan of the Church of CAGW?
I have never understood why actors are regarded as savants. Their sole purpose in life is to repeat lines written by someone else and do as they are told by a director – excellent training for being an expert on everything.
If you want to get a message across then use an actor. An actor does not have to think for his or herself or question what they are told. They are trained to take in anything they read or are told to say. That’s why most of them are in the ‘Green’ camp. They do not have to be basically intelligent. indeed most of them would not pass a test on any subject. So long as they are reasonably good looking and have a good voice they become all-important, at least in their own minds. And dressing for the red carpet to parade like cattle at an agricultural show will help Their only equals are in their absence of intelligence are those that promote the AGW cause, and the mindless admirers who worship the ground they walk on..