Leas Eric C, Althouse Benjamin M, Dredze Mark, Obradovich Nick, Fowler James H, Noar Seth M, Allem Jon-Patrick, Ayers John W
University of California San Diego School of Medicine, San Diego, CA, United States of America.
Institute for Disease Modeling, Bellevue, WA, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2016 Aug 2;11(8):e0159885. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0159885. eCollection 2016.
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.
从历史上看，专家们用于分享社会事业相关信息的策略一直是自上而下的，这意味着最具影响力的信息被认为来自有计划的活动和宣传。然而，如今越来越多的人开始独立地参与社会事业，部分原因是在线平台使他们能够即时地搜索、创建和分享信息。在某些情况下，这种“自发宣传”可能会与自上而下的策略相匹敌，甚至超越它们。通过分析自发宣传传播所借助的相同平台，大数据分析能够快速检测公众对社会事业的参与情况。为了证明这一观点，我们评估了莱昂纳多·迪卡普里奥在2016年奥斯卡颁奖典礼上发表的关于气候变化的获奖感言，对全球英语新闻（彭博终端新闻档案）、社交媒体（推特发文）以及关于气候变化的信息搜索（谷歌搜索）产生了怎样的推动作用。尽管传统新闻报道的增长并不显著（增长54%；95%置信区间：-144至247），但包含“气候变化”或“全球变暖”等关键词的推文数量达到了创纪录的高点，增长了636%（95%置信区间：573 - 699），迪卡普里奥发表感言当天的推文数量超过了25万条。实际上，“迪卡普里奥效应”分别比2015年联合国气候变化大会（COP）的日均效应和地球日效应高出3.2倍和5.3倍。与此同时，迪卡普里奥发表感言当天，谷歌上对“气候变化”或“全球变暖”的搜索量分别增长了261%（95%置信区间，186 - 335）和210%（95%置信区间149 - 272），并且在之后的4天里一直保持在较高水平，搜索量分别为104,190次和216,490次。这一增长幅度分别是COP日均增长幅度和地球日增长幅度的3.8倍和4.3倍。搜索内容与迪卡普里奥演讲中的内容紧密相关（例如，“最热年份”），因为未被提及的内容搜索量并未增加（例如，“电动汽车”）。由于这些数据可以实时免费获取，我们的分析策略为专家们在某个问题突出时检测和参与自发宣传提供了大量的提前时间。我们的研究展示了发现和协助变革推动者的新机会，并增进了我们对21世纪媒体环境中传播情况的理解。
