Climate searches surged after DiCaprio speech

    Earlier this year, DiCaprio won an Oscar for his performance in The Revenant  and famously used his acceptance speech to advocate for action on climate change.
    As it turns out, that speech was effective. A study led by the San Diego State University Graduate School of Public Health finds that Tweets and Google searches about climate change reached record highs afterward.
    During the ceremony, the actor fired off thanks to other actors, the director, his agent, parents, etc., and then concluded:
 

  “I just want to say this, making The Revenant was about man’s relationship to the natural world, the world that we collectively felt in 2015 was the hottest year in recorded history. Our production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to be able find snow. Climate change is real. It is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species. And we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters or the big corporations, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people who will be most affected by this, for our children’s children, and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed.”

 
    The San Diego State University researchers examined news reports, Twitter feeds and Google searches mentioning "global warming," "climate change" or other terms on Feb. 28, the day of the Academy Awards. 
    There were more than 250,000 unique tweets mentioning those terms, “636 percent higher than expected the day DiCaprio spoke,” concluded the research, Big Data Sensors of Organic Advocacy: The Case of Leonardo DiCaprio and Climate Change, published in the journal, PLOS-One.
    “Google searches for ‘climate change’ increased immediately the hour DiCaprio spoke, rising 261 percent …. the day of, 78 percent the day after, and remained significantly higher four days later,” the research concluded.
    Specific terms mentioned in DiCaprio's speech -- such as "hottest year" and "indigenous" -- also increased, the report said. But searches for terms not mentioned by DiCaprio, “electric cars,” for example, stayed the same.
    San Diego State University adjunct assistant professor John W. Ayers led the study along with doctoral candidate Eric C. Leas.

    Related:

    Record-setting temperatures in 2015 

    Climate change could be fast, irreversible  

    If you would like to comment, give us a shout, or like us on Facebook and tell us what you think.