DiCaprio’s Oscar Speech Did More For Climate Change Than Earth Day

But it’s alternative stimulating counterexample to the over-all, well-supported idea that mindfulness is overvalued – on top of similar work some of these identical academics have done about cognizance days and Charlie Sheen’s HIV declaration. They mentioned that the well known actor’s “effect” shadowed Earth Day and The Paris Climate Conference focused by factors of 5.3 and 3.2, respectively.

With regards to Google searches, the numbers went so high that it became “third-highest point ever recorded for climate change or global warming on Google trends”.

The team found that while there was little to no news media attention on DiCaprio, the social media and search response was overwhelming: tweets on climate change or global warming jumped 636% higher than the average the day of the Oscar speech.

When DiCaprio said this, 34.5 million people were watching. According to researchers, tweets and Google searches on the topic spiked enormously, and in the case of tweets, seemingly set a new record based on data analyses from 2011 to the present. According to SDSU, the research team used public archives to acquire their data for the study.

In fact, tweets related to climate change on the day when DiCaprio delivered his speech was at the highest.

Leo’s call for action on climate change, in particular, has been heard, loud and clear, especially after winning the much-coveted Academy Awards trophy earlier this year.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the internationally covered COP generated more news, but DiCaprio’s speech led to an explosion on Twitter.

To put it simply, Ayers noted that it really does matter when celebrities speak out.

Ayers says the significance of these findings is that celebrities speaking out makes a difference, even when it does not get as much coverage in more traditional outlets.

The study, titled “Big Data Sensors of Organic Advocacy: The Case of Leonardo DiCaprio and Climate Change”, was published August 2 in scientific journal Plos One.

Ayers adds that with the methods used in the study, it could be possible at some time in the future to actually time further advocacy and engagement campaigns to maximize the impact of a moment such as the DiCaprio speech.

The study simply concludes that celebrities are indeed agents of change, especially when it comes to important world issues.