But social media did.
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A new paper published by PlOS ONE shows that those words caused immediate spikes in tweets and Google searches relating to climate change.
When the Revenant actor delivered his rousing speech which stressed the need to take climate change seriously, searches around the topic spiked significantly a new study has found.
The Academy Awards were organized in February in which DiCaprio received Best Actor award for his role in the movie “The Revenant”. 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.
“The number of tweets including the phrases “climate change” or “global warming” on the day of DiCaprio’s speech were at the highest recorded value in our database with more than 250,000 tweets on that day”, according to the report, co-authored by Eric Leas, a University of California San Diego School of Medicine researcher. “It is the most crucial threat facing our entire species, and we need to work together and stop dawdling”. He also spent time chiding people for not doing due diligence fighting the scourge.
“Climate change is real”.
The effects weren’t just felt on social media, Google searches from users keen to find out more about climate change “increased immediately the hour [after] DiCaprio spoke”, according to the study.
Ayers and the team used a mixture of media coverage searches using the Bloomberg Terminal, Twitter content searches, and Google trends search data to analyze what happened after the speech. 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.
In fact, tweets related to climate change on the day when DiCaprio delivered his speech was at the highest.
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“The example of DiCaprio and others demonstrates that dissemination can occur completely outside the context of a campaign and can even generate more public engagement than planned events”, the study noted. The study concludes that “The scientific community must adapt to the 21st century dynamic communication landscape and ready itself for the next opportunity to harness the agents of change”.
