Authors: Toni Baraka, Sara Gates May, Noah Britt, Will Henderson
Over Labor Day weekend, a gender reveal party using a smoke generation pyrotechnic device ignited a wildfire that went on to burn thousands of acres surrounding Los Angeles. Since then, more fires have broken out around California, Oregon, and Washington with arson and climate change as the culprits. As mass evacuations take place, homes are being destroyed and many casualties have occurred. Through it all, conversation on social media has increased to 838k posts in the last week.
The talk surrounding these fires has mostly been on Twitter (89.2%) but there have also been a lot of videos posted on Youtube (6.8%). These videos have been about the fires themselves and, on September 10th, the orange sky that Californians woke up to. This oddity caused a major spike in social posts, with 168k on the tenth alone. Trending hashtags on Instagram include #californiafires, #californiawildfires, #wildfirescalifornia, and #wildfires. While the hashtags are focused directly on the fires, there has been another trending conversation as well: politics.
67.9% of the tweets had a negative sentiment. Many of these posts showed anger at the gender reveal party and the damage it has caused. The other 32.1% of tweets were marked as having a positive sentiment, but they were more on the neutral side because they were about politics. After analyzing these posts, it is clear that the fires are being used as a chess piece in a game to win the presidential election. While there are many Californians posting about the direct impacts of the fire, users from all over the country are posting about how President Trump and former Vice President Biden are handling the situation and how that may predict our future come November. This is even more evident when you see who the most mentioned users are on Twitter when it comes to this situation.
Most mentioned users:
In the above chart, President Trump is the second most mentioned user in the Twitter conversations surrounding these wildfires. This further confirms that politics has reared its head during an environmental crisis, and will undoubtedly remain at the forefront of this issue.
Top influencers include ABC News, BBC News (UK), BBC News (World), and NBC Breaking News, all with high credibility scores of 98%. These outlets are posting updates surrounding the fires, and the political side of the conversation has mostly been on social.
Overall, spikes in conversation over the analysis time frame have been related to the wildfires that are ravaging the state. The majority of the conversation has been negative, and users online have directly shared their opinions on the cause of the fires and their predictions about how it will impact the presidential election. If users don’t start putting more focus on aid and relief instead of politics it seems likely that these fires will be overlooked, just like Hurricane Laura in Louisiana.
Full Analysis:
Purpose: To analyze the thoughts and sentiments of Californians surrounding the wildfires that are ravaging the state.
Analysis Time Frame: September 6, 2020 – September 13, 2020
Overall Trends
- The conversation is mostly surrounding the gender reveal party that many claim to be the cause of the fires.
- The sentiment is generally negative because new information about possible arson was just released and people are sharing it.
- Users online have turned the conversation into a political one and many posts involve President Trump and former Vice President Biden.
Overview
The following keywords were used to search and analyze online conversations surrounding the wildfires in California:
- Group 1: California AND wildfires, California AND fire, gender reveal AND fire, gender reveal AND wildfire
- Group 2: California AND burning, gender reveal AND burning, party AND wildfire, smoke AND California
Trends in Conversation
- The conversation significantly peaked on September 10th (168k posts) when Californians woke up to an eerie, orange sky,and many shared photos on Twitter.
- In the last seven days, there have been 838k tweets surrounding the keyword groups, and while many of the tweets are information about the wildfires, the conversation has also taken a political turn that has more people involved. Not only are Californians posting, but the rest of the country is also.
- 2% of the conversation is coming from Twitter, which is a smaller percentage than usual. This is because YouTube is contributing 6.8% with users posting videos of the fires.
- Trending words from this analysis included:
- California
- Wildfires
- Fires
- Oregon
- Change
- Trump
- Washington
- Climate
- The trending word Oregon is included because the wildfires that originated in California have now spread to Oregon and Washington.
Influencers
- Top influencers include ABC News, BBC News (UK), BBC News (World), and NBC Breaking News, all with credibility scores of 98%.
Sentiment
- Sentiment is mostly negative with an overall rating of 67.9%. Many posts in this category are talking about how the gender reveal party defied COVID mandates and has burned millions of acres.
- When analyzed, most of the posts categorized as positive also had underlying negative sentiment but the conversation focused on politics and the election, making them seem a little more neutral.
