Sharing an Oscar Nominee Story
The Academy Awards are the final event in the season of awards ceremonies. With the glamour of Hollywood’s hottest in their finest designer gowns, many of us at home can’t help but watch the entire show.
We took this opportunity to use bitly data to see which nominees from specific categories saw the most attention online in the weeks prior to the ceremony. The most interesting thing we discovered was that social media popularity in the week leading up to the big event did not necessarily mean a nominee was destined to walk away with a gold statue. Each one of the nominees that had the most attention in the week leading up to the Oscars came away empty handed last night, reminding us that only members of The Academy actually have influence on who wins.
We used bitly data from Tuesday, 2/7 to Friday the 2/22 to learn how often each nominee was mentioned (or “voted for”) through URLs. For each day, we collected a count representing these mentions. Averaging the last 4 days (Tuesday-Friday of last week) as our “current” level of attention and comparing this to the rest of the month, we can get a factor of increased or decreased attention leading up to the Oscars. This factor is compared over each category for the nominees and converted into a percentage of attention to each nominee (in each category). This percentage can be represented as the number of “votes” that each nominee received in the last week relative to the past.
Our most successful results were in the “Best Picture” category. Silver Linings Playbook received the most attention via bitly URLs, but the actual winner, Argo, came in a respectable 2nd place.
In the best Supporting Actress category we were surprised to see Sally Field, who played a stunning Mary Todd Lincoln in Lincoln, see more social media attention than Anne Hathaway, who was favored to win (and did win) for her role as Fantine in Les Misérables.
Another surprise was last night’s winner for Best Actor, Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln, who received the smallest amount of social media attention in the days leading up to event.
Best actress winner Jennifer Lawrence saw a fair amount of attention in the week leading up to the Oscar’s, but not quite as much as the adorable Quvenzhané Wallis of Beasts of the Southern Wild, or the talented Emmanuelle Riva from the French film, Amour.
The way the social web comes alive around movies is an astonishing thing to watch. We enjoyed measuring the social attention these nominees received, and love seeing how different events could change the online conversation. For example, during the awards ceremony, Jessica Chastian’s outfit alone probably drove some impressive social traffic. What was your favorite moment from last night? What was your favorite film this year? Share with us below in the comments.
