Actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s Oscar acceptance speech comments urging action on climate change drew more attention on social media than Earth Day, according to a study out of the University of California San Diego.
The study, titled “Big Data Sensors of Organic Advocacy: The Case of Leonardo DiCaprio and Climate Change,” was published Aug. 2 in scientific journal Plos One. It argues DiCaprio’s acceptance speech for best actor received much more attention on social media than it did on traditional media outlets.
More than 36 million people watched this year’s Academy Awards. DiCaprio won best actor for his role in “The Revenant.”
“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.
“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.
DiCaprio used a lion’s share of his Oscar speech to rail against so-called man-made global warming. He also spent time chiding people for not doing due diligence fighting the scourge.
