Measuring Occupy Steam
by Sebastian Benthall
The Economist recently blogged that the Occupy movement may be losing steam, based on the number of posts per day on the We Are the 99% Tumblr blog.
The author explains the appeal of this metric here, arguing that since updating a site is more effortful than using a Twitter hashtag, it is a better indicator of involvement.
While it’s definitely worth making the distinction of between on-line buzz and meat activity, using just one web site as an indicator seemed shady to me. Who knows what could be influencing that Tumblr? Maybe it’s just the site that’s lost steam, since by now anybody who is likely to look at it probably (a) has already and (b) gets the point.
What about using a more aggregate measure of how much people care about the Occupy movement? Here’s an easy one to grab: the number of Google searches for ‘occupy’.
You can see spikes corresponding to some major Occupy events:
- October 15th, the peak, was Occupy’s Global Day of Action
- October 27th, another high, came right after an Oakland occupier got brained by a police tear gas canister.
- November 3rd was Oakland’s Occupy-induced general strike
- The last little bump on November 10th corresponds to the Colbert coverage of the police brutality on Berkeley’s campus
Yes, searches are in decline. But the numbers suggest that as long as protesters can keep things eventful–by causing an economic ruckus or getting beat up–they will stay on the public radar.
Digifesto 
Sad but true. It seems the most coverage that you get out of it is violent. I subscribed to the AP blog and there were four or five articles concerning Occupy. All were about tear gas, billy clubs, and other violence. One noted an attack on police.
Through media eyes they probably are losing their steam as a political movement, and gaining as a rabid mob of hippies.
Went to the camp yesterday afternoon as I was leaving NYC, and although I was impressed by their organization and infrastructure (bike driven generators!), I left with the impression that media narrative isn’t that far off. Well, not just hippies, but also a handful of people who really really don’t like jews.
Ugh, seriously? That’s disappointing (the anti-semitism part).
Over on this coast things there’s still some energy behind it, but maybe it’s just a matter of where the curve is it.
Suppose it’s jumping the shark. Has it left anything in its wake? The best articulation of goals I’ve heard suggest that what the movement was really about was training a new community of activists and creating a greater network of people who are willing to act collectively.