Sarah Palin, despite her derision of the “lamestream” media, is something of a media darling, with journalists forever discussing her future in politics and a possible 2012 presidential bid.
But, would it surprise you to hear that for the last 30 days, “paul 2012″ and “ron paul 2012″ have had a larger number of Google searches than “palin 2012″ and “sarah palin 2012″?
And what would a three-way Barack Obama - Sarah Palin - Ron Paul presidential race look like?
There’s lots of talk in Washington about jobs, and there’s lots of talk about Afghanistan. But I was surprised to see that one of the rising searches in Google this week is the combination of the two.
Searches for the phrase “jobs in afghanistan” has been rising throughout 2009 and got a nice upward bump this week. The volume of search for this phrase is now nearly as large as searches for “jobs in iraq.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised that so many unemployed Americans are looking Eastward. Afghanistan job listings on the official USA government jobs website include positions with extra “danger pay” and other addons that could bring the yearly salary upwards of $150,000. Job requirements seem to be approximately the following (I’m reading between the lines here): a US citizen, able to breathe.
I wonder if the jobs include health insurance?
I’ve been thinking about how the volume of Google searches (or more likely, Twitter and Facebook status updates) could be used to track swine flu/H1N1 activity. I recently noticed that “real” scientists have been looking at this, too.
The journal “Nature” published an article titled “Detecting influenza epidemics using search engine query data” in November of 2008. The abstract states:
One way to improve early detection is to monitor health-seeking behaviour in the form of queries to online search engines, which are submitted by millions of users around the world each day. Here we present a method of analysing large numbers of Google search queries to track influenza-like illness in a population. Because the relative frequency of certain queries is highly correlated with the percentage of physician visits in which a patient presents with influenza-like symptoms, we can accurately estimate the current level of weekly influenza activity in each region of the United States, with a reporting lag of about one day.
(What — a lag of one day? That’s soooo 2008. )
Interesting as it is, I doubt that the volume of search queries (or tweets or Facebook updates) accurately represents actual infections. To me, this looks like a great way to track the public awareness and/or anxiety level about a disease. In other words, it’s a good way to follow the hype, but doesn’t tell us much about actual sickness.
Can Tweet volumes tell us a more meaningful story? Let’s look at a few examples of recent tweets containing “h1n1″:
dakotanews First Dakota County H1N1 Vaccine Clinic http://bit.ly/4ue7aZ 
immuneprotect Amid vaccine/Tamiflu shortages mother whose son died with H1N1 gives warning http://bit.ly/2n3KMx 
blackbeautyshi Keep Your Kids Safe From H1N1 This Halloween: Keep Your Kids Safe From H1N1 This Halloween More Recent A.. http://bit.ly/2nZ4mX 
remitos RT @wwwhatsnew Robot simula síntomas de gripe H1N1 http://bit.ly/Ifs3K 
Eva2009Sophie Happy and safe halloween to those of you participating in it,they said on news here don’t let kids put their handsn candy,give it 2them-h1n1 
bwchealth Livingston County Health Center deals with H1N1 flu virus http://bit.ly/4E7Tuz 
Herbaleena Herbal Drink Cure & Preventative From H1N1 £20+P&P #H1N1 London #H1N1 UK #H1N1 Britain #H1N1 Scotland #H1N1 Ireland #H1N1 wales 
SwineFluInst #SwineFlu Child H1N1 Swine Flu Deaths Rising - WebMD http://ow.ly/15YrZ5 Notice that not one of these is actually a tweet by a person infected with H1N1. In contrast, Tweets containing the words “getting sick” are much more evocative:
DANE_YOUNG Ughhhhhh I thnk i am getting sick…The worst..N now i am mad 
timungashick Getting ready for neighborhood #Halloween party. We have Dorothy, Wicked Witch, Lion, Scarecrow and Munchkin. Tin Man is sick and in bed. 
mistresscaitlin Got up from a nap. Still sick, but not as bad as I thought I was getting hit. Going to be late for pumpkin carving 
but need food first. 
Jesabugg is getting 2 sick girls ready for bed…hope the medicine kicks in so they can go trick or treating! 
shanslaughter I lit a candle for my dad today. I’m pretty sick and tired of hearing about people getting cancer. My uncle’s dying,too. Fuck you, God. 
misha_yuryevich いまから病院 I have bonchial asthma for years. I am tring to keep exercise to avoid getting sick. After seeing a respiratorist, I’ll go swimming. 
MusicSavvyMom Busy Day - Liam crashed in the car on the way home, still asleep on the sofa. He NEVER naps. Lord, I hope he’s not getting sick! 
LSierra570 I really appreciate that the Office keeps all its NEPA references straight. I do not appreciate getting sick. Cheers/Jeers. (via @mmmeghan) 
ninaescolar @cathypaulino Haha idk. Hopefully. I’m so excited. Still dont know the release date tho. Btw i think I’m getting sick. Ugh ate’s fault!Let’s see how twitter trends for “getting sick” look on Trendistic:
Wow, that’s an ugly chart! I can’t draw much of a conclusion here other than this might be too noisy a measurement to give us any useful information.
What do you search for when you’re getting sick? Not worried about getting sick, but actually getting sick?
Ever since “Joe-mentum” swept the nation, I’ve had a bit of a fascination with this politician who looks and acts like a cross between the Church Lady and a pickled plum. With today’s big announcement that Joe Lieberman, independent senator of Connecticut, might join in a filibuster to prevent a vote on health care reform with a public option, I became curious about what Lieberman-related conversations are taking place.
It’s too early to see Google Trends for “lieberman”, so I took a look at Twitter Streamgraphs. On Twitter Streamgraphs, you can see what words were combined with “lieberman” in the last 1000 tweets. It is an interesting way to see the flow of what words people are using in conjunction with a term of interest.
Here is the Streamgraph for “lieberman” as of 8 pm PST on October 27th:
The biggest hump tonight is for the word “call” — a call-to-action for phoning the senator. A smaller but noticeable bulge comes for the word “insane.”
I was hard-pressed to find anything positive on Twitter about Joe Lieberman tonight. Reactions ranged from “Lieberman is independent of rational thought, personal integrity and genuine speech” to “Lieberman is a hypocrite and a douchebag” with a generous helping of “knife in the back” references. I don’t recall Twitter leaning markedly to one side or another politically during the 2008 election; either something has changed, or Lieberman has just done a good job of making himself disliked from all sides.
My own consciousness/anxiety level about H1N1 has been sharply on the rise over the last few weeks (this could have something to do with a pediatricians’ office asking patients to call in daily to find out when the vaccine is available. Seriously? You want all your clients to call you every day to check? This is the 21st century, people! But I digress…), so I was wondering if Google searches are showing a similar pattern.
The answer: not so much. Searches have been gradually rising over the past 6 months, and are high overall, but not showing a sharp uptick in the last few weeks. To get a sense of scale, I compared “swine flu” and “h1n1″ against “pelosi” and “health care”:
Twitter trends are similar — a chart of usage of the words “swine flu” on Twitter over the last 30 days shows no upturn:
I guess I’m the only one obsessing - for now.
UPDATE 10/24/09: Oh, there you are! It looks like the president declaring swine flu a national emergency was enough to get the gopher to pop its little head out of the hole (see Twitter trends, below). Now… where did I put that pediatrician’s phone number?
