Having started my blog three weeks ago with a post on the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and how they were flooding the media with their own videos I thought it only appropriate to come full circle and talk about how the Gulf Spill is losing interest with the American public.
In an article posted on Mashable.com Jolie O’Dell talks about how interest in the spill is continuing to wain (except a recent three day spike when the trial cap was placed and the flow stopped) in public interest. A Trendistic review of the past month shows that tweets on the subject of the spill have decreased 0.1% of total tweets to 0.05%.
Searches on Google over the last three and a half months show a peak of over 7.5% of the search volume index in June declining to under 2.5% currently. Even bloggers are starting to lose interest. Nielsen’s BlogPulse is stating that there was a 0.25% decrease in the total number of blog postings regarding this subject, making it around 0.16% of all posts.
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Oil spill shutters part of Houston Ship Channel Houston Chronicle – Sep 28 2009 |
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Report into oil spill ‘rushed’: Greens WA today – Oct 31 2009 |
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Oil spill in Texas waterway contained National Nine News – Jan 24 2010 |
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Gulf Coast oil spill comes ashore Newsday (subscription) – Apr 30 2010 |
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Gulf oil spill swells to 4m gallons Stuff.co.nz – May 11 2010 |
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Obama vows to ‘fight’ BP oil spill Aljazeera.net – Jun 16 2010 |
Sadly it does look like we are losing interest in this spill, and that means that the media will soon follow suit and decrease coverage. This means that the organization that will continue to supply images and video footage to the masses will be, you guessed it, BP.
This is my last graded post on this blog. Throughout the course of this project I have learned a wealth of information on how social media is utilized by organizations related to the Oil and Natural Gas Industy. In addition to this I has also had the priveledge of reviewing the sites of my piers. Thank you Renee & Melinda for your comments and for posting excellent articles.
You are very welcome! I have really enjoyed reading about how the oil and gas industry uses social media to further their business objectives, or save face in the case of BP. I honestly am a little tired of hearing about BP myself, so I’m a little glad the rest of the world is losing a little interest. You do raise a good point though, that now BP will be the only supplier of new media with regard to the spill, so hopefully they will be transparent with their footage and updates. I think most of us have learned a great lesson from BP through this crisis about being open and honest with your constituents, especially in a crucial time when their support is what matters most.
This is interesting because I myself, especially from researching BP as well, have become disinterested in the topic. I just hope BP will open up commenting and communication on their pages like Renee said, for the crisis is still not really over. There are a lot of outcomes due to the oil spill and I hope there will be more of a switch from talking politics and bashing BP to continuing social media tactics on volunteering and donating to the relief of the gulf.