A Twitter visualization tool created by TweetReach provides some insight into how Oscar watchers were tweeting and has visualized the data in its Academy Awards Twitter Explorer tool.
TweetReach tracked more than 2 million tweets during Sunday’s broadcast (up from last year’s 1.27 million tweets, as The Next Web noted). But the tool might not provide a full picture of tweets about the Academy Awards.
You can take a look at how many mentions there were of some of the top nominees during the night, and dig into find out how many mentions there were of each major nominee during each minute of the show. Unsurprisingly, the charts spike when the specific award for that category was given out, with the winner receiving the highest volume of tweets at the time they walked up the steps to collect his/her award.
The Best Picture chart is perhaps the most interesting, as it spiked each time one of the nominees received an award in another category. The early going was dominated by Hugo, which picked up five awards in total. The chart shows a number of red spikes around the times Hugo crew members stepped on stage.
The pre-awards favorite, though, was The Artist, which also collected five awards. The Best Picture chart had its biggest spike at the end of the night, when the black-and-white film scooped the top prize. However, the spikes in tweet numbers were far lower throughout the night than they were for Hugo.
TweetReach also published a list of the moments that were tweeted about the most. The Cirque du Soleil performance topped the list, followed by Octavia Spencer’s Best Supporting Actress win; Hugo’s Best Visual Effects triumph; Meryl Streep coming out on top in the Best Actress field; and the Best Picture nod for The Artist.
Interestingly, TweetReach’s insight into the most tweeted about moments differs from that of Twitter itself. The network wrote on its own Twitter account that the top five most- tweeted moments were Best Documentary winner Undefeated; Angelina Jolie’s leg; the incident with Sacha Baron Cohen and Ryan Seacrest; Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis teaming up to present an award; and Best Song winner “Man or Muppet.”
The Best Documentary winner came out on top here, perhaps due to the f-bomb one of the filmmakers dropped during the acceptance speech.
Perhaps this has something to to with the way TweetReach tracked tweets during the event. The company monitored tweets that used the #Oscars hashtag, the @TheAcademy account, and general mentions of the Oscars and Academy Awards. My timeline, at least, was flooded with tweets that contained clear references to the Oscars without explicitly mentioning them.
For instance, after Bret McKenzie won the Best Song award, I saw numerous tweets congratulating him or making reference to his band Flight of the Conchords. Automated tracking of the Oscars is a difficult thing to do when many of the tweets don’t overtly reference the broadcast, meaning there was likely a vast number of relevant tweets that TweetReach was unable to pick up on.
Meanwhile, since TweetReach only tracked Oscar tweets during the broadcast, it’s likely that The Artist’s Best Picture win would have ended up higher on the most tweeted list if tweets sent for a period after the broadcast counted too. It was the last award of the night, and tweets related to that win were counted for only a few minutes.
While the dataset being used by TweetReach doesn’t appear to be comprehensive by any stretch, it still provides a fascinating look at how those watching the awards were tweeting about it in volume.
I’m just happy Jim Rash, the Dean from Community, has an Oscar and had the stones to make fun of Jolie’s ridiculous leg pose.
Photo by lorenjavier