Google Trends: European Union, China, and Kim Kardashian

This Google Trends chart displays news searches in the U.S. over the past twelve months related to the topic of the European Union, vs. searches related to China, vs. searches related to Kim Kardashian. This Trends chart is fairly simple, and it makes the point abundantly clear that the European Union is consistently of very little interest to the American people. The only time in which searches for the European Union topped Kim Kardashian or China was during the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, 2016, or Brexit.

This has a lot to say about the United States’ relationship with the European Union, showing that the American public does not believe this political institution to be particularly relevant to their lives. While it may seem unfair to rank the European Union against one of the United States top reality television personalities, searches for the European Union consistently rank under that of searches for China as well. If it were simply a matter of proximity rather than interest or perceived relevance, one would expect the European to surpass China in searches, yet this is not the case.

To give the American public the benefit of the doubt, it is possible that this Trends chart indicates that the U.S. media is not doing a comprehensive enough job covering news related to the European Union. Perhaps as Brexit nears its formal conclusion, search interest in the European Union will spike once again.

Google Trends: Climate Change and Global Warming

This Google Trends chart displays the relative number of searches for the terms “Global Warming” and “Climate Change” over the past five years. We can interpret a number of interesting things from this visualization. First that searches for both topics seem to grow in the lead up to election dates in early November. Interest then rapidly drops off in the following months.

This could however, be effected by the second trend: seasonality. Searches for both topics seem to be at their lowest amounts during the hottest months of the year. This could be due to the fact that people assume it should be hot during July, and are not surprised or concerned when it is. Another interesting thing to note is that while climate change has become the more scientifically accepted term, global warming has consistently remained the more popular search term.

However, both topics still follow almost identical Trends. I had expected to see search volume for both topics rise with the beginning of every new month, as this is the time when popular scientific journals such as Nature are released, yet there this does not seem to be a significant trend.

Practice Post

Gov. Pat Quinn talks about MAP grants at DePaul University. (Photo by Josclynn Brandon)

Editor’s note: This story was originally posted on Dec. 12, 2012 and is housed at RedLineProject.org

By Bob Smith

Gov. Pat Quinn visited DePaul University’s Loop campus on Wednesday to discuss how pension reform is harming the Monetary Award Program (MAP) college scholarships and access to higher education in Illinois.

“This is so important to our state, not only in the past, but certainly now and in the future,” Quinn said. “We want everyone to have the opportunity to go to college that has the ability to go to college.”

MAP grants are need-based college scholarships that allow merit students who are in need across the state and do not need to be repaid by the student. Quinn said that due to cutbacks and having to pay more money in the pension amount, almost 18,000 students lost their MAP grant scholarships this year.