{"id":145,"date":"2023-11-26T18:38:35","date_gmt":"2023-11-26T18:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/?p=145"},"modified":"2023-11-26T18:38:35","modified_gmt":"2023-11-26T18:38:35","slug":"hamas-attack-on-israel-through-the-lens-of-google-queries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/2023\/11\/26\/hamas-attack-on-israel-through-the-lens-of-google-queries\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamas’ attack on Israel through the lens of Google queries"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On October 7th<\/sup>, 2023, Hamas attacked Israel from the Gaza Strip, which it has been governing since 2007. The details of the attack are horrific, and I won\u2019t describe them here. Suffice to say that they are in line with the acts of the Nazi regime and ISIS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We know from the past that Google search volume tells an interesting story about major world events, so here are a few graphs about that attack, through the lens of Google Search Trends<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, the attack has caused major trauma to Israelis, as visible in this graph of search volume for anxiety and for depression. The latter serves as a comparator. As the graph shows, searches for anxiety spiked on October 7th<\/sup> and were high for around a month after then. As somewhat expected, searches for depression were attenuated for the same period, which is perhaps similar to an effect we saw at the start of the COVID19 pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Normalized Google search volume for anxiety (orange) and depression (blue) in Israel over time. The dotted line marks the date of the attack. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In Israel, interest in news spiked at the start of the war but has since gone down significantly. Similarly, queries about Hamas and the Gaza Strip spiked and then went down, though not to baseline (yet). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Normalized Google search volume for news in Israel over time. The dotted line marks the date of the attack. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Normalized Google search volume for Hamas (orange) and the Gaza Strip (blue) in Israel over time. The dotted line marks the date of the attack. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Worldwide the trend is as expected from the literature<\/a>, which shows that a half-life of a few days for major news events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Normalized Google search volume for Hamas in Israel (orange) and the world (blue) over time. The dotted line marks the date of the attack. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What about effects of this war on the world at large? Here\u2019s interest in the phrase \u201cFree Palestine\u201d. Note how it is almost nonexistent until October 9th<\/sup> but then, just two days after Hamas\u2019 atrocities, it spikes. Somewhat similar to interest in Hamas it\u2019s decaying quickly, but is not yet back to baseline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Normalized Google search volume for “Free Palestine” in the world over time. The dotted line marks the date of the attack. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps it\u2019s more about fashion than about substance? Let\u2019s check the USA. Here we see a strong political effect of these queries, i.e., more democrat states are more likely to be interested in Free Palestine. The voting share for Biden-Harris in the 2020 Presidential elections explains almost 70% of the variance. This is interesting because, of course, President Biden is a democrat and he took a strong pro-Israel stance in this war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Normalized Google search volume for “Free Palestine” per US state as a function of the voting share for Biden in the 2020 elections in that state. DC is excluded (though it falls nicely on the line). The dotted line is a linear regression line with R2<\/sup>=0.69. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As Greta Thunberg noticed, Free Palestine is highly correlated with another political issue \u2013 climate change. The correlation explains more than 60% of the variance! The outliers on the top (meaning, more interest in climate change than expected according to the interest in Free Palestine) are mostly states that are likely to be affected by climate change such as Hawaii, Vermont and Alaska. Outliers on the other side are (in my opinion) Democrat states with large universities, but this warrants more careful research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Normalized Google search volume for “Free Palestine” per US state as a function of normalized search volume for Climate Change. The dotted line is a linear regression line with R2<\/sup>=0.62. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My prediction is that interest in Hamas and this war will soon wane as the world moves to the next crisis. In Israel, expect a spike in pregnancy queries in a few months.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On October 7th, 2023, Hamas attacked Israel from the Gaza Strip, which it has been governing since 2007. The details of the attack are horrific, and I won\u2019t describe them here. Suffice to say that they are in line with the acts of the Nazi regime and ISIS. We know from the past that Google … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Hamas’ attack on Israel through the lens of Google queries”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}