Actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s call for action on climate change during his acceptance speech at the Academy Awards ceremony drew more attention to the issue than the Paris Agreement in 2015 or Earth Day, a new study reports. According to a study titled “Big Data Sensors of Organic Advocacy: The Case of Leonardo DiCaprio and Climate Change” published in Plos, DiCaprio’s acceptance speech for his Best Actor award did not cause a huge increase in media coverage of climate change. However, it did cause Twitter activity about climate change to increase 636%, Washington Examiner reported. “The number of tweets including the phrases ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’ on the day of DiCaprio’s speech were at the highest recorded value in our database with more than 250,000 tweets on that day,” according to the report, co-authored by University of California San Diego School of Medicine researcher, Eric Leas, and San Diego State University Graduate School of Public Health researcher, John Ayers. About 36 million people watched the Academy Awards in February. DiCaprio won Best Actor for his role in “The Revenant” and is one of the most high-profile activists pushing for action on climate change in the entertainment world.
