One of the advantages of the digital society and the dataisation of our daily lives is that of measurement. Today, in fact, there is not a single event, moment or aspect that concerns us that cannot be surveyed to understand its scope and actual consistency. So even the G7, which started yesterday under the Italian presidency, has its measurable side, indeed, more than one, to be honest.
Let’s start from the toponym “Borgo Egnazia”, the town in the province of Brindisi that hosts world leaders who meet to discuss economic and financial issues, development and policies for security and climate change. In digital conversations, not only in Italy, the term has obtained over 63 thousand interactions in the last seven days with a positive sentiment of 67%.
These first data would apparently seem devoid of any significant meaning, yet they give us a first, not at all marginal, indication regarding the presence of the name of the tourist location in a very large volume of conversations. In other words, it is the confirmation of a breakdown in the regional and national diaphragm for Borgo Egnazia. So much so, if we take a census of the countries in which the term has been used most frequently by online users, we can see that immediately after Italy, there are the United States, Germany, India, France and Spain. While, to further account for the global dimension and power of the network, it is possible to showcase further data: in the last twenty-four hours the post that obtained the highest number of interactions – 35,527, including likes, comments and interactions – which had the term Borgo Egnazia within it, it is the one published on Instagram by the account “The Times of India” which is followed by three million followers.
The same analysis, but obviously with different results, can also be done using the term “Puglia”: in this second census it is inevitable that the total numbers of interactions exceeding 200 thousand will grow, again in the last seven days, while the sentiment remains substantially unchanged with a positive percentage expected at 65.2%.
While it is significant to note how the geography of speech changes by simply changing the search key. In fact, with the term “Puglia” some countries appear that were not previously among the top places in the list: this is the case of the United Kingdom, Brazil, Canada and Colombia which join Italy, the United States and France. To complete the circumnavigation of the boundaries of online conversations and have precise indicators of how much a single event can preside over the digital info-sphere, we use our third and final term as an “online fishing hook”: “G7”. In this case, it is interesting to browse through the basket of most used terms accompanying our latest search key: well every time, and we are talking about an estimate of 450 thousand mentions which in turn produced more than 2.3 million interactions, it is the expression “G7” was used, in 17% of cases the word “Italy” was present and in 10.3% “Puglia” also appeared.
In conclusion, if in the past, in order to be aware of the geographical scope of a piece of news or knowledge of it, it was necessary to recover and collect newspaper clippings or record the television reports of the various broadcasters, with results that were still deficient because it was almost impossible to complete the tour of the world, now, on the contrary, the measurement is so precise that not even the like absentmindedly placed by the last of the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s followers escapes the census.
