By

@OlumideIDOWU

From Sunday, Nov. 29 through Monday, Dec. 14, there was a robust online conversation about COP21. The conversation took place almost entirely on Twitter with 92% of all mentions of the conference appearing on that platform. While news and blogs comprised of only 5% of total online mentions of COP21, they contributed significantly to the total potential impressions of the conversation, which totaled to 35 billion.

Leadership was a key topic that emerged in the online conversation. Mentions of the COP peaked on Monday, Nov. 30, the opening day of the conference in which 150 Heads of State gathered at Le Bourget. In the subsequent days, President Obama, PM Modi, PM Trudeau and President Hollande stood out in online conversation for their announcements and contributions to the negotiations. Two of the most retweeted tweets from the COP were from different Obama account about the Paris Agreement; from both the official @POTUS tweet the OFA-run @BarackObama account.

The online conversation peaked again at the close of the conference on Saturday, Dec. 12, with the adoption of the Paris Agreement. Though the #ParisAgreement hashtag only emerged a day prior, it became the dominant topic of conversation as the conference came to a close and in the immediate aftermath. In the few days of its use, the hashtag was used over 200,000 times.

The Nov. 29 Climate March was the only civil society action to be mentioned in a significant way across online conversation, with the #ClimateMarch hashtag appearing in the top hashtags used over the two-week period. And advocacy did permeate the online conversation through general hashtags #ClimateAction and #ActOnClimate, the latter being specific to the U.S. and used by @WhiteHouse and @POTUS official accounts.

KEY METRICS

Over the duration of COP21 in Paris, from Sunday, Nov. 29, to Monday, Dec. 14, there were 3,054,509 total posts that mentioned the conference and the Paris Agreement, resulting in 35 billion impressions potential impressions.

Content sources
92% of the mentions were on Twitter
5% of the mentions were on news and blogs with 154,919 mentions over the two week period

Total conversation
Mentions peaked on Monday, Nov. 30 (Heads of State day) with 441,320 mentions and again on Saturday, Dec. 12 (the day the agreement was adopted) with 393,410 mentions
Mentions were never fewer than 98,365, which happened on Sunday, Dec. 6, at the mid-point of the conference
Twitter conversation

Over 2.1 million mentions of the #COP21 hashtag

Over 200,000 mentions of #ParisAgreement hashtag
DAILY BREAKDOWN OF CONVERSATION SIZE
DAILY BREAKDOWN OF CONTENT SOURCES

OVERALL ONLINE CONVERSATION TOPICS NEWS CONVERSATION TOPICS
Account
Mentions

@cop21
81000

@potus
48000

@un
25000

@narendramodi
24000

@unfccc
20000

@laurentfabius
19000

@johnkerry
15000

@cfigueres
13000

@fhollande
12000

@rapplerdotcom
11000

TOP HASHTAGS MOST MENTIONED TWITTER ACCOUNTS
Hashtag
Occurrences

#cop21
2100000

#climatechange
270000

#parisagreement
200000

#climate
130000

#paris
69000

#actonclimate
54000

#climateaction
37000

#earthtoparis
35000

#climatemarch
35000

#lpaa
24000
Methodology
Date: 29 Nov 2015 –14 Dec 2015

Search terms: “#COP21” OR “COP21” OR “COP 21” OR (((“#Paris2015” OR “UNFCCC”) OR (“Paris” AND “climate”)) AND (“talks” OR “negotiations” OR “summit” OR “conference”)) OR #ParisAgreement

Language: English