Virtual get togethers

The weekend is here again, which means many of us will be looking for ways to blow off steam. As we’ve covered before, plenty are meeting up with friends and family over video calls, and they’re doing more than just catching up.

We decided to go a bit further and find out what kinds of virtual events people were filling their time with under quarantine.

Using Qriously, we surveyed around 8,000 adults across Australia, China, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the US, via their smartphones and tablets. ¹

Here’s what people have been getting up to.

Games nights, involving things like quizzes and card games, lead the pack, with movie nights following close behind. Both have been helped by a range of websites and apps that enable joint activities between people in separate locations.

A Brandwatch favorite, for example, is Skribbl, a Pictionary-like game. Mentions of Skribbl have skyrocketed since lockdowns were implemented. In February, the game was mentioned around 800 times a week. Last week that number was nearly 3k.

There were some differences at the country level. When it came to virtual dinners, 22% of Chinese respondents said they’d attended one, while no other country even went above 12%.

Spain, Italy, and France, all had movie nights as their most popular option – 44% of respondents in Spain had attended one, while it was 38% for those in Italy and France. These same countries reported the highest interest in exercise classes, too.

Generally, all countries show a significant amount of people turning to virtual events to keep their social lives going. As lockdowns are eased in some countries, it’ll be interesting to see if any of these activities stick.

Grasping for good news

With the barrage of constant (usually upsetting) news updates, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. But, increasingly, those on social media are sharing uplifting news and kind gestures from around the world to distract from the chaos.

As reported in our bulletin on April 8, less and less people are proactively discussing Covid-19, or engaging with content on the topic. The data suggests that people are getting fed up with discussing the virus, and could be looking for different kinds of content instead.

Using our Consumer Research platform, we found some evidence to support that theory. Despite the pandemic, more people than usual were posting about feel-good and uplifting stories.

Since February 24 2020, there were 10m English-language authors posting about uplifting news or acts, 3m more than the same period in 2019. The number has been steadily growing since lockdowns around the world were put into place.

Of the feel-good mentions we found, 8m of them had nothing to do with coronavirus.

Some of the most popular content which wasn’t related to the crisis included:

• 73k mentions of recovered koalas being released back into the wild after the devastating Australian bushfires
• 32k mentions of actor John Krasinski’s ‘Some Good News’ show

Among the good news mentions, thousands of people were sharing pictures of drawings, kids, dogs, and cats according to our Image Insights tool.

That said, the sharpest increases in good news stories were related to Covid-19 itself. For example, when 99-year-old retiree Captain Tom Moore raised £15m for the UK’s National Health Service, his actions increased mentions of ‘good news’, ‘kind gestures’, and ‘hero’ by 400% over seven days.

And there were 142k English-langauge mentions of clapping and singing to celebrate our key workers around the world.

As we’ll see below, the good will and positivity is by no means subsiding.

How we’re helping one another

From sharing examples of community support, to the support itself.

We wanted to know what people were doing around the world to help others during the outbreak, so we turned again to Qriously.

We surveyed around 8,000 adults across Australia, China, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the US, via their smartphones and tablets. ¹

Here’s what the survey found.

The picture is very positive. On average, 60% of respondents said they were doing something to help their community. That’s a lot of people offering up their spare time in a crisis.

With lockdowns cutting off the most vulnerable in society from nearly all contact, it’s heartening to see that the most common reported action was contacting the lonely. The French are leading the way with 39% of respondents saying they’d done this.

Interestingly, small business support came second with people buying coupons and vouchers to help companies survive the quarantine. This was particularly popular in France and Australia. This tallies with our previous bulletin research that found an increase in people discussing buying from local businesses.

In times like these, even a small helping hand goes a long way, and it’s heartening to see that so many people are going much further than that.

Get more in-depth data

Every Wednesday we put out a free 100 page report on how Covid-19 is affecting us the world over.

Head here to find out more and get signed up.

Thanks for reading

We hope you all enjoy your weekends, and we’ll be back Monday.

Stay safe,

Brandwatch Response Team

¹ Note: All surveys are subject to a wide range of potential sources of error. On the basis of the historical record of the polls at recent general elections, there is a 9 in 10 chance that the true value of a survey result lies within 4 points of the estimates provided by this survey, and a 2 in 3 chance that they lie within 2 points.