The GERD Pulse
Using Google Trends data to observe asymmetries in how the public follows the GERD developments
Inspired by a recent and creative analysis by Synaps on mining underused data retrieved from Wikipedia pages’ visits and by slightly older research by the Pew Research Center on using Google Trends data to observe how public interest shifts as a crisis unfolds, I decided to do something similar about the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) as Ethiopia may soon begin filling the dam.
Methodological premise
Google search data track users’ behaviour online by recording all the queries we type into its search box. Without overstating their explanatory power —because those data can only capture the ‘pulse’ of users who have access to the internet and use Google to search for information, and cannot say anything about the reason why they conducted those searches— these data can still provide descriptive information about the existence of public concern, interest or curiosity to learn more about a certain issue by searching for more information about it via Google’s search box.
It’s possible to retrieve data based on the country from which the user conducted its search, or on the language used to formulate the query. Because of some issues related to country-based data, I decided to use the latter as a proxy for some communities of people (English queries as a proxy for the international community at large vs Arabic and Amharic queries as a proxy for local communities affected directly by the GERD project, including those of Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia) and look for possible differences in their interest in the issue over time.
Of course, the selection of the search terms is crucial. As the identification of all the possible ways the public might search for information on a topic is extremely difficult, after reviewing news articles about the GERD in the selected languages I opted for only the most common search terms, deciding that those few were enough to get at least the basic ‘pulse’.
Something similar could have be done with the number of visits (and not visitors, as two visits by the same person are counted as two) to Wikipedia pages through Wikimedia pageviews API. However, the mere fact that there is not a Wikipedia page on the GERD in Amharic makes this alternative approach useless. Let’s focus then only on public online searches, via Google.
The GERD Pulse
With regard to the GERD, data retrieved from queries formulated in Arabic or Amharic during the past five years indicate a different trend in terms of issue salience in comparison to those formulated in English, intended as a proxy for the international community. That is to say, Arabic and Amharic speakers who looked for information about the GERD showed high levels of interest in that topic especially during some moments which did not always correspond to those of English-speaking users.
So, for example, what is immediately apparent from the visualization above is that both the local and international communities have the highest volume of GERD-related queries in the third week of June, when Cairo covertly threatened Ethiopia with the use of force (or at least that was the public perception) and called on the UN Security Council to intervene. But equally apparent is that the trend lines are not completely symmetric (or overlapping, depending on how you decide to visualise them), meaning that some key events related to the GERD dispute were perceived as more interesting or alarming to one of the two communities and less to the other. For example, while the English Google community showed great interest in the GERD during the US-led talks held in Washington last November, the Arabic and Amharic Google community seemed quite unconcerned about it (low number of searches, compared to the mean). Expectedly, higher numbers of searches have instead been recorded in conjunction with events or declarations made by local authorities. With exceptions, of course: the death of the GERD chief project manager in July 2018 in Addis apparently triggered more interest in the international rather than the local community.
Country-based research
The research above was conducted by looking at worldwide searches in the selected languages. An alternative could have been the analysis of country-based searches in specific countries, hence comparing Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia’s “GERD pulses”. Some issues related to country-based data prevented me from carrying out the latter. Nonetheless, some preliminary results of a country-based research are available below.
In conclusion, looking at data on Google searches is an interesting alternative way for reviewing the timeline of a political issue (otherwise very boring) with the added value of revealing also the different ways the general public follows the developments concerning that issue. Little can of course be drawn from it in terms of explanations (it’s a descriptive exercise, and it should remain so), except for the need to devote greater attention to public concerns — taking the pulse of the local vs international communities — rather than solely to politicians’ solemn declarations.
