By Travis Johnson
Handicapping the Oscars is the sport for people who don’t like sports (or any kind of physical activity, really). Pretty much everyone in the film industry does it, especially critics – then we spend the month or so after the ceremony explaining why we were wrong in ways that make it seem like we still know what we’re talking about. It’s a good time.
But the thing is, everyone does it – if you’re into movies, you have some interest in awards season, even if (and sometimes especially) if you profess not to. And these days, you talk about it on social media.
With that in mind, we reached out to our amigos at Meltwater, a cutting edge media intelligence company, to look at the amount of social media buzz that’s happening around some of the main categories. Looking at a data sample from January 24 – February 10, they were able to put into numbers which nominees were generating the most chatter.
Now, it’s hard to say how closely this reflects the thoughts of the Academy voters – do nonagenarian former heads of development even use Twitter? – but keep this page handy for Monday’s ceremony – it’ll be a fun little exercise.
Well, there are no surprises to be had in the Best Picture conversation, with La La Land capturing a whopping 37.9% of the voice share – that’s impressive even when you figure that some of those tweets and whatnot will be part of the backlash against the film. Its closest competition is Moonlight with 11.7%, and it all heads south from there. That probably maps onto the probably outcomes quite neatly.
The clear lead here is Casey Affleck for Manchester by the Sea, although it’s not an overwhelming majority. Remember, though, this data is based on social media mentions, and recent controversy over sexual harassment allegations may have artificially inflated his numbers. Gosling is still a safer bet, although the conservative Academy, eager to make up for #OscarsSoWhite, might chuck it to Denzel again.
Meryl Streep is so close to 50% as to make no difference, but again we must remember that her recent self-appointment as the voice of Hollywood resistance against Trump is going to be a factor in that. Still, a late-career win for Streep would be a hell of a thing, even if it’s for the second best movie on about Florence Foster Jenkins.
Well, it’s Dev Patel, shortly to be named an honorary Australian, no doubt, for Lion, with almost 40% on the voice share – although don’t discount Mahershala Ali for Moonlight. The other three, frankly, feel like lip service.
Once again we have a clear favourite, with Hidden Figures‘ Viola Davis capturing almost 50% and the rest split fairly evenly between the other nominees.
And finally, a category we requested data on mainly because of the presence of Tanna, Australia’s first Foreign Language Oscar nominee. Sadly, it looks like Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman has the most buzz, although possibly that’s because he can’t enter the country to attend the ceremony. The soon-to-be-remade Toni Erdmann is also generating a lot of Oscars noise, along with A Man Called Ove. At least Tanna has the excellent Land of Mine to keep it company down there.
