Streisand effect

The other side of the coin

Introduction

In order to verify if the so called “Streisand Effect” actually happened, thanks to the Google Trends tool we were able to visualize either the single trends about our subjects or them altogether.
This way we discovered that if the Right to be forgotten should in fact bring about the removal of information about someone, the fact that said people ask for removal in the first place implies the opposite effect, namely the Streisand Effect.

Aiming to investigate the Streisand Effect, we decided to consider the most important cases we found in the corpus we previously analyzed. We also tried to select cases from different countries involved in dealing and discussing measures concerning the RTBF.

How to read the first visualization

This visualization considers the timepspan from 2007 to the end of 2014, when the main events regarding these people occurred.
You can switch the visualization between the one regarding the relative percentage and the one regarding the absolute percentage by clicking on the buttons below.
When you are in the Relative one, each trend goes from a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 100 and each one is independent from the other. Instead, when you are analysing the Absolute one, every trend is linked to the other, so that, for example, if a trend reached the max value of 100 before, now it may be only at 2. By hovering over each trend with your mouse you can read a brief summary about the specific case and the peak of searches on a specific period of time.

How it has been done

The first tool used was Google Trend to extract the data about each person (for the Relative percentage visualization) or them altogether. Then, through Excel or Google Sheet, we were able to organize them in order to create a line chart.

Findings

The Streisand Effect is confirmed by this analysis, given how the peaks are found in the time frame of the erasure requests.
Comparing these trends in an absolute scale, it is immediately evident how each of them is somehow flattened, given the weight of the Catsouras’s trend.

Metadata

Timestamp: 14/12/2014 - 18/12/2014

Data source: Google Trends, Google

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