Americans Google Syria more than almost any other country
The online game "Where’s Damascus?," which went viral last week, plays on the punchline that Americans don't know very much about the countries that their government bombs. The same could be said for the Washington Post story, “9 questions about Syria you were too embarrassed to ask.” (Question one: “What’s Syria?”)
But while some Americans may not be up-to-date on the current conflict in Syria, they're trying hard to be. In fact, Americans have been Googling Syria more in the last week than any other country at any given point since 2004, when Google began keeping track, except for three: Iraq, in May 2004, when investigators found what was believed to be evidence of WMDs; North Korea earlier this year, when fears that it had developed a uranium-based nuclear weapon reached fever pitch; and America, all the time.
(Google's analytics tool Google Trends is normalized to take into account that people are Googling more now than before, according to Google spokeswoman Roya Soleimani.)
Syria has captured the nation's online curiosity more than Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, and Iran at any point in the last nine years, and Iraq at any point in the last eight. That's for a few reasons, according to political scientists interviewed by America Tonight: the timing, the ongoing nature of the story, and the way President Obama's request for congressional approval has turned an international crisis into a domestic political drama.
"It's historic in this regard," says Craig Hayden, an assistant professor in the International Communication Program at American University’s School of International Service, about Obama's decision to go to Congress. "...The process is becoming the story. And it's allowing more people to become exposed, get interested."
Almost as much as Iraq
Syria searches in the last week have beat out Iraq searches since May 2004, even though 2006-2007 was the most violent period in the war. Overall, Iraq has garnered far more Googling over the last nine years, but only because Americans (in aggregate) apparently haven’t been too faffed about Syria until last week. It should also be noted that Google Trends wasn’t keeping track in 2003, during the debate to go to war in Iraq.
We're still at war in Afghanistan
Enough said.
Isn't something going on in Egypt?
If you had the impression that we were wildly discussing the breakdown of civil society in Egypt, and now there's hardly a peep on the subject, well, you're right. When reports of last Wednesday's chemical attack in Syria surfaced, Syria quickly dwarfed Egypt in Google searches, and Egypt has only continued its downward slide. (For an update, thousands of supporters of ousted President Morsi took to the street Tuesday.) Syria Googling in the last week has even outpaced Egypt Googling during that country's January-February 2011 revolution.
We actually intervened in Libya
Even though America hasn't become involved yet in Syria, the country still handily beats out Libya in Google searches. Not only have Americans searched for Syria more than Libya over the last nine years, but they've also searched more for Syria in the past month than they did Libya in March 2011, when the U.S. and allies fired more than 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles into the country.
Aren't Americans most worried about Iran?
Even Iran, the country that stirs the greatest anxiety among U.S. strategists, has generated only a fraction of the interest among the American population at any given point. The surge of Syria Googling the past month is four times greater than Iran Googling at its peak in June 2009, when the disputed presidential election resulted in deadly protests.
North Korea's nuclear bomb threats
American curiosity was extremely piqued when North Korea supposedly conducted a test of a nuclear bomb in February, and then began issuing nearly daily threats against the United States. In fact, North Korea is the only country to garner a higher peak of U.S. Google searches than Syria this year, except for...
The winner is clear
More than any other country, Americans like to search for America. The most common related Google searches involving "America," however, are "bank america" and "bank of america." So if one of the largest banks in the world had Syria in its name, this might be a fairer competition.
What's behind it?
"It's a huge story of course," explains Marc Lynch, director of the Institute for Middle East Studies and professor of political science at George Washington University. "Besides chemical weapons and the possibility of war, we have two years of humanitarian disaster. Two million refugees, 100,000 dead ... It is kind of the perfect storm.”
But our interest in Syria is a pittance compared to our endless fascination with Miley Cyrus. Following Cyrus' twerk-filled performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, Google searches for her name wholloped searches for Syria. But now that the outrage and adulation have simmered down, searches for Cyrus and Syria are pretty much neck-in-neck, in one of the greatest testaments to the American people.
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