Again the general picture is unchanged. Each metric has fallen for the sixth week in a row, although the rates at which they’re falling aren’t the same.

The Covid-19 conversation saw the smallest drop we’ve tracked so far, contracting by just 6%. The size of the discussion is still significant though, with just under 6m people mentioning the virus last week.

The amount of content referencing Covid-19 has remained pretty steady, dropping by 9% last week. That compares to drops of 8% and 10% in the two weeks prior. Nevertheless we’re certainly not starved of content, with 400k articles going up last week.

Our biggest drop was in the average amount of social engagements with Covid-19 content. It fell by 13%, the third largest drop for this metric we’ve recorded.

This won’t be shocking to most readers. Covid-19 coverage and conversation is a constant wherever we go, so many may be looking to get away from it.

What’s grabbing people’s attention instead?

As we previously reported, feel-good stories are one thing the internet is here for these days, and there was a big one last week. Garnering 780k engagements, putting it among the top 30 non-coronavirus articles of the week, it was all about a shipwreck.

The article is an excerpt from the book Humankind by Rutger Bregman, and tells the story of a bunch of boys shipwrecked on an island for 15 months. Counter to the famous novel Lord of the Flies, the boys worked together peacefully as a community.

At a time of communal effort and sacrifice, whether that means keeping your distance from your neighbors or helping with shopping for the elderly, this story clearly resonated with people.

According to BuzzSumo, the piece is the Guardian’s tenth most shared article of the past two years. With it getting 4m+ page views, other publishers should be paying attention.

Virtual LOLs

Entertainers have been pretty hard hit by pandemic. With bars and venues shuttered, people who make a living in front of a crowd have had to find ways to adapt.

Comedians obviously fall under this category, so we decided to take a look at how the world’s laughmongers are navigating the crisis. Many of them are turning to virtual events to keep their careers going.

We can see a clear jump early in March, just after lockdowns were introduced in many countries around the world. Promoters were quick to readjust as comedy clubs shut down.

Obviously it’s a good way for comedians to bring in some cash before they can get back on stage. Plus, offering free events can be a good way for lesser known comedians to start building a rep as people clamour for entertainment from their living rooms.

It’s not all stand up, though.

For example, at the end of April there was a Parks and Recreations reunion that raised money for Covid-19 relief efforts. The whole episode was set up as a Zoom call between the characters.

There’s also the matter of Saturday Night Live. The show’s most recent season had to be temporarily halted after New York city was shut down. But within a few weeks it was back, produced remotely with the cast filming from home.

These two examples have likely spurred on others in the comedy game, proving that a lack of a live, in-person audience doesn’t need to mean a lack of laughs. Comedians will probably be happy about the lack of heckling, too.

Staycations and camping on the rise

Thanks to Covid-19, and the travel restrictions it’s brought about, a lot less people are flying. That doesn’t mean they’re giving up on vacations, though. Using our Consumer Research platform, we found an increase in English-language mentions about staycations and camping as people looked closer to home when planning for the year ahead.

Camping is a particularly popular alternative to traditional vacations. In March and April, there were 375k social authors discussing camping plans as an alternative to a trip abroad.

As we can see, more people are discussing camping this year than in previous years. The conversation is up 14% in 2020 compared to the average for January to April in the four years prior.

This suggests the pandemic has got people looking longingly to the great outdoors, although January and February (before lockdown measures took hold in much of the English-speaking world) also saw a lot of people looking forward to outdoorsy vacations. Camping, later in the year, could be twice as popular as it would have been.

So what are people planning? In March and April, 31k users discussed backpacking around their home country, 27k planned to hit a beach with their tent, and 25k users discussed a camping trip based on hiking.

Likewise, because people have had to rethink their vacation plans abroad thanks to Covid-19, staycations have increased in popularity too.

Again we can see an increase in 2020 compared to January – April in the years 2016-2019, with staycation conversations up by 41%. A big contributor to this was Canada’s April appeal for people to ‘staycation for the nation.’

Consumers have started to make plans for their staycation. There were 51k mentions of a trip to the ‘Happiest Place on Earth’, 45k mentions of the beach, and 8k mentions of road trips.

We found what appears to be a gap in the social media market for help in booking or organizing staycations. 88k users were looking for help to organize one for the family, and 8k honeymooners requested some help from social in finding a romantic getaway.

Vacations are a good example of how consumers have adapted throughout the pandemic – they are still determined to experience something new, and make the most of their time this year.

That said, are those chatting about staycations and camping being a bit optimistic by planning ahead for the year? These kinds of vacations aren’t going to be great (if they go ahead at all) under lockdown, and the hospitality industry could be one of the last to fully open up again.

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Brandwatch Response Team