City movement, mapped

We’ve been exploring Citymapper data to investigate how movement in cities has changed because of lockdown measures.

Sweden has a unique approach to the pandemic, which entails citizens taking personal responsibility for physical distance guidelines while most non-essential businesses remain open. It’s turned heads around the world – especially for those who thought lockdown and quarantine measures were over-the-top.

Within Sweden, polling suggested the majority of the population supported the government and its strategy.

Despite not having a full lockdown in place, travel activity does seem to have slowed. According to the Citymapper Mobility Index, the number of people travelling around Stockholm has dropped by 70% since March 8.

In comparison, cities in full lockdown like London and New York have seen drops of 90% and 95% respectively, while Copenhagen in neighboring Denmark had a drop of 88%. This suggests that while many people in Stockholm have self-restricted their travel, more formal lockdowns are better at bringing movement down.

But as lockdowns continue, frustration has started bubbling. Our Consumer Research platform revealed that since March 8, there were 157k people demanding an end to lockdown in the States, and 58k calling for the same in the UK.

It’s still early days of course, but it seems likely that discontent with lockdowns will grow. For example, protests have been seen across the US, while car use in the UK has already started to rise.

Relationships are feeling the strain

In times of stress and turmoil, our relationships can become strained. Add to that being stuck indoors for most of the day, and it’s no surprise that more people are seeking relationship advice.

We looked at the number of Reddit submissions on r/relationship_advice and r/relationships, finding that advice requests have been growing, on average, by 4% per week since March 23. That compares to the average 0% weekly change we found before this in 2020.

As lockdowns came into force, submissions to the subreddits we studied saw a big drop the week of March 16. There will be a couple of reasons for this, such as people adjusting to new schedules and being too busy to post.

But then we see the build. As people have had to spend much more time with each other, be that with roommates, partners, or family, help requests have gone up. It seems like tempers are fraying, and annoying habits are getting harder to ignore.

But what issues are causing tension?

Unsurprisingly, quarantining and Covid-19 make appearances, showing they’re driving a lot of problems. From March 23 onwards, virus-related issues were mentioned in 29% of submissions.

We also found that lockdown isn’t getting in the way of cheating. People have moved their infidelity into the modern era, with mentions of sexting and snooping on partner’s messaging apps.

On a more serious note, our research tallies with a worldwide rise in reports of domestic violence since lockdowns have been in place. With people stuck indoors, there is little escape for many of those suffering at the hands of those they live with.

People turn away from Covid-19 content

It’s Monday, so it’s time to take another look at how we’re discussing Covid-19 online, and how we’re engaging with content on the topic.

To do this analysis, we use BuzzSumo to look at how many articles about Covid-19 are published and the average number of social engagements (Reddits shares, Facebook likes, etc) they get.

We also include the size of the general discussion around Covid-19 online using data from our Consumer Research platform. We then index all the data to March 2 so we can make the trends comparable.

Here’s the latest data.

For the number of articles and size of discussion, we see the continuation of downward trends. Publishers are releasing less Covid-19 content than in previous weeks, and the same goes for the people discussing it. Having said that, last week saw the smallest drop so far.

For average engagements per article, the story is a little different.

For two weeks it barely changed, suggesting publishers were still finding their feet. But that all changed last week when we noticed a fall of 23% – one of the biggest drops we’ve tracked so far (equal to the drop of the same size the week of March 30). Articles now get 582 engagements on average, compared to their peak of 1,154.

This could be gloomy news for publishers, many of whom are struggling to stay afloat as ad money dries up. That said, it may be that they are finding successful engagement figures in other ways, without covering the Covid-19 crisis.

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Stay safe,

Brandwatch Response Team