Patriotic attitudes are generally very stable. In a
question Gallup asked in January 2001, 87% said they were "extremely"
or "very" proud to be American. When Pew repeated the identical
question last year, 86% gave that response. In 2001 and 2009, only 1% said they
were "not at all proud." The 9/11 tragedy produced more overt
displays of patriotism and heightened sentiment, but responses soon returned to
the norm.
So how did 9/11 impact American
patriotism? Back in 2005, an MSNBC article reported the results of a poll conducted
by the Roper Reports unit of NOP World. NOP’s vice president of consumer trends
was quoted as saying:
“We tracked patriotism, spirituality and religion,
and giving to charities and volunteerism right after 9/11,” Silvers said. “All
three popped up. Within about nine months, volunteering was down and so was
religion, but what has stayed with us is patriotism, and it’s obviously fueled
by a couple of things. The shift point was 9/11.”
As are most of the folks working
at my BI software development company (SiSense), I could be called obsessed when
it comes to applying business intelligence methodologies to anything. In this
spirit, I automatically started thinking about how I might be able to uncover
some trends showing if and how actual data might support the articles and
surveys I saw about American patriotism and 9/11, as the ten-year anniversary
of the 9/11 tragedies approached.
I decided to take a look at Google search data and see if and how online searches reflect the “patriotism effects” of 9/11 in America. After looking around and reading some more, I came up with two searches to check out: flag sales and volunteering.
What led me to check out flag
sales? I saw a recent article that says that, “One response to the
catastrophic events of Sept. 11, 2001, came quickly in a traditionally American
way -- flag sales soared.” The
article quotes the president of Gettysburg Flag Works in New York State as saying, “‘On 9/11, 12,
13, 14, we sold out everything that was red, white and blue. We had lines out
the door,’ recalled Mike Cronin, president of Gettysburg Flag Works. “I was in
flag shock for a couple of weeks.’”
Not surprisingly, a sharp increase in searches related to flag sales can be seen in Google search data in the month of September 2001. For the years following 2001, however, searches for flag sales were relatively flat.
Interestingly, though, this year’s tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks seems to be resonating more with Americans than on previous anniversaries: flag sale searches increased significantly over the past few weeks.
Flags Sales 2001
Flags Sales 2007
Flags Sales 2011
When I went looking for
articles which might discuss the increase in community service and volunteering
among Americans, I didn’t find much. However, a look at Google search data for
“volunteer USA” shows an interesting consistency with what I saw for flag sales
searches: significant spikes in searches after the original 9/11 and then again
this year.
US Volunteers 2009
US Volunteers 2011
US Volunteers 2001
US Volunteers 2009
US Volunteers 2011
From the graphs above it is quite clear that the 10th anniversary of 9/11 has a great impact on patriotism, even more so than years before.
In any case, it’s hard to believe that ten years have passed since thousands of Americans died on 9/11. Hopefully, America is stronger as a country for it and its people are stronger as a nation. In case you feel like reading more about how patriotism has increased in the US since 9/11/01, I leave you with the following article, published this week in a Florida newspaper, which talks about American patriotism (and the difficulty in measuring it with surveys): Since 9/11: Patriotism - Ten years after the deadliest terrorist attack inside the United States, love of country remains as strong as ever, if not a little stronger.
In any case, it’s hard to believe that ten years have passed since thousands of Americans died on 9/11. Hopefully, America is stronger as a country for it and its people are stronger as a nation. In case you feel like reading more about how patriotism has increased in the US since 9/11/01, I leave you with the following article, published this week in a Florida newspaper, which talks about American patriotism (and the difficulty in measuring it with surveys): Since 9/11: Patriotism - Ten years after the deadliest terrorist attack inside the United States, love of country remains as strong as ever, if not a little stronger.
By: Roi Hildesheimer | The ElastiCube Chronicles - Business Intelligence Blog
