Celebrity Controversies and Attention Span

The adage goes, “There is no such thing as bad publicity.” Over the past eight months, we have had plenty of celebrities who have tested this theory with a range of controversies. However, these controversies often seem to disappear as quickly as they arrived. While we were in a meeting talking over Will Smith’s Oscar slap, we started discussing how long we felt the attention would be on Will Smith.

Curious, we analyzed four celebrity controversies to see if we could identify the attention span that people have when it comes to the controversy, what can help keep the conversations going, and if there was any lasting effect on the individual’s reputation.

We analyzed four controversies that we felt were in a similar vein: Dave Chappelle’s Netflix special, Joe Rogan/Neil Young Spotify, Will Smith’s Oscar slap, and Ricky Gervais’ Netflix special.

What emerges is an interesting pattern when we analyze the volume of conversations that take place around an event. In each case, we see that there is a quick spike as the controversy goes viral. However, there appears to also be a quick decline as people move on after a few days. However, this isn’t always the case. In the cases of Dave Chappelle, Joe Rogan, and Ricky Gervais, future events and responses caused additional conversation spikes. In the case of Will Smith, people pretty quickly decided their stance on the slap and it passed without additional conversations. This would suggest that if you ever go viral for something negative, your best option is just to stay silent and let it pass over the course of a few days.

However, it isn’t really enough to only analyze the conversation volume to determine if there is no such thing as bad press. We must also analyze the nature and sentiment of the conversations to understand if there is a lasting effect on the celebrities’ image.

When analyzing the sentiment behind the conversations, what we typically see is a drop in the number of positive conversations when a controversy emerges. This isn’t surprising given that the celebrity is going viral for something negative. However, what is interesting is whether or not these celebrities can regain their positive conversations after the controversy declines. The above shows that in the cases of Dave Chappelle and Will Smith, there was lasting damage to their reputation.

A couple of notes about Joe Rogan and Ricky Gervais. Joe Rogan was already a pretty popular, yet polarizing, person prior to the controversy. In addition, the 52% that were neutral on him suggests that most people that didn’t listen to him didn’t care about him one way or another.

In the case of Ricky Gervais, the conversation had actually evolved since the Dave Chappelle special. Most people had already taken a stance that talked about how comedians are supposed to push social boundaries, free speech, etc. This, combined with not being as well known as Dave Chappelle, likely shielded him from any further fallout.

It would appear that in the cases of Dave Chappelle and Will Smith, their reputations took a hit based on their controversies and will take some care to build back.  I suppose the lesson is that if you ever get a chance to be a PR manager for a controversial celebrity, the playbook should be to simply stay quiet and let the controversy pass and work on rebuilding their reputation in the weeks to follow.