Gas Prices On The Rise
Throughout the past year, as the COVID-19 shuttered travel for many, the price of gasoline in many areas of the U.S. has been its lowest in years. In some areas, that price was less than $2 per gallon. But as America continues to reopen and adjust to life with coronavirus, gasoline prices are now headed the opposite direction.
According to CBS, the national average price of gasoline is now $2.87. The price doubled in two-thirds of the country. The hike has a few roots, including natural disasters such as in Texas, where many refineries are located, has also contributed, but the demand has increased, as air travel also has risen. On March 4, there were 1.4 million airline travelers, the most in any day since March of last year.
But what is the overall conversation like? Naturally, we enlisted the help of Social Studio, in the Adam Brown Social Media Command Center, to help.
For this search, we used the keywords of ‘gasoline’ and ‘price,’ along with ‘gas’ and ‘price.’ Because the price hike has come in the past month, over 30 days, the search generated just under 70,000 online posts.
Below is the word cloud generated from the search, which shows the keywords associated with the search. There are a few words, such as ‘cylinder’ and ‘delhi’ that are associated from posts that originated from India:
The majority of posts, unsurprisingly, were labeled as from the United States. But specifically, the next highest number of posts were from Texas. Interestingly, though, among age groups, the 25-34 age demographic posted more than any other group and the majority of the posts from that group came from California. Three of the top five locations were Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego. Of course, California has the highest average gas price in the country, at nearly $3.87 per gallon.
Also of note, it appears much of the conversation is driven by Yahoo and subsidiary websites, including Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Canada, and Yahoo News, nearly one-fourth of the total posts.
But perhaps also as interesting, because much of the conversation has originated from Texas, ERCOT, or the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, has been included in many posts. And not surprising, the conversation has been quite negative, given the council’s failures with the loss of power during the recent bitter cold temperatures there. And ERCOT it seems, is drawing at least some of the blame for the gas prices, though Texas itself still is among the lowest gas prices on average in the country, at $2.63, according to AAA.
It doesn’t seem that gas prices will be dropping anytime soon. And we’ll be utilizing Social Studio from our fourth floor perch at the College of Communication and Information to track this and other trends.