It’s that time of year again. The 91st Academy Awards ceremony is upon us and, according to our social data, everyone’s abuzz with excitement. Who will be going home with the big prize? Who are people most excited to see on stage at the Oscars 2019? What on earth is going on with the host situation?? Here at Synthesio we’ve gathered tons of social data and insights on the Academy Awards. More specifically, I set out to answer one question: if the viewers could choose the Oscar winners, who would win the top three awards?

People aren’t afraid to share their opinions on social media. Thankfully, that means there is a lot of great social data I was able to access. For this particular blog post, I decided to focus on which nominated movies, actors and actresses have captured the hearts (and figurative votes) of social media users worldwide.

So, how did I determine such a subjective statistic? I looked at social data over the past 30 days and used Synthesio’s Social Reputation Score algorithm. Social Reputation Score, or SRS for short, provides a score of 0-100 based on overall mention volume and the sentiment (positive vs. negative) of each mention on social media. This score gives us a holistic picture of the overall feeling toward a topic or brand as expressed online.

So, if social data predicted the Oscars 2019 … who would win?

Best Picture

By far, the Best Picture award had people talking the most. This category took a whopping 56% of total mentions between the main three topics we looked at — Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Actress. Black Panther ended up with the most overall mentions within that category, but the field was pretty even overall. Roma and a Star is Born both came within about 2% of each other. The rest of the nominees weren’t too far behind. That’s only mention volume, though. The bigger story is, who came away with the best overall SRS score?

The Favourite lives up to its namesake and wins the prize in best overall score with a solid 65.04 SRS, despite only pulling in about 11% of all Best Picture mentions. This score indicates that the movie scored extremely positive among audiences, enough to offset what it lacked in actual mentions. Black Panther fell to about middle-of-the-pack as far as SRS is concerned. Bohemian Rhapsody appears to be the most divisive choice among audiences, with a solid positive sentiment rating but nearly double the negative sentiment of any other Best Picture nominee. A lot of people had an opinion on that one.

Best Actress

The Best Actress category generated the most buzz between the Actor categories. Social data proved that unlike the Best Picture category, there was a massive discrepancy in mentions. Lady Gaga took the lion’s share of mentions (40%) as the most talked about actress on social media. Coming in second place, Glenn Close only brings home about 17% of mentions.

But did all of that buzz translate into the best SRS? Not even close. When taking both mention volume and overall sentiment into account, Lady Gaga comes in dead last. Ouch.

Instead, Olivia Colman of The Favourite takes the prize here with a 63.13 SRS. Social data shows that people loved The Favourite!

Best Actor

Social data seems to show that A Star Is Born cast some real buzzworthy stars. Bradley Cooper takes home about 40% of all Best Actor social data mentions, much like his co-star Lady Gaga. Second place winner Rami Malek fares a bit better in this category compared to his Best Actress counterpart with a total of 21% of mentions. Unfortunately, once we introduce sentiment into the equation Bradley Cooper’s popularity takes a nosedive. The actor’s SRS lands him last among all other Best Actor nominees. While the negative sentiment generated looks to be on par with the other nominees in this category, Bradley Cooper has the smallest percentage of positive sentiment. It appears that some viewers were left feeling a bit “meh” about the actor.

While Vice had the lowest SRS based on our social data in the Best Picture category, actor Christian Bale came away entirely unscathed. The actor reigns supreme over all other Best Actor nominees with an SRS of 61.69. Few mentions regarding the actor himself appear to be negative. His performance seems to have impressed audiences, even if Vice didn’t.

And there you have it, the winners of the Academy Awards … if the viewers had a say! Learn how to run your own social listening studies with Synthesio. Ask for a demo today.