Did last week’s extraordinary congressional hearings on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs), commonly referred to as UFOs, take the world by storm? We did some research and analysis on social media conversations using Brandwatch and searches surrounding the event to gauge people’s reactions and the findings were intriguing.

Google witnessed a staggering 67x rise in UFOs-related searches

During the Congressional hearing, global UFO searches on Google experienced an extraordinary 67x surge. Although the latest official term is UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), UFO still trumped search engines at 85% more than UAP. On the search engine giant, top countries for UFO and alien-related searches are the United States, Argentina, Spain, and Canada.

Google Trends Top Locations

UFO-related Social Media Mentions: 10x Increase

In the month of July, there were a staggering 6 million mentions related to UFOs and aliens on social media. Notably, the last week of July alone contributed to 3.5 million of these mentions. This represents a significant increase, with conversations growing by 10 times from the usual range of 100-120K mentions on any regular day in July to a peak of 1.25 million mentions just on July 27th, coinciding with the day of the congressional hearing.

The topic of “Non-human Biologics” emerges top in popularity

There are a few key takeaways from the US congressional hearing on UFOs. Comparing the two topics, “Non-human Biologics Recovery” and “Government’s possession of UAPs or UFOs” on social media, our findings show that Non-Human Biologics Recovery dominates 70% of conversations, while UFO Possession captivates the remaining 30%.

Data from BrandWatch

Popularity doesn’t equate to positivity

Even with the recently gained momentum on UFOs, social media platforms are seeing a wave of skepticism, resulting in a staggering 400% increase in negative sentiments. This surge is predominantly fueled by growing skepticism towards UFO claims and mounting suspicions of government involvement in diverting public attention as part of a conspiracy. The chart below shows the recent change in the number of social media conversations based on sentiments a week before the UAP hearing.

Data from BrandWatch

In summary, the hottest topics round up:

• Government involvement and cover-ups: People are discussing the Government’s role in dealing with aliens, whether it is allowing the use of captured aliens for a movie, covering up their existence, or hosting secret programs dedicated to researching UFOs. There is suspicion and curiosity about what the government knows and how they handle it.
• UFO sightings and encounters: Conversations about UFO sightings, personal encounters, testimonies, and videos that have been declassified by the US Navy. There is a focus on the possibility of aliens visiting Earth and trying to understand the nature of these sightings.
• Pop culture references: Some conversations reference aliens in the context of pop culture, such as asking which song to play for aliens or discussing the portrayal of aliens in movies and TV shows.
• Memes: People on social media make humorous comments about their existence. These headlines reflect a mix of curiosity, skepticism, and light-heartedness surrounding the topic of aliens.