Does online buzz predict Oscar winners?

While this year’s 83^rd Academy Awards may have offered few surprises in terms of which actors and which movies ended the night with coveted statues in hand, there was a tremendous amount of buzz througout the social media space in the days leading up to Awards night, with viewers taking to Facebook, Twitter and their respective blogs to talk about this year’s nominees.

We wondered if all of this online activity could be an early indicator of future Oscar winners. To find out more, Cohn & Wolfe conducted a quick analysis of conversations happening within the social media sphere about this year’s nominees, taking a look at a few of the most popular categories: Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Actress.

Here’s what we found:

Best Picture

The Nominees: ‘The Social Network’, ‘Toy Story 3’, ‘Black Swan’, ‘The Fighter’, ‘True Grit’, ‘Inception’, ‘Winter’s Bone’, ‘127 Hours’ and ‘The King’s Speech’

Winning four Oscars this year, including Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects, Christopher Nolan’s ‘Inception’ was the most talked about film during Oscar weekend—generating more than 50,000 posts in the week leading up to Awards night.  Closely following its lead were “The King’s Speech” (48,079) “The Social Network” (41,371) and “Toy Story 3” (38,035). Though ‘Inception’ was clearly the forerunner in driving online activity, “most talked about” in social media does not necessarily translate to a Best Picture winner. That award went to “The King’s Speech.”

Best Actor in a Leading Role

The Nominees: Javier Bardem, Jeff Bridges, Jesse Eisenberg, James Franco and Colin Firth

While this year’s co-host, James Franco, had a slight edge over Colin Firth in the week leading up to the big night (driven in part by his hosting gig), Colin Firth soared ahead in the final hours with more than 16,000 posts across social media channels.

This year’s Best Actor winner, Colin Firth, generated more online buzz than his fellow nominees Javier Bardem, Jeff Bridges and Jesse Eisenberg combined, with more than 53,000 posts online.

Best Actress in a Leading Role

The Nominees: Natalie Portman, Michelle Williams, Nicole Kidman, Annette Bening and Jennifer Lawrence

A fan favorite this year, Natalie Portman has dominated online conversations and topped 20,000 posts across social media on Oscar Night. It’s no surprise that she took home the Best Actress award.

Nicole Kidman finished a distant second place in online share of voice with just a fraction (1/6 to be exact) of Portman’s buzz.

These findings tell us that online buzz, while not an exact science, may be an early indicator of Oscar winners by demonstrating a clear link between viewer engagement and end results. It’ll be interesting to see how this might translate to other awards this year.

So what do you think? Were these films and their stars worth the hype?

Methodology: C&W Digital used Radian6 to analyze online conversations across social media channels (blogs, blog comments, forums, forum replies, images, videos, Facebook and Twitter) over the timeframe of February 21-28, 2011. For the “Best Picture” analysis, we limited results to the film’s name AND “Academy Award” OR “Oscar” to exclude irrelevant results for films like “The Social Network” and “Inception.”