Magazines, stores, most public and online services announce the debut of calendar holidays and events long before they actual start. That got me thinking, when people start thinking and writing about these events. Take Christmas for instance. Even from November see Christmas trees in windows, promotions for buying gifts, and we hear Christmas specific songs and carols. While these visual incentives are not easy to miss, the question arises: what happens in online platforms? The analysis I made is related to the presence of the *#christmas* and *#halloween* tags in the steemians’ posts. 
**Setup and Data Availability**
I connected to the steemsql database following the guidelines for Python provided by @arcange https://steemit.com/steemit/@arcange/steemsql-com-a-public-sql-server-database-with-all-steemit-blockchain-data. To retrieve the data I used the following query:
*SELECT count(*), year(created), month(created) FROM Comments where category='christmas' group by year(created), month(created) order by year(created), month(created)*
The analysis was made on the data available in the database starting March 2016 up to January 8, 2018. All posts published on the steemit platform that had #christmas and #halloween were included. The years used in the analysis are 2017, 2017, and 2018. The important dates are December 25th – Christmas and October 31st – Halloween.
**Case study 1 - #christmas**
![craw.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/hpiynhbhq/image/upload/v1515437574/vfiz2habwvewlaeccmbj.png)

**1. First mention**
The first mention of #christmas was on May 14th 2016 by two persons.
**2.Top mentions**
The most *christmas* tags were included in posts on December 25th, 2017. For the year 2016, the most mentions were also on December 25th.
![cgroup.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/hpiynhbhq/image/upload/v1515437648/uexihw0dgfqxsm2tdmnx.png)

**3. Interest increase**	
Based on the 2017 available data, people start being interested in Christmas and start writing about it in October, while in November the number increased even more. The previous day to Christmas, the Christmas day and the following day after Christmas count for the most tag inclusions. 
**4. Interest fade**
After the event passed, people continued writing about it, but not as much. In 2017 people were still writing about Christmas in the first two weeks of January. In February no mention of #christmas was detected.
**5. Two-week analysis**
Analyzing the post tags two weeks before and after the Christmas shows that people show more interest in writing about Christmas before it starts. In 2017, two weeks before Christmas there were 9810 tags while after the event only 6940tags. For the same period, in 2016, there were 1278 tags counted before Christmas and only 490 tags after Christmas.
![tablec.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/hpiynhbhq/image/upload/v1515435185/wwdgggchrfog0bv116sw.png)

**Case study 2 - #halloween**
The same analysis was conducted for another recurrent event, the Halloween. While the volume of posts does not differ very much between the two years used for analysis, the results follow the same pattern. 
![hraw.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/hpiynhbhq/image/upload/v1515435588/ark5cfmswcalnkjbechu.png)

**1. First mention**
The first mention of #halloween was on June 21st 2016 by three persons.
**2.Top mentions**
The most *halloween* tags were included on October 31st 2017: 468. For the year 2016, the most mentions were also on October 31st: 85.
**3. Interest increase**	
People start thinking about Halloween at the debut of autumn, in September. The interest increases as the end of October approaches. The day of celebrating Halloween and the previous and following day count for the most tag inclusions. 
**4. Interest fade**
People’s interest in Halloween abruptly drops the second day after Halloween and fades away in the following days.
**5. Two-week analysis**
Analyzing the post tags two weeks before and after the event shows that people show more interest before the event than after it has ended. In 2017, two weeks before the event there were 874 tags while after the event only 689. For the same period, in 2016, there were 154 tags before the event and only 50 after the event has ended.
![tableh.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/hpiynhbhq/image/upload/v1515435139/nrkcxfh8lxt78p6kfjgb.png)


**Conclusions**
People are more interested in writing about an event before its debut. Their interest fades out once the event has passed. People’s interest in an event starts increasing approximately in one month before the event. People start thinking about a following event in the month preceding the event and the interest increases when the month of the event starts.

<br /><hr/><em>Posted on <a href="https://utopian.io/utopian-io/@idril/increased-and-faded-interest-in-events-as-in-steemit-tags">Utopian.io -  Rewarding Open Source Contributors</a></em><hr/>