Chadwick Boseman on Google’s 2020 Top Trending Searches
Google’s 2020 Top Trending Searches list is like a time capsule of the events and interests that reached citizens and consumers this year. Not only was Disney nostalgia prevalent in the most searched trends for 2020, but the late actor Chadwick Boseman made the list on more than one occasion.
Here is what Google Analytics taught us about 2020, and what it means for how people are relating to Marvel content online.
Google Search Trends 2020: Top Results
Google released its 2020 Year in Search, outlining the top trending topics in each category on Wednesday, December 9, 2020. Coronavirus and Election Results were the first and second most popular trending searches, respectively, in 2020 – reflecting some of the major news of the year.
Kobe Bryant, who passed away unexpectedly last year, took the third spot.
Kobe Bryant celebrating the Los Angeles Lakers’ victory over the Orlando Magic in the 2009 NBA Finals. Bryant was the only Laker to show up for the parade. Photo: Scott Brinegar/Disney/Getty Images
Goggle Search Trends 2020: Celebrities
Tom Hanks topped the list in the actor category. Hollywood Reporter speculates because he was the first celebrity to publicly reveal he had tested positive for coronavirus back in March.
Hanks also ranked fifth in the most-searched people category.
Hanks responded to some fan mail from a young boy named Corona. Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
Google Search Trends 2020: Top Movies
The Oscars best picture winner Parasite takes the first spot in the top trending movie searches of the year, followed by its fellow best picture nominee 1917. And Black Panther takes the third spot.
Photo: Marvel Studios
Google Search Trends 2020: Chadwick Boseman
Chadwick Boseman was one of the most searched individuals in memoriam this year, taking the third spot on the list.
The late actor also took ninth place on the most trending searches of the year.
Photo: Entertainment Weekly
Disney recipes made the year’s top trending recipes, including Disney Churro, Dole Whip, and sourdough bread. Fans can enjoy making some of the trending recipes – including the Disney Churro and Dole Whip – thanks to the Disney Parks Food Blog and numerous Marvel cookbooks released this year.
Photo: Nikkolas Smith
For fans of Boseman that live near Disneyland, they can also head to Downtown Disney to pay tribute to the Black Panther star while enjoying some delicious treats. In a mural by artist Nikkolas Smith dedicated to Black Panther actor Chadwick Boseman, it depicts the actor doing the Wakanda Forever salute with a young kid wearing the Black Panther mask.
Google Search Trends 2020: Civic Engagement
The late Boseman’s death inspired people, and for the first time in Google Trends history, protest near me was searched in every state.
Photo: Getty Images
According to Google, the analytics’ trends demonstrate a shift in civic engagement:
Search interest in “protests” spiked in June of 2020. In years past, when national protests took place, most search interests came from our biggest cities. However, this year, from small towns to big cities, protests surfaced in every single state. One needed to look no further than “protest near me” this year to find a place to show support for the people and communities seeking justice.
Boseman was a symbol to many in the Black community who felt his career embodied the Black Lives Matter movement. And the general publics’ increased interest in activism, in general, is represented in the list of trending searches for 2020.
LeBron James honors the late Chadwick Boseman. Photo: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
According to Google, the top trending t-shirt the U.S. searched for in 2020 was Black Lives Matter t-shirts. If you want to continue supporting the movement with a Marvel-inspired that you can purchase from home, then check out Gerry Conway’s shop, BLM – Skulls for Justice.
Art by Wess Hancock. Photo: BLM – Skulls for Justice
Google Search Trends 2020: Ableism and Chadwick Boseman
Thanks to activists worldwide, there was also a surge in people searching for information on ableism.
Photo: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
In the disability awareness community, Boseman’s death sparked a push to discuss the “Hollywood ableism problem” and raise awareness. Because, in truth, Hollywood fails to create roles for disabled artists and fails to represent the diversity of the community. In an aptly titled article, Imani Barbarin argues that “in Chadwick Boseman, disabled Black kids got their superhero, the tragedy is [they] didn’t know him as such.”
Even when representative roles are created for the disabled community, those parts are rarely given to disabled artists.
The recent kerfuffle with Sia over the non-disabled Maddie Ziegler’s casting to play a nonverbal autistic artist/dancer in her new movie, Music, is a prime example of Hollywood’s failure to give roles to disabled people. Non-disabled actors currently play 95% of disabled roles despite 20% of the population identifying as disabled, and 1 out of 54 as autistic.
Photo: Alice Wong
In response to the boom in disability awareness, in part, thanks to activists’ efforts in the wake of Chadwick Boseman’s death, there was a significant increase in the United States on searches on the topic of ableism. American searches for what is ableism nearly doubled in 2020, according to Google.
Ableism, as defined by dictionaries, is discrimination or prejudice against individuals with disabilities, and searches for the phrase in the United States nearly doubled over last year. Still, deeper insights on the topic can be found in the voices of disabled advocates like Alice Wong (pictured), an activist, media maker, and consultant based in San Francisco, and the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project. Her book Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories From the Twenty-First Century was released in June 2020, and it shines a light on what ableism means in today’s world.
Wong and disability activists are contributing to conversations around ableism and the systems that exist that perpetuate it, including those in the performing arts.
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