Now for something different: What effect did the release of the Hulsey Draft, and its associated media reports, have on AE911Truths online engagement (which I offer as a rough proxy of change in public awareness)?
As you know, for a long time I have been momitoring some online numbers from AE's web presences, among them
- Their Facebook "Likes"
- The number of Page Hits, as displayed on the bottom of the old homepage design ("Content View Hits")
It's always been the case that those numbers/day increased on and around the 9/11 anniversaries every year. Much of this can be attributed to general popular interest about 9/11 peaking around those days, some of it may be attributed to the fact that AE themselves center some of their largest marketing efforts (such as press releases and new announcements, projects) around that date.
The Hulsey report was released on September 03 this year (Alaska time - Sept 04 in most of the world), and in the days following, some independent media outlets carried the story, e.g
I think I remember, but can't find it now, that Mick expressed some concern that such early news reports might have the power to transform the minds of many fresh people into Truthers. But how many?
If that was such a huge influence on public awareness, then some of these newly recruited Truthers should come back to AE911Truth, look at their home page, and like their Facebook presence.
Three graphics show that there is, if any, only a very small discernible signal in the data.
1. Here is the development of "likes/day" to
their Facebook page:
What you see here is that they actually were losing a few likes almost every day until Sept 04, then (after the release),. three days just above 0, then (starting Sep07/08 - when news reports came out - a small jump to around 50/day. Then comes 9/11 proper, with a sharp 2-day peak follwed by about 10 days of deterioration back into negative territory.
Then comes another, smaller peak that deteriorates over 3 days. Sinced then, they've been below 0 again.
This seems to suggest that the Hulsey report and subsequent media echo has gained AE something like 5 extra Likes per day for a period of no more than 10 days - under 500 total.
To illustrate that it is normal for "Likes/day" to start increasing a few days before 9/11, peaking and then deteriorating on 9/11 and ca. 10 following days, here is an overlay of the same thing for the years 2015-2019. Note that in some years I did not record the numbers daily, nor at regular intervals, so don't compare peak heights. The area under the graph is what counts in the end:
What I claim is that the Hulsey report generated few, if any, extra "Likes" compared to the usual development in Septembers.
2. Visitors to the ae911truth.org - the home page, as recorded on the old design
http://www1.ae911truth.org/
This data is very noisy from day to day, so I have now taken to record the numbers every 3rd day. Only from 9/10 onwards did I record daily for 6 days.
Almost every year, they see more traffic in September than in the preceding and following month, due to the heightened interest that the anniversary creates.
You see: Traffic peaks somewhat (roughly +40% over the average of preceding and following months) for no more than 4 days. There's a more prominent peak at the end of September that I have no explanation for.
The page hits after the press releases and before 9/11 are unremarkable.
September totals have been higher than August's and October's almost every year. Comparing the August-October averages of the last 5 years...
...2019 does'n stand out at all - in fact, other Septembers have stood out more markedly in recent years.
CONCLUSION
It seems that the press coverage of the Hulsey Draft has benefitted AE911Truth's online engagement only marginally, if at all. It is difficult to discern a signal.
(Post Scriptum: I have not seen, nor spent serious time looking for, explanations for the "FB Likes" peak of Oct 5, nor for the "Conetent View Hits" peak between Sep 28 and Oct 01. They also do not coincide with each other, which indicates they have different origins, which makes it unlikely that media reports about the Hulsey study would have caused them)