GaWC Project 88

Global Buzz – Measuring Short-Term Changes Among Cities in Globalization

Funded by Loughborough University (2009-10)

Researchers: Michael Hoyler, Oli Mould and Peter Taylor

[Results]

Global Buzz is an ‘immediate measure' of globalization: it indicates levels of global activity that are happening within selected cities over a given month. This short-term measure allows cities to be closely monitored over time. Results are produced for 62 cities in the form of % global buzz occurring in each city.

The measurement of Global Buzz is based upon a formula that combines counts from Google searches on cities with key concepts. From this we obtain the % of global buzz in each city every month. Changes from month to month are also computed.

The choice of cities is based largely on other GaWC results but with an additional requirement for reasonable representation across world regions.

Here are the selected cities: