As US social media recently honored Veterans Day, Nov 11, let’s take more than a moment to reflect on the dedicated men and women of our armed services.
Cannabis is still Federally classified as a Schedule One substance. That means VA clinicians are not allowed to recommend medical cannabis as part of any treatment program. That hasn’t stopped many vets from using cannabis to treat various conditions.
Veterans are a major subgroup of cannabis consumers. They are very well represented in the Munchies Index, too. From May ’19 to present, the 42.2M word dataset contains 3,282 instances of “veteran”. Check out the word frequency plot:
It’s hard to miss that spike in Nov ’19. What do you think that’s about? A sample of those tweets confirms a pattern of seasonality: November 11 is Veterans Day.
The November 2020 spike? The dataset only includes findings up to November 7. Here’s an updated visualization with data through November 15:
The seasonal Veterans Day surge of interest occurred in November 2020. It did not occur at nearly at same magnitude as in 2019. We can base this assessment on the peak of usage immediately before and during Veterans Day.
Refining Filter Settings to Explore the Data
What happens if we remove November from the plot? A different view. The scale changes significantly and the trendline runs nearly flat. The Munchies community expresses strong interest in veterans on Veterans Day, and a consistently low level of interest the rest of the year.
Veteran is actually a special class in the Munchies Index. How does veteran compare to other well known professions? Carpenter appears only 26 times. More on that unexpectedly low finding in the future. Firefighter appears 171 times. Manager, 825 times.
Summary of Top Veterans Day Posters
The Munchie dataset shows a 47% decrease in Veterans Day related content from 2019 to 2020. What could explain such an unexpected shift? One hypothesis was that the shift could be related to the 2020 Presidential election. This theory is based on two assumptions:
- First, the Munchies culture is historically left leaning; AND
- Veterans, as a group, may have become less socially attractive to the Munchies community as a result of political polarization.
The Munchies Index data isn’t an adequate source to confirm the validity of either of those large assumptions. However, the data can share more insights about the content creators who noticeably shifted their interests away from Veterans Day in 2020.
A Closer Look at Top 2019 “Veteran” Posters
Note: the goal here is NOT to call out any individual or group for their historic posts about any topic. We considered concealing the user names for the sake of this study, but ultimately decided against it. Analysts look to user behavior for signs of patterns in the community at large. Such analysis is understood to be an imperfect lens.
MMPConnection & MMPConnect: High volume “veteran” posters in 2019. Both accounts appear to be linked by branding and content. Current interests touch on many aspects of the cannabis community including medicinal use, industry news, and global advocacy. These are two (2) of the only three (3) users to make the Top 15 in the study. Their 2019 contribution of 57 posts decreased by 82% in 2020.
Griffkohout: A high volume “veteran” poster in 2019. User made no mention of Veterans Day in 2020. Current interests include local community, cannabis, and far left politics.
TheTotalReport: A high volume “veteran” poster in 2019. User made no mention of Veterans Day in 2020. Current interests include cannabis and far left politics.
OhmAllianceLLC: A high volume “veteran” poster in 2019. User profile no longer exists in November 2020.
GreenSourceMMJ: A high volume “veteran” poster in 2019. User promoted a generous 25% discount for vets on Veterans Day. That was their only mention of the target term in the study date range. Current interests include cannabis and business.
OmniMedicalMMJ: The top “veteran” posted in 2020. Would have tied for 8th place in the 2019 ranking. Current interests include medical cannabis and cannabis advocacy.
All the users identified here stood out due to their frequency of posting AND their relatively heavy use of hashtags. Some of the user data supports the political shift hypothesis. Other data is neutral on that point. It remains unclear as to why Veterans Day lost so much popularity within the munchies community.
About Stonewright.AI
Stonewright is a data science and technical marketing service firm. We focus primarily on the food, beverage, and cannabis industries. Former Stonewright clients include:
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