MH370: Social media hype on an all time low

It has been 25 long days since Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 mysteriously vanished and the hype around its disappearance has hit an all-time low on social media.

An article by Mashable cited data by Sysomos, a Marketwired company and leader in social analytics and intelligence, showed tweets about the plane was only mentioned 170,657 times on Twitter on Sunday.

MH370 on Twitter

There was a 92% drop from a high of 2,343,994 of Twitter mentions on March 24, when Prime Minister Najib Razak announced MH370’s journey ended in the middle of the south Indian Ocean.

The news portal also reported that mentions of Malaysia Airlines search in news media are down by 64% at 12,832 news mentions from a high reached on March 24 at 35,715, according to data by Sysomos.

MH370 on the news

“The public's fatigue has seemingly set in after weeks of endless speculation and few credible leads in the investigation into the plane's disappearance,” said Mashable news editor Brian Ries in his article.

Search operations for flight MH370 is still underway, led by the Australia Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA). Around 20 ships and aircrafts are currently scouring the seas for any signs of the missing jetliner, but so far have only recovered random flotsam and jetsam from the sea.

However, the families of the 239 missing passengers have refused to give up hope. Many are still camped out in hotels in Beijing and Malaysia, attending daily debriefings, hoping against hope that their loved ones are still alive.