Each day numerous global and national events leave an imprint on our lives, perceptions, and values. This affects our behavior, social stance, consumer preferences, worldviews, the content we consume, the topics we discuss, and even the words that we choose to use. Gradually such events form who we are as human beings, as a nation, and as a society.
Hereby, we believe it is important to take the time and acknowledge which topics dominate our lives, what we are talking about daily, what is all over the news, and what truly matters for our society today.
No one knows the answers to those questions better than our trend analysis experts. So we gladly took up the opportunity to turn that knowledge into actions by taking part in kaksepishe.com’s initiative, aiming to identify the most remarkable words for Bulgarians in 2022.
The results of the project “Words of the Year” 2022 revealed that according to Bulgarians, the words marking 2022 are “war” („война“), “inflation”(„инфлация“), “elections”(„избори“), and “Ukraine”(„Украйна“).
This campaign took place for a second consecutive year, but what was different this time was that the study consisted of two separate parts. Similarly to last year, the first part focused on which words people identified as remarkable. However, this year there was also a second part, investigating the media landscape, something that has never been done before in a Bulgarian study of that type.
What Do People Say?
Following last year’s procedure, the first part of the campaign, aiming to reveal the public opinions was structured in three main steps:
- Step one: Crowdsourcing of remarkable words on social media;
- Step two: A well-qualified jury picked 10 out of the top 30 most popular suggestions;
- Step three: There was an online survey that allowed people to choose the winners.
The outcomes of this stage identified that the word “war”(„война“) was the undisputable winner with over 51% of the votes, followed by “inflation” („инфлация“) that received 40% of the votes, and then “elections”(„избори“) and “Ukraine”(„Украйна“) both with around 29%.
What Does the Media Say?
As for the second part of the study, Sensika had the chance to contribute to this initiative by conducting a nationwide media analysis that included approximately 11.3 million publications in Bulgarian from over 7990 media sources, including news websites, blogs, and forums.
Our large-scale analysis of more than 2.6 million words and phrases, identified that the most frequently used words/phrases in the Bulgarian media landscape for the period from 1 January 2022 until 31 December 2022 were:
- “Bulgaria” („България“)
- “Russia” („Русия“)
- “Ukraine” („Украйна“)
- “war” („война“)
- “Europe” („Европа“)
- “USA” („САЩ“)
- “politics” („политика“)
- “minister” („министър“)
- “price” („цена“)
- “child” („дете“)
- “help” („помощ”)
- “president” („президент”)
- “government” („правителство”)
- “support” („подкрепа”)
- “parliament” („парламент”)
- “party” („партия”)
- “energy” („енергия”)
- “gas” („газ”)
- “governance” („управление”)
- “economics” („икономика”)
During our research, we not only identified the most mentioned words in the Bulgarian media landscape, but we also analyzed the context in which they were used by looking into the words that most often appeared in combination with them. This is a methodology that we use to discover top media stories and conduct in-depth topic monitoring for various issues, industries, and events.
For example, in this particular use case, we observed that the word “prices” („цени“) seems to be mostly related to the prices of gas and fuels. This is evident by the fact that the keywords that appear to be used in combination with it are “gas” („газ”) and “Russia” („Русия”).
While the word “children” („деца”) was used both in relation to the Ukrainian war, and also due to the fact that a child went missing for a couple of days in mid-November.
This year’s study revealed a rather negative state of mind in Bulgaria that could be partially explained by the ongoing war in Ukraine and the lack of political stability.
We can’t help but wonder what the wider implications of this negative trend are on perceptions, consumer behaviors, or businesses.
If you are curious to find the answers to these questions with us, book a demo and let us share our expertise!
