An analysis on “The Rock”
About 15 years ago, one of today’s most popular and highest paid actors emerged onto the scene in Hollywood. Coming from a background of WWE wrestling, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson began his acting career with “Beyond the Mat” and “The Mummy Returns” in 2001. From then on he continued to land huge roles in movies due to his good looks, charisma, and tough attitude. He has grown into a celebrity icon with a plethora of sponsorships and brand deals. He has become a household name to many Americans and is a role model for fitness and healthy lifestyle choices. Dwayne Johnson has appeared in at least 56 movies over his career with many of those movies being very successful in the box office. With “The Rock” being such a prominent figure of our generation, there are extensive articles and history online about his past and present. In his Wikipedia page, there is extensive information about his early years, his wrestling career, and the bulk of the article talks about his career in film. This post is going to be exploring Dwayne Johnson’s wikipedia page and why there is a demand for information about him.
Dwayne Johnson is somebody that is prominent in the Hollywood scene but not very talked about outside of his movies. He has never been in the media for any scandals or wrongdoings which has led him to become a role model for young people of this generation. Using information from his wikipedia page, it can be seen that his page is visited a lot compared to other actors that have similar status to him. The visualization above is comparing the page views of Dwayne Johnson to actor Chris Hemsworth, who also has had his fair share of ultra successful movies. It is evident that the demand for knowledge about “The Rock” is a lot higher than other actors similar to him. It would be interesting to find out why this is the case. Maybe he is just a better actor or his movies are more entertaining. It is hard to tell just from this data.
Using wikipedia functions in python, information about page views and revisions are easily able to be downloaded and analyzed. The furthest into the past that this wikipedia page gives is from 2015, even though “The Rock’s” career extends much earlier than that. Taking a look at his pageviews from 2015 to 2022, it can be seen that there are around 2500 views on an average day. However, the most important part of this graph is the sudden spikes in views on certain days and figuring out why people are flocking to Dwayne’s wikipedia page on these dates. The graph above shows timestamps of many of Johnson’s recent blockbuster movies. When looking at the graph it can be seen that most of the spikes in activity on the page happen around the release of a big movie. The biggest spike, which is about 250,000 page views in one day, happens right before the release of Hobbs and Shaw, which is one of “The Rock’s” biggest movies to date. This shows how big events such as a movie release or TV show airing will have a huge impact on the views of his page. It was surprising to see that Johnson’s newest movie, “Black Adam” did not follow this trend like his other movie releases. This could be due to a lack of interest in this new movie or that there was not enough publicity for it. The fast and furious movies have the biggest impact on pageviews at least in the graph above. This could indicate that Dwayne Johnson is best known for these movies, as well as the Jumanji movies. It seems that people want to learn about “The Rock” when one of his movies is about to or has just been released. The demand for information is highest when he is about to be in something big.
Coming from a background of WWE, where he already had a decent amount of fame, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was a prominent figure in the entertainment industry. Once he started starring in his own movies, his viewership and popularity took off. Like any other celebrity, he is going to be researched and information about him will be sought after. This demand for information is at its highest when a new movie is released or about to be released. This shows that Dwayne is best known for his films and is most prevalent in the media because of said films.
