I&#x27;d be interested to see the rest of their results, because I think you&#x27;ve just demolished that headline figure.<p>Reading the article I noted that an audience varying between 2.2 million to 3 million in the months before and 2.2 million to 2.5 million in the months after didn&#x27;t look like a step change in user behaviour; the claimed &quot;fall&quot; was no bigger than the variance over the previous 12 months. And I think you&#x27;ve just explained why the monthly results peaked at 3 million in one of the months before.<p>I don&#x27;t think the hypothesis is altogether implausible, but the evidence presented in the news article summary is less than compelling, particularly when this is the sort of research where researchers are at liberty to cherry pick their results.<p>In the absence of the actual paper, here&#x27;s the underlying Google trends
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.co.uk&#x2F;trends&#x2F;explore#q=al%20qaeda" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.co.uk&#x2F;trends&#x2F;explore#q=al%20qaeda</a>
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.co.uk&#x2F;trends&#x2F;explore#q=terrorism" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.co.uk&#x2F;trends&#x2F;explore#q=terrorism</a>
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.co.uk&#x2F;trends&#x2F;explore#q=bombing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.co.uk&#x2F;trends&#x2F;explore#q=bombing</a><p>Clearly (i) the hypothesised step change in user behaviour post-Snowden doesn&#x27;t exist for global web searches (ii) there are a lot of spikes attributable to individual events, not least one in early 2013 and (iii) there&#x27;s a <i>trend decline</i> in searches for terrorism starting over a decade ago