The News in New Media

Author: mvbraze

Sen. Warnock Defeats Herschel Walker in Georgia Runoff

December 9, 2022

The 2022 midterm season is now complete. Here at the Social Media Listening Center we have been diligently following this election cycle and previously covered the Georgia midterms here. While midterms happened nearly a month ago, we were left without answers for the results of the Georgia senate race as neither candidate received the majority vote, and it was sent to a runoff election that would be held December 6th, 2022.  This left both Georgia and the country waiting with bated breath as this race would ultimately decide which party would hold the power in the senate.

As we discussed in our previous article on the Georgia elections, Georgia has seen a massive increase in voter turnout these past few election cycles – and this race was no different. The Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, said in a press release that there were “More Election Day votes cast in the 2022 runoff than on Election Day in the 2022 General Election, than on Election Day in the January 2021 runoff, or on the General Election Day in 2020”

The two candidates in the runoff election were incumbent Democratic Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker. Senator Warnock maintains his seat in the senate earning 51.4% of the votes (1,816,096 votes). Herschel Walker received 48.6% of the votes (1,719,483 votes). Sen. Warnocks win gives democrats the 51st seat in the senate, thus giving the party true majority.

To understand the publics reactions to the runoff election, we used the keyword search to look up mentions of “Georgia Runoff” from December 5th to December 9th, as the election took place within that timeframe. The term has been mentioned 244.47k times in this period and reached 7.7 billion users. The overall sentiment of these posts was negative with 72.84% of posts being coded as such (30.3k posts) and 27.16% were coded as positive (11.2k posts). Overwhelmingly these conversations were taking place on Twitter and Reddit.

Users discussing the runoff elections were primarily male (64.72k mentions) and came from the United States (113.2k mentions). Top influencers were news sources such as, The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post. As well as political reporters such as, Rachel Maddow and Steve Kornacki.

Content under this search focused on disseminating who won the election:

 

But, other tweets focused on the history surrounding runoff elections in the state of Georgia. There are very few states who participate in runoff races. Only 10 states participate in runoffs during a primary election season, and only Georgia and Louisiana participate during midterm election cycles. In Georgia, this law was introduced in the 1960s by segregationist, Denmark Groover who famously pinned blame onto black voters for his losing his bid to reelection. Later, Groover admitted that that this system was put in place to suppress minority votes.

https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1600244884081807362?s=20&t=_t-L-qkKxfp0KAOL8PHbuA

While this election marks the close of the 2022 midterms, the SMLC at Clemson University will continue to monitor conversations and update you as necessary.

Author: Michelle Brazeau

2022 Spotify Wrapped Released

December 2, 2022

It’s the most wonderful time of the year – Spotify Wrapped season. Spotify Wrapped is one of the most highly anticipated roll outs of the year for its users. Beginning in 2016, Spotify has taken users listening data to provide them with a most-listened to list. The concept has evolved into giving users individualized playslists and shareable content.  Not only does Spotify wrapped give users their personal most-listened to songs, it also provides users with lists of the most-streamed artists and songs globally.

According to Spotify, the most streamed artists globally in 2022 were:

  1. Bad Bunny
  2. Taylor Swift
  3. Drake
  4. The Weeknd
  5. BTS

The most streamed songs globally in 2022 were:

  1. As It Was – Harry Styles
  2. Heat Waves – Glass Animals
  3. STAY (with Justin Bieber) – The Kid LAROI, Justin Bieber
  4. Me Porto Bonito – Bad Bunny
  5. Tití Me Preguntó – Bad Bunny

Now that we now what people were listening to this year, we took to Sprinklr to see what people were saying about their streams. The term “Spotify Wrapped” was mentioned 1.78 million times from November 29th to December 2nd. This term reached over 4.89 billion users. The sentiments of these posts were overall negative, with a sentiment score of 67.74% negative (445.2k mentions). These posts reached a volume height of 959,850 mentions on November 30th (the day Wrapped was released). Top themes included Last Year and Next Year as people reflected on results from years past and predicted those to come. Top hashtags included #spotifywrapped and #spotifycorrupt.

Users discussing Spotify Wrapped were predominantly females (798k mentions) in the United States (190,821 mentions). Top influencers include news sources like The New York Times and CNN. Other influencers include other entertainment sources like Billboard and Netflix.

Referring back to #spotifycorrupt, it seems that fans of the popular K-POP group, BTS, are outraged that Spotify has not included the group in some of their rankings.

This story seems to be developing as users have mentioned Spotify has taken steps to rectify this issue.

https://twitter.com/zonequal/status/1598391380673437696?s=20&t=whGyxEXMPiZ0bhY16jhwXw

Overall, the conversations surrounding Spotify Wrapped ranged from individuals sharing their top five to joking about what their lists mean. This year’s Spotify Wrapped included a section that gave you a horoscope-like description of what your listening habits mean. This inspired people to make parodies and even sparked an investigation into the brains behind this project by The New York Times.

Other content surrounding Spotify Wrapped included users sharing their more interesting results. Like this user who listened to “Mice Repel” by Ultrasonic Pet Repellent, 292 times this year.

Most users ended up sharing how they were unsurprised by their results and could easily predict what other people listened to as well.

It is always a fun time of year to reflect on our listening habits. While we won’t be sharing our top 5 songs of the year, we will continue to monitor these conversations at The Social Media Listening Center at Clemson University.

Author: Michelle Brazeau

 

Ticketmaster Under Scrutiny After Cancelling Taylor Swift Ticket Sales

November 18, 2022

It turns out Taylor Swift gave us all an easter egg in her hit song Bejeweled when she told us we might have to wait in line. After releasing her highly anticipated 10th studio album, Midnights (which we covered here), Swift surprised fans with an “Eras Tour”. This tour will have music from all of Swifts albums and span from March to August of 2023. This will be the first time Swift has been on tour since here Reputation tour in 2018, as her Loverfest tour was canceled due to COVID-19.

https://twitter.com/taylorswift13/status/1588516506349891584?s=20&t=CPSXCeH1BChr5LqQvXdrYA

Fans were excited to buy tickets and were granted an opportunity to enlist in a “Verified Fan” presale hosted by Ticketmaster. This would allow fans to pick tour dates and if selected, allowed to purchase tickets early on Tuesday November 15th. Fans who weren’t selected were promised opportunities to purchase tickets through a presale for Capital One card holders or during the general sale which was supposed to be held Friday, November 18th.

On Tuesday, the 15th, fans eagerly logged onto Ticketmaster to buy their tickets. However, they were greeted with less than favroable circumstances. Lines for tickets were hours long and Ticketmaster ended up pausing the queue multiple times. Ticketmaster said that this was due to an unprecedented amount of people and bots entering the queue – both of which the verified fan presale intends to prevent. On the 15th, Ticketmaster released a statement saying that many tickets have been sold and they are trying to get through the queues as soon as possible, but that they will be delaying the Capital One presale.

After the Capital One presale, Ticketmaster then released the statement that would ultimately cause outrage by fans – there were no more tickets left and the general sale was canceled.

So who exactly is talking about Ticketmaster? The name of the company has been mentioned over 1.06 million times since November 14th and reached over 6.67 billion users. Unsurprisingly, the sentiments were 86% negative (386.89k mentions). The volume of these mentions reached a peak on the 15th of November (487,678 mentions). The primary platform users are discussing Ticketmaster is Twitter.

Users engaging in conversations surrounding Ticketmaster have been primarily users who identify as female (561.3k mentions) who reside in the United States (347.1k mentions). Top influencers include news sources, like The New York Times and CNN, as well as politicians like Alexandria Oscasio-Cortez and Senator Blumenthal who were critical of Ticketmaster as a monopoly.

Even, the Tenessee Attorney General announced in a tweet that they would be looking into this incident.

Other tweets focused on how large the news of this scandal was as it trended over more serious issues such as the recent attacks in Poland.

https://twitter.com/Pluto_Shmurda/status/1592615266953101312?s=20&t=bzdErj48gcVXQkfwXbe4Ww

Finally, some Swifites just made light of the situation by making jokes and lyric related puns.

While the controversy surrounding Ticketmaster is just beginning and certainly the star of the show right now, we must acknowledge that Swift still managed to break records with this ticket sale.

As always, the Social Media Listening Center will continue to monitor these conversations and report any updates.

Author: Michelle Brazeau

Georgia Election Results and Runoff

November 11, 2022

Over the past few weeks we have been monitoring conversations about the midterm elections. Most recently, we discussed the results for the races that happened in South Carolina. Today, we will we look at the results of the Georgia races and see what conversations are happening after people left the polls on Tuesday night. First let’s look at the results of the election in Georgia. We sourced the election results from Ballotpedia and The Associated Press.

Governor: The gubernatorial candidates for Georgia were incumbent Brian Kemp (R) and Stacey Abrams (D). The two had previously faced each other in the 2018 election season, where Kemp defeated Abrams. This election cycle was no different as Kemp won with 53.4% of the votes (2,109,105) and Abrams has 45.8% of the votes (1,809,522).

House: The state of Georgia elected 14 candidates on November 8th to serve in the U.S House of Representatives. Electing 6 democrats and 8 republicans to the House. Here are the results of these elections by district:

District 1:

Earl Cater (Incumbent) (R) – Winner

Wade Herring (D)

District 2:

Sanford Bishop Jr. (Incumbent) (D) – Winner

Chris West (R)

District 3:

Drew Ferguson (Incumbent) (R) – Winner

Val Almonord (D)

District 4:

Hank Johnson (Incumbent) (D) – Winner

Johnathan Chavez (R)

District 5:

Nikema Williams (Incumbent) (D) – Winner

Christian Zimm (R)

District 6:

Bob Christian (D) – Winner

Rich McCormick (R)

Distict 7:

Lucy Mcbath (Incumbent) (D) – Winner

Mark Gonsalves (R)

Lisa Babbage (R) (Write-in)

District 8:

Austin Scott (Incumbent) (R) – Winner

Darrius Butler (D)

District 9:

Andrew Clyde (Incumbent) (R) – Winner

Michael Ford (D)

District 10:

Tabitha Johnson-Green (D) – Winner

Mike Collins (R)

District 11:

Barry Loudermilk (Incumbent) (R ) – Winner

Antonio Daza (D)

District 12:

Rick Allen (Incumbent) (R) – Winner

Liz Johnson (D)

District 13:

David Scott (Incumbent) (D) – Winner

Caesar Gonzales (R)

District 14:

Majorie Taylor Greene (Incumbent) (R) – Winner

Marcus Flowers (D)

 

SENATE: Lastly, we will cover the senate results. The senate race between Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) and Herschel Walker (R) has been closely watched. We monitored conversations live on election night from our Twitter.

https://twitter.com/ClemsonSMLC/status/1590174522023763969?s=20&t=k4ahNPaoHKKozKihO6MGiA

The results of this election were too close to call and neither candidate was awarded a majority of the votes. This means that there will be a runoff election held in Georgia on December 6th. 

We took to Sprinklr to see what the conversations were surrounding the news of a runoff. The term “Georgia Runoff” was mentioned 233.39k times and reached over 5.22 billion users since November 8th, 2022. The overall sentiment of this keyword search was 67.45% negative (11.46k mentions). The volume of this topic reached a peak on November 9th with 107,807 mentions. The most used social channel was Twitter.

Most of the content surrounding the runoffs were politicians attempting to mobilizie constituents to get ready to vote again.

Other tweets showed support to Warnock who is facing a similar situation to the 2020 elections where he won the runoff election against republican incumbent Loeffler.

Other top themes of discussion concerned the balance of the senate. This race will help determine who has control of the senate. As repoted by The Associated Press, currently the split is 46 democrats to 48 republicans. Runoffs, like the Georgia race, will be important in deciding who will get the power in the senate.  The SMLC will continue to follow this race and update you when results are in.

Author: Michelle Brazeau

South Carolina U.S House Candidates on Social Media

November 4, 2022

Previously, we have examined the gubernatorial and senate races for the state of South Carolina. Finally, we will end this week by exploring the races happening for the U.S House of Representatives. While all districts will be mentioned, we used Sprinklr to look Districts 1, 2, 3, and 4 in the most depth. This is because they encompass the larger cities in the state, such as Charleston (1), Columbia(2), Greenville (4). We also included district 3 as it represents us here in Clemson.  To help clarify, here is a map showing the 7 congressional districts in South Carolina.

District 1: Nancy Mace (R)– Incumbent, Annie Andrews (D), and Joseph Oddo (Alliance Party)

Representative Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) is the incumbent Republican nominee for district 1. Mace’s name has been been mentioned over 149k times and reached 2.6 billion users. Mentions were overall coded as 81% negative. Some of the top themes under the search of Mace’s name are “Donald Trump” and  “Democrat running against Republican Nancy Mace”. The most retweeted post under Mace’s name is from her opponent, Dr. Annie Andrews

Mace has also been highly mentioned as Tulsi Gabbard, who previously ran for president in 2020 as a democratic nominee, left the Democratic Party and gave Nancy Mace her endorsement.

Dr. Annie Andrews (@AnnieAndrewsMD) is a pediatrician and the democratic nominee in District 1.

A search of her name reveals that she has been mentioned 26.3k times and reached over 143 million users. The sentiment of these mentions were coded as 63% positive. Some of the top themes of discussion surrounding Dr. Andrews include “Violence against Women Act.. This is a reference to a tweet in which Dr. Andrews quotes herself  calling out Nancy Mace for voting against this act.

Joseph Oddo doesn’t seem to have an official campaign Twitter. However, an online search revealed he was in the Alliance party and is a strong believer in election reform.

District 2: Joe Wilson (R)– Incumbent and Judd Larkins (D)

Representative Joe Wilson (@RepJoeWilson) is the incumbent Republican nominee for district 2. A search of his name revealed he been mentioned over 47k times and reached over 263 million users. The sentiment of the posts was more negatively coded at 84%. The themes and posts discussing Joe Wilson were saturated with call backs to the time he yelled “you lie” at President Obama during his State of The Union address. The most retweeted post on the matter coming from his opponent Judd Larkins.

https://twitter.com/JuddForCongress/status/1560006771695026181?s=20&t=O38quX48d_OOrzFlgA5Zrg

 Judd Larkins (@JuddforCongress) is the democratic nominee for district 3. Larkins name has been mentioned 1.3k times and reached 16.7 million users. The overall sentiment of these posts were 68% positive.

https://twitter.com/JuddForCongress/status/1560714425291751424?s=20&t=Zc38FW4PbeHGnpmzStYfsw

Most of the posts mentioning Larkins name were from his personal account or those who are in support of his campaign. Similarly, to Representative Joe Wilson, many of the posts use the “you lie” incident as a way to gain support for Larkin.

District 3: Jeff Duncan (R)– Incumbent

Representative Jeff Duncan (@RepJeffDuncan) is the republican incumbent and only nominee for district 3, which represents us here in Clemson. Duncan’s name has been mentioned 19k times and reached over 170 million users. The overall sentiment of these posts were 65% negative. Many of the top tweets related to Jeff Duncan show him on a list of congressmen who attempted to overturn the election or were related to the insurrection of the Capitol on January 6th.

District 4: William Timmons (R)– Incumbent and Lee Turner (Independent) (Write In)

Representative William Timmons (@RepTimmons) is the incumbent republican nominee for district 4. A search of his name revealed he had been mentioned 7.4k times and reached 50 million users. The overall sentiment of the posts were 86% negative. Simialrly to Representative Duncan, the most retween posts using Timmons name put him on the same list regarding the events on January 6th. A top theme regarding Timmons was Donald Trump, primarily for his endorsement of Timmons.

Lee Turner (@VoteLeeTurner) is the independent write in candidate for the 4th district. She has been mentioned 1.99k times and reached 30.8 million times. The overall sentiment of the post were 60% positive. Most of the content surrounding Turner were call to action posts to ensure constituents know to write in Turner, if they so choose.

Finally, here is a list of the remaining districts we did not cover today.

District 5: Ralph Norman (R)– Incumbent, Evangeline Hundley (D), and Larry Gaither (Green Party)

District 6: James Clyburn (D)– Incumbent andDave Buckner (R)

District 7: Daryl Scott (D) and Russell Fry (R)

The SMLC will continue to follow the midterm elections which take place on Tuesday, November 8th.

Author: Michelle Brazeau

Early Voters Head To The Polls in Georgia and Texas

October 28, 2022

Midterms are upon us, and early voting has begun. Many states have different rules regarding early voting, but a majority allow voters to vote early anywhere between 45 days to  5 days before election day. South Carolina generally allows voters to cast an absentee in person ballot 30 days before election day.

Voters are showing up to the polls this midterms season. According to a CNN article published on October 25th, over 9.2 million people in 40 states have cast an early ballot. Currently, Florida has the highest number of early voters, closely followed by California and Georgia.

A keyword search for “early voting” was done using Sprinklr. Our search took place over this week, October 23rd to the 28th. The top themes of discussion surrounding the term “early voting” included Georgia, and Texas both of which have begun their early voting periods this month. Overall, this term was mentioned 339k times and reached 3 billion users in this one-week period. Users were primarily females in the United States, with the largest density of users being in Texas.

Top influencers in the “early voting” keyword search were news outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, but also politicians such as, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Beto O’Rourke, and Hilary Clinton.

To investigate the aforementioned top themes a little closer, we are going to take a look at two states making waves in the sense of early voting, Georgia and Texas. Using Sprinklr we searched “Georgia Early Voting” and “Texas Early Voting”, respectively for these searches.

The race for government between Stacey Abrams (D) Brian Kemp (R) is being watched closely by the whole country since the state turned blue in 2020. As of right now FiveThirtyEight has Kemp leading by 6 points. However, we must mention that Stacey Abrams has been credited with the increase in voters in Georgia, especially in the 2020 election year, and it seems this cycle is no different as Georgia is seeing record numbers of early voters.

Georgia also has been in the front of the news cycle for its senate race between Herschel Walker (R) and Raphael Warnock (D). FiveThirtyEight currently has Warnock ahead by 1 point. To see who is talking about these races were went to Sprinklr to analyze conversations surrounding early voting. Our keyword search revealed that the term “Georgia Early Voting” was mentioned 30K times and reached over 242 million users. Demographically, users were females with the most users being from California or Georgia.

The next keyword search showed that the term “Texas Early Voting” was mentioned over 64K times and reached over 490 million users. This term saw an increase in more than double its mentions, from 12,000 to 30,000 on October 24th – this being the first day early voting began in the state. The demographics of users discussing early voting in this state were females in Texas. Conversations mainly focused on the race between Beto O’Rourke (D) and Greg Abbott (R).

https://twitter.com/0liviajulianna/status/1584336948927553537?s=20&t=B2W9PAL3RgniQptvJ2bvyg

Overall, content posted in each of these searches was similar. Most of it being voters showing their pride in showing up to the polls and politicians urging their constituents to engage in democracy. The following are examples of both gubernatorial candidates in Texas.

The Social Media Listening Center will continue to monitor elections through the rest of the midterm season.

Author: Michelle Brazeau

Taylor Swift Releases ‘Midnights’

October 21, 2022

“Dear Reader”, the autumnal weather has arrived here in Clemson and so has Taylor Swift, as she released her 10th studio album, Midnights (at midnight) on October 21st.

The news of Midnights was a surprise for fans as Swift is currently in the middle of re-recording her first 6 albums. The impetus of re-recording these albums was a dispute regarding her masters, ultimately, the rights to them were stripped from her. Swift has released two re-recorded albums thus far (See our blog post on her re-release of RED).

The roll out of Midnights is unique from the last two new albums Swift released, Folklore and Evermore. Both of which she completely surprised fans with as they had little to no promotion. Whereas Midnights was a highly anticipated album for Swifties everywhere. Swift announced the release of this album at the 2022 VMA awards, while accepting one of three awards she won that evening. The promotion of of this album was full of surprises, in typical Taylor fashion. Swift leaned into fan theories, or as swifties would call “easter eggs” through various social media posts to announce this album, the most popular of which being “Midnights Mayhem with Me”. This short Tik Tok series announced the track titles of the songs on Midnights. Swift, the “Mastermind” she is, even had her fans tune into the 3rd quarter of the Cardinals vs Saints game on Prime’s Thursday Night Football for a special announcement – a visual album!

Midnights is an album of songs that Taylor Swift says represent different “sleepless nights” throughout her life. Writing, “I think of Midnights as a complete concept album, with those 13 songs forming a full picture of the intensities of that mystifying, mad hour”.  First, swifties were graced with 13 songs at midnight on October 21st, but as instructed through a promotional social media post earlier this week, they waited up until 3am for a ‘chaotic surprise’ which was an additional 7 songs.

Who is talking about Midnights? We took to Sprinklr to look up conversations surrounding ‘midnights’.  From October 20th to the 21st, ‘midnights’ has been mentioned over 1.2 million times, reaching over 4.8 billion users. These conversations are primarily happening on Twitter and over 50% of users are including photos in their posts. Females in the United States were the dominate participants in these conversations. In addition to fans, the top influencers include YouTube, Spotify, The NFL, and of course, Taylor Swift.

An increase in conversations began happening around 10 pm on October 20th as fans had just received the news about the visual album on Prime’s Thursday Night Football. Then conversation volume nearly doubled at midnight on the 21st as the album hit streaming services.

The album seems to be well received as the conversations are overwhelmingly positive – receiving a 76% positive sentiment score. Both fans and critics took to twitter to share their thoughts regarding the album, saying it is some of Swift’s best work and it has all the favorite parts of her previous albums in one.

The conversations surrounding Midnights have only begun as swifities received the official music video for “Anti-Hero” on Friday morning, which will be followed by more to complete the Midnights visual album. We will keep monitoring conversations, but for now we will be streaming Midnights from the Social Media Listening Center.

Author: Michelle Brazeau

Dame Angela Lansbury Passes at 96

October 14, 2022

On October 11th, 2022, Dame Angela Lansbury passed away at 96 years old. Lansbury left quite a legacy behind and her impact of the entertainment industry will live on through her films. Angela Lansbury starred in many films, such as ‘Murder, She Wrote,’ as well as being the iconic voice of ‘Mrs. Potts’ in ‘Beauty and The Beast.’ Lansbury was a talented musical theater actress in addition to her work in films. She played leading roles in shows like ‘Sweeney Todd’ and ‘Gypsy.’ Her work was highly recognized, winning her five Tony Awards. Four of these Tony awards were for her roles in musicals and her fifth was for a featured role in a play in 2009.

Not only was her work incredibly popular in the United States, she remained loyal to and gained recognition in her home country. Born in the United Kingdom, Lansbury was just as important to the country as it was to her. In 2014, Queen Elizabeth II bestowed Lansbury ‘Dame Commander of the British Empire’.  This is a high honor given to one who have had a strong impact in their field of work.

Who is talking about Angela Lansbury? We took to Sprinklr to search “Angela Lansbury” to find out. Her name has been mentioned 468k times from October 11th to October 14th. These mentions have reached over 6.9 billion users. Those engaging in discussing surrounding Lansbury were primarily females in the United States or United Kingdom. The most popular platform to discuss Lansbury was using Twitter, and 44% of users shared pictures along with their posts; many of these were photos of Lansbury in her most famous productions.

Top influencers in the conversation were news outlets such as BBC News and The New York Times, but also some other organization such as Disney Animation and even NASA, who posted this beautiful tribute to Lansbury:

Regardless of if it was organizations she worked for or fans of her work, users took to social media to share their fond memories of Lansbury. Many repeated stories they heard about the kind heart Lansbury had both for her co-workers and those were impacted by the AIDS epidemic.

https://twitter.com/sharpegirl/status/1579961837348880390?s=20&t=ilooHZDk7Fb3AcTK00qk0Q

https://twitter.com/rebeccamakkai/status/1579931097932365824

Overall, sentiments regarding her were positive. Individuals shared their favorite roles she played and expressed their sadness at her lost. Below is a word cloud of popular emojis associated with this search. As you can see, many users included emojis relevant to her most popular roles., i.e. roses for ‘Beauty and the Beast’, and a broom for ‘Bedknobs and Broomsticks.’

It is no doubt that the world is mourning the loss of Angela Lansbury. However, they are also celebrating the incredible legacy she left behind and keeping it alive through sharing their favorite performances online. As always, the Social Media Listening Center will continue to monitor these conversations.

Finally, we’d like to end this article with the following tweet from Playbill which sums up the legacy Dame Angela Lansbury wished to leave on this world.

Author: Michelle Brazeau

President Biden Pardons Federal Simple Marijuana Possession Convictions

October 7, 2022

On Thursday October 6th, President Biden announced a pardon for all prior federal convictions of simple marijuana possession. This marks a step towards the potential decriminalization of marijuana. The decriminalization of marijuana was something President Biden was supportive of during his campaign for the presidency, making it one of his key promises. This decision is going to affect thousands of people currently incarcerated with these charges.

While this pardon order only has an impact on those who are charged on a federal level, President Biden urged local leaders to follow him in pardoning charges of simple marijuana possession on a state level. During his announcement of this pardon President Biden also called for an investigation into the classification of marijuana – saying it “makes no sense” as to why it’s treated as more serious offense than fentanyl.

In a video released by The White House, President Biden declares that “no one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana”. He also makes note of the how having a marijuana related charge has an impact on multiple portions of ones life from housing to employment. President Biden also points out the disparities between incarceration rates of White and Black individuals when it comes simple possession charges, stating that Black Americans are disproportionately affected in terms of arrests and convictions.

This news happened within the last 24 hours and already has a massive reach online. The term “Biden Pardon” has over 118k mentions and has reached 1.8 billion users. The majority of users were males in the United States. These conversations were taking place on Twitter, shortly followed by Reddit. Many of the top influencers were news sources as CNN and BBC News, and of course, Joe Biden and The White House.

This news has clearly shocked audiences, with one of the top themes of discussion being, “OMG”. While the sentiments were split nearly 50/50, it seems the public is celebrating this landmark decision. Taking to their social media pages to share that they were happy to see progress being made towards the decriminalization of marijuana. Some users even taking the time to make a joke around the situation.

Not only did people describe their excitement surrounding this decision, users choice in emojis more subtly reflected the positive sentiment. The following is a compilation of the most used emojis within his keyword search.

While the discussions seem mostly positive, others were quick to point out that this pardon may not affect as many people as it’s being advertised. Though it will pardon any federal convictions of a simple marijuana possession, it will not alleviate other charges or assist those on the state level – which are where a lot of these charges are.

This decision is a historic one and the Social Media Listening Center will continue to follow conversations surrounding this topic and update you as necessary.

“Don’t Worry Darling” Released in Theaters

September 30, 2022

Don’t Worry Darling was one of the most highly anticipated movie releases this year. The psychological thriller directed by Olivia Wilde, starring the likes of Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, and Gemma Chan, has been at the forefront of the popular press cycle prior to its debut in theaters. Most notably, the press the movie received after the Venice Film Festival ranged from amazement of Florence Pugh’s performance to whether Harry Styles actually spit on Chris Pine. However, regardless of the media presence the movie received, its critic rating pre-release was at 36%, causing viewers to wonder how this movie would perform among the public.

However, despite its negative reception by critics, the movie made its theatrical debut on September 21st, 2022, where it grossed over $19.2 million dollars in box office revenue and $30 million across the world.

Because of the buzz this movie received we decided to monitor conversations about the movie post release. The term “Don’t Worry Darling” has been mentioned over 380k times from September 18th to September 28th, reaching over 3.76 billion users. To avoid spoilers, we analyzed the general sentiments and demographics of the movie in that ten-day period.

While the movie received more negative press attention prior to its release, conversations surrounding the movie have been overwhelmingly positive, with over 73% of mentions using positive sentiments.

So, who was talking about Don’t Worry Darling? Many of the people sharing their thoughts on the movie were females in the United States. With large fan accounts, news publications, and even Harry Styles himself being among the top influencers of conversation. This movie has clearly been a hot topic of conversation on socials, even garnering the attention of other major celebrities such as Kim Kardashian – even making Kim herself a top theme of discussion within the Don’t Worry Darling keyword search.

Agreeing with Kim, conversations seemed to be dominated surrounding both Harry Styles and Florence Pugh’s performances. Below is a word cloud which shows the positive words associated with the term “Don’t Worry Darling”.

Florence Pugh seemingly won over viewers of the movie with a stellar performance as Alice Chambers. Tweets praised her acting skills and were unsurprised she delivered in another bone-chilling thriller.

While the movie was negatively received by critics, this search of social media conversations revealed audiences felt the opposite. The movie premiered with a 77% acceptance rate as compared to the lackluster 36% given by critics, fans of the movie expressed that they disagreed with this rating.

While the Social Media Listening Center won’t give our official review of the movie, we will certainly keep an eye on developing opinions.

Author: Michelle Brazeau