On Aug. 25, 2020, 17-year-old Illinois resident Kyle Rittenhouse walked among protesters supporting the Black Lives Matter movement in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and fatally shot two people with a semi-automatic rifle. He was arrested the following day in his hometown and was charged with multiple felonies, including first-degree intentional homicide, posession of a dangerous weapon while under the age of 18, and reckless endangerment. Rittenhouse told sources that he was there to protect local businesses, despite no indication that he was asked to guard the site.
Rittenhouse’s legal team attended a pre-trial hearing with prosecutors to review outstanding issues before the trial begins on Nov. 1. During the pre-trial, Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder determined that the people shot by Rittenhouse may be called ‘rioters’ or ‘looters’ but that attorneys should not use the word ‘victim.’
“Let the evidence show what the evidence shows, that any or one of these people were engaged in arson, rioting or looting, then I’m not going to tell the defense they can’t call them that,” said Judge Schroeder.
What has the conversation been like on social media? At the Social Media Listening Center, we used a keyword search for “Kyle Rittenhouse” and “Trial,” “Kyle Rittenhouse” and “Victim,” and “Kyle Rittenhouse.” While this search may not be fully extensive, it provides a glimpse into the online conversation.
In the first 24 hours after the news was announced, the search found more than 261,000 tweets discussing this topic. Unsurprisingly, the overall sentiment of this search was 95.9% negative and 4.1% positive. However, it is difficult to gauge audience sentiment from sentiment analysis alone when discussing serious issues such as homicide. To get a better look at the conversation and the sentiment surrounding this topic, we paid close attention to the word cloud capturing the most common words and phrases associated with this search:
To gain even further understanding of the sentiment surrounding this news, we looked at the most commonly used hashtags related to the search. We found that #kylerittenhouse, #removejudgeschroeder, and #antifa were at the top. When searching the keyword “Kyle Rittenhouse,” we found that some of the top themes of discussion were “Shooting People,” “Murderer,” “Self Defense,” and “Victims.”
Who exactly is engaging in this conversation? It appears that the majority of mentions surrounding this topic are from male Twitter users in the 18-35 age demographic in the United States. The top influencers on Twitter are primarily news outlets, including CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Fox News. Other influencers include news reporters and columnists such as Haley Willis from The New York Times and Will Bunch from The Philadelphia Inquirer.
1. So you're probably seething about the judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse case saying lawyers can't call the 3 people he shot "victims," while there's a chance they can be called "rioters" or "looters"
Did you wonder what's up with this guy? I did.
Buckle up
— Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) October 27, 2021
As Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial approaches, @chashomans investigates for @NYTmag what he and so many other armed men were doing in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the first place. https://t.co/MqZAp8zj70 pic.twitter.com/u1hmXBXb2t
— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 26, 2021
The keyword search also revealed that Reddit users are engaging in the subreddits r/Politics, r/NotTheOnion, and r/Libertarian. One of the most popular posts on r/Libertarian linked to an NPR article about the news and received 800+ upvotes and 1.5K+ comments. The comments contained numerous statements criticizing the article for being misleading. “It’s certainly a weird situation to us on the outside looking in, but the Judge’s requests are hardly nefarious if one reads beyond headlines,” commented one user.
The volume trend of this conversation has steadily declined since the news was announced. However, this conversation is likely far from over. We expect to hear more about this topic once the trial officially begins on Nov. 1. In the meantime, we’ll continue monitoring this topic and others from the Social Media Listening Center.
Author: Kendall Phillips
