After a unanimous Virginia Supreme Court ruling, a Robert E. Lee statue erected in 1890 was removed from Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. This was the final Confederate statue to be removed from Monument Avenue, marking a huge victory for civil rights activists.
Following George Floyd’s murder last summer, Democratic Governor Ralph Northam ordered for the statue to be removed. However, the removal of this historic monument required extensive litigation and Supreme Court approval. Despite Virginia having a complicated history with Confederate monuments, citizens seem to be supportive of the decision.
“It’s representative of the fact that we’re sort of peeling back the layers of injustice that Black people and people of color have experienced when governed by white supremacist policies for so long,” said community activist Ana Edwards to the Associated Press.
What has the conversation been like on social media? At the Social Media Listening Center, we used a search for keywords “Robert E Lee” and “Virginia” and “Robert E Lee” and “Statue.” The term “Robert E Lee” has been widely used and is not specific enough to be included in the search. While this search may not be fully extensive, it provides a glimpse into the online conversation.
On Sept. 8 when the news was first announced, the search found more than 117,000+ tweets discussing this topic. By Sept. 11 at 11:59 pm, the search found 216,630 mentions across all platforms. The overall sentiment of this search was 84.1% negative and 15.9% positive. It is difficult to gauge audience sentiment from sentiment analysis alone when discussing serious issues such as white supremacy. 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 this search. We found that #keepfighting, #flagoftreason, #mlk, and #virginia are at the top. When searching the keywords “Robert E Lee” and “Virginia,” we found that some of the top themes of discussion the day the news was announced were “U.S. War Heroes,” “Largest Confederate,” “Statue of Confederate Gen,” and “Good Riddance.”
Who exactly is engaging in this conversation? The majority of the mentions surrounding this topic are from male Twitter users in the 18-35 age demographic located in the United States. The top influencers on Twitter are primarily news outlets, including CNN Breaking News, NBC News, The New York Times, and ABC News. Corinne Perkins, the North America Editor for Reuters Pictures, and Ben Shapiro, a political commentator and media host, have also been active voices in the conversation.
Today: The statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, the largest Confederate statue remaining in the United States, is removed by a construction team in Richmond, Virginia. Photo by @evelynpix pic.twitter.com/k3uRUW0Qcr
— corinne_perkins (@corinne_perkins) September 8, 2021
Figuring out the decline and fall of the United States will not be difficult for future archaeologists https://t.co/wWbSv1JPza
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) September 9, 2021
The keyword search also revealed that Reddit users are engaging in r/News, r/AskAnAmerican, r/UpliftingNews, and r/Politics. One of the most popular posts in r/News received over 2.9K+ upvotes and 400+ comments, sparking a discussion about Confederate monument removals. This post also linked to an article from The Guardian detailing the events from Sept. 8.
The volume trend of this conversation has steadily declined since the news was announced. However, the conversation may not be over quite yet. There are still several hundred Confederate monuments in the United States being removed at rapid rates. While we can’t be sure what will happen to the remainder of the monuments, we’ll continue monitoring this topic and others from the Social Media Listening Center.
Author: Kendall Phillips
