Social Media Users Will Always Have the Final Verdict. Looking at the Conversations Surrounding O. J. Simpson’s Death.

This past Thursday, April 11^th, social media erupted in chatter after the news of the latest celebrity death. Typically, social media users take to posting about how sad they are after a celebrity death or sharing their favorite memories of recently deceased celebrity. However, the conversations about this specific celebrity were a little different than the normal discourse. The celebrity that passed last week was the infamous Orenthal James “O. J.” Simpson. The former pro football, actor, and alleged murderer died of complications associated with prostate cancer at the age of 76. With the death of a figure as controversial as O. J., social media was exploding with discussions about him, his death, and, again, whether or not he killed his ex-wife, Nicole Brown.

From the morning of April 11^th to the time of writing this, across all social media platforms O.J. has been mentioned by social media users over 600 thousand times and these posts have been seen 9.5 billion times. This large volume of posts and reach is to be expected when any big celebrity dies, especially one as controversial as O. J. As of Sunday, April 14^th, however, the conversations have largely died down to only a few thousand posts. X was the most significant platform where these discussions took place, and the sentiment split of the discourse was exceptionally lopsided. About 23% of the posts were rated as being positive while 77% were rated as negative. This does make sense though as death can be rated as a negative topic on top of the fact that many people disliked O. J. Some of the top themes of the discussions about O. J. included rest, Heaven, and killer. However, as nice as “rest” and “Heaven” sound, many social media users were quick to make jokes about the polarizing figure.

Demographically speaking, twice as many men than women were posting about O. J., and conversations were exclusively had by American social media users. The top influencers in the conversation have mainly included new outlets such as The New York Times, ABC News, and TMZ, all of which helped spread the news of O. J.’s passing. 

Aside from the negative and joking aspects of these conversations, many of these metrics are common parts of discussions from when celebrities die, but because O. J. possibly killed his ex-wife, ran from the police, and then joked about being a killer for years afterwards social media users preferred to get the last laugh as opposed to celebrate his life. When the next controversial celebrity dies, it can be expected that the posts about their death will look similarly to the post about O. J, from the past few days. 

Author: Ben Katarzynski