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By Citizen Reporter

Journalist


Oscar’s responsibility failure dominates online conversation

Most of the online conversation about the Oscar Pistorius murder trial on Thursday was dominated by prosecutor Gerrie Nel's accusations that Pistorius failed to take responsibility for his actions.


This was according to media monitoring group Data Driven Insight (DDI).

DDI said in the 24 hours ending at 4pm on Thursday, this topic dominated online conversation at 26.85 percent.

Another topic of interest was American musician Kendrick Lamar’s song “Bitch don’t kill my vibe,” which the court heard caused a fallout between Pistorius and his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.

She was reportedly upset after the song was played while she, Pistorius and his friend drove from a function.

Steenkamp sent Pistorius a message where she wrote that she was “not some bitch” that was trying to kill his vibe.

A total of 16.23 percent of the online chats around the trial were based on this point.

At 10 percent, the third most conversed about topic came from Pistorius’s “I don’t know” responses which he gave to several of the questions posed to him by Nel.

Pistorius was on trial for the murder of Steenkamp after he shot her dead through a locked bathroom door at his house on Valentine’s Day last year.

He alleged to have mistaken her for an intruder.

According to DDI, while fresh signals being possibly detected from the missing Malaysian plane made world headlines, Pistorius’s trial generated more coverage.

Comparing the two stories, Pistorius’s trial received 97.68 percent of the news coverage while the missing Malaysian airplane received 2.39 percent.

Globally, the United States gave the trial the most publicity, followed by Australia, and the United Kingdom.

The data was compiled from 6.2 million social media platforms which included blogs, forums, social networks and commentary.

It also included data from 60,000 global online newspapers, 2000 South African print publications and 66 radio and television stations.

– Sapa

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