In the wake of the September Fox Lake shooting, the #BlackLivesMatter campaign has drawn heavy fire, coming under the blame as signs point to it as a primary motivator in the shooting of Officer Joe Gliniewicz. Both the original hashtag – brought together in the wake of Ferguson and the deaths of other black individuals at the hands of police officers – and a new one, #BlueLivesMatter, created to defend the police, have been abuzz as new evidence indicates that Gliniewicz staged his suicide and was not, in fact, killed by someone in the name of Black Lives Matter.
My website, available here, takes a look at tweets from each respective tag to study the nature behind the commentary, with generated tag clouds to look at buzzwords in each tag and a few tweets pulled from the .csv files to highlight the behavior and intent behind each tag’s origin and nature.