The reboot of the 1977 miniseries Roots debuted May 30 simultaneously on History, A&E and Lifetime, telling a multi-generational story of slavery from its beginning in Africa to the freeing of slaves in 19th Century America.
Despite premiering on a U.S. holiday, TV viewers tuned in and reacted on social media in droves. Canvs, the language analytics company that measures emotions around content, took a closer look at the premiere.
Canvs detected 24,610 Emotional Reactions (ERs) out of 95,659 tweets captured by Nielsen, with more than 25% of tweets expressing some sort of emotion. The main ERs fell into the dislike (18.2%), good (18%), excited (12.7%), crazy (10.3%) and sad (6.9%) buckets, with love dominating at 23.1%.
I cant live tweet & pay the proper amount attention to this, but so far so good ... i like that its not a EXACT remake #Roots #KuntasKin
- NV - May Baby (@NVme68) May 31, 2016
One particularly compelling scene occurred about halfway through the show, when white boat captains decided to make an example out of one of the captured men to instill fear and obedience in the rest: They cut off his arm on the ship's deck while the other slaves watched, terrified. There were over 900 ERs during that five-minute span as people expressed their shock on Twitter.
Oh my this boat scene is intense #roots
- Taylor Stewart (@taylorbstewart) May 31, 2016
The biggest emotional spike came at the end of the airing, when a white slave owner brutally whipped Kunta Kinte (played by Malachi Kirby) after he tried to escape. There were nearly 1,000 ERs during that five-minute span, with the majority expressing dislike (25.1%).
To see them break this strong black man is heartbreaking. Sad because its now happening before our eyes everyday #Roots
- Meia Beia (@theychooseMEIA) May 31, 2016
During the night there were 12,544 unique reacting authors with an average of 1.96 reactions per author. The miniseries continues for the next four nights, wrapping up on Friday, June 3. It will be interesting to see how viewers continue to react to this racially-charged narrative.
Tonight episode of #Roots was amazing looking forward to next 3 episodes coming this whole week!
- TAH (@Toddmatic) May 31, 2016
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The reboot of the 1977 miniseries Roots debuted May 30 simultaneously on History, A&E and Lifetime, telling a multi-generational story of slavery from its beginning in Africa to the freeing of slaves in 19th Century America. 
