
Chris Rock's scathing opening monologue at the Oscars, dealing with the hot-button issues of race and a lily-white array of Academy Award acting nominees, was largely greeted warmly on Twitter, according to tweets collected by Nielsen and analyzed by Canvs.
The Oscars generated more than 7.2 million tweets, including more than 2.4 million Emotional Reactions (ERs), numbers roughly equivalent to the Feb. 15 Grammy Awards, according to the Canvs analysis.
The monologue prompted more than 370,000 tweets over its 15-minute or so length. Of the tweets expressing specific emotional reactions, just over half expressed love for Rock's tough talk, while 10 percent of reactions fell in the good category and another 13 percent funny. Funny reactions peaked about 5 minutes into the broadcast, after an opening montage of the year's films, when Rock came on stage and said, Man, I counted at least 15 black people in that montage.
Plenty of tweets, such as this much-retweeted post from rapper Charlamagne Tha God, weighed in approvingly:
Great observations made by Chris Rock. Put a lot of things in perspective. I mean things we already knew but was good to hear them said.
- Charlamagne Tha God (@cthagod) February 29, 2016
But 16 percent of the tweets containing emotional reactions during this stage of the broadcast fell into the hate or dislike categories.
Rock's opening segment was far from the show's biggest source of Twitter reactions, however.
The night's biggest Twitter response came for Leonardo DiCaprio's long overdue Best Actor win for The Revenant. More than 680,000 tweets erupted during the announcement of his win, including nearly 231,000 emotional reactions as the show was close to wrapping up.
Of all phrases mentioned in more than 2.4 million tweets on the night, roughly 30 percent of them included a reference to some variant of DiCaprio's first or last names. His name was by far the most mentioned on Twitter during the telecast.
In the last five minutes of the show, when another 434,000 posts and nearly 148,000 emotional reactions were clocked, roughly 20 percent of tweets expressed congratulations, largely to DiCaprio. The congrats came from Twitter users prominent and not so much:
Its about time #Leo
-
Jessica Chastain (@jes_chastain) February
29, 2016
Lady Gaga's passionate performance of Oscar-nominated song Til It Happens to You, about sexual abuse, stirred more than 71,000 emotional reactions, spiking on crazy around the term performance. All told, her name surfaced in 3.1 percent of tweets, compared to 4.3 percent for Chris Rock.
Who knew Joe Biden and Lady Gaga would become advocates for sexual assault survivors everywhere tonight at the Oscars. Powerful performance!
- Marcus Garrett (@Marcus_Media) February
29, 2016
By the time Best Picture winner Spotlight was announced, however, a lot of people were still talking about DiCaprio's win as well as subsequent celebrations backstage. But there was still plenty of affection for Spotlight.
A nice tribute to genuine, real, groundbreaking
and brave journalism in #Spotlight
Best Picture win. #Oscars
-
Anthony Aguilar (@HarbingerOfAres) February
29, 2016
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