So who might be behind this brigade of fervent Depp supporters online? Bridgman said it's primarily young people who have a lot of time on their hands. "What you want to really look at is say, okay, how much of this is being pushed organically and who's doing it?" Bridgman said. "Johnny Depp does have this large group of people who feel incredibly passionate about this case." Ninety-three per cent of the analyzed accounts sided with Depp, according to NBC News.
Lawyers for Depp and Amber Heard made their closing arguments to a Virginia jury in Depp's civil suit against his ex-wife. Research by the Israel-based tracking firm Cyabra indicates that, of 23,000 accounts that were analyzed for their engagement with the trial, only 11 per cent were bot accounts.Īctor Johnny Depp leaves court on Friday. "I think in general, bot activity is overstated on things like this," Bridgman said. There has also been speculation that automated Twitter bots are contributing to the online hubbub, especially from Depp's camp, according to Vox Media.īut there probably isn't as much bot activity some might think, said Aengus Bridgman, director of the Media Ecosystem Observatory at McGill University in Montreal. Snopes, the fact-checking website, has rebutted several popular conspiracies about Heard: namely, that she sniffed cocaine from a tissue in court, and that she ripped part of her testimony from the 1999 film The Talented Mr.
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The idea of a trial is that as much authentic evidence as possible is put before a jury." What's real and what isn't?Īs the trial has spread like wildfire across social media, so too has misinformation surrounding it. 'Whose side are you on?' This is bizarre," Todd said. "'Who do you want to win?' I'm asked all the time about this. That online fervour has given the trial the feeling of a football match, said Paula Todd, a lawyer and media professor at Seneca College. (Craig Hudson/The Associated Press)Īnother curious trend is the use of fancams - a type of montage-style video popularized online by K-pop fans - which play like a reel of either party's supposed "highlights" during court proceedings. Depp's fans, for example, can watch every moment that the Pirates of the Caribbean star has a sarcastic exchange with Heard's lawyer. Heard, who is counter suing Depp for $100 million US, has been the target of vicious hate on TikTok in particular, said Khan.Īctor Johnny Depp waves to supporters as he departs the Fairfax County Courthouse on Friday. On TikTok and Twitter, users are pulling audio and video clips from the trial, in which Depp and Heard have spoken about the sad details of their marriage, to glorify and vilify either party. We're seeing people see entertainment in it - content creators saying, 'you know what, this is how I actually can build my brand.'" "We're seeing this proliferation of misinformation about a domestic violence trial. "It's a meme-ification of domestic violence," said Farrah Khan, a gender justice advocate and the director of Consent Comes First at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). Live-streamed online, even now as the jury begins its deliberations, critics say the legal action has devolved into a frivolous source of entertainment.
The minutia of libel law litigation, however, has fallen practically to the wayside in recent weeks when it comes to internet content about the trial. If you're on a major social media platform, you've probably noticed it by now: tweets, TikTok videos and other posts about the defamation trial involving actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, which began in mid-April and has been an inescapable source of viral content since.ĭepp is suing his ex-wife Heard for $50 million US in civil litigation in Virginia's Fairfax County Circuit Court, claiming she defamed him in a 2018 op-ed for the Washington Post where she described herself as a "public figure representing domestic violence." WARNING: This story contains details of intimate partner violence.
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