From a street in Minneapolis to over 1 billion screens across the World

What the data is telling us about the true effects of George Floyd’s death 

On May 25, 2020 a 46-year-old man died after a police officer knelt on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. George Floyd, as he was then identified, was being taken into custody for using a counterfeit $20 bill before a series of reckless actions from Minneapolis police officers turned fatal, making him the latest addition to the already long list of unarmed Black Americans killed by the use of excessive force.

I first saw the video of George Floyd held to the ground on Instagram. While I was shocked by it, I didn’t realise how impactful it was going to be until a few days later when the same video started to appear on all my social channels and anti-racist protests sparked in major US cities.

The video of Mr. Floyd’s final minutes spread across social media like wildfire, reaching over 500 million screens within the first few days and quickly becoming a symbol of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The deaths of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery at the hands of the US police earlier in the year generated comparatively less social media reaction: just over 300,000 and 800,000 posts respectively.

What was it about George Floyd that inspired solidarity marches worldwide and ignited discussions on the use of excessive force by the police, justice inequality and systemic racism?

It is important to understand that George Floyd’s death comes in the throes of Covid-19, a pandemic which disproportionally affects Black communities in the US with devastating outcomes. Black Americans are more likely to die of Covid-19 than any other race or ethnic group, and more likely to be laid off due to the economic situation.

Around 65 of every 100,000 Black Americans have died from coronavirus – this is more than double the rate for of Asian, Latinx and white Americans. For perspective, if Black Americans had died of Covid-19 at the same rate as white Americans, around 13,000 of them would still be alive.

The America we grew up knowing – inspiring and powerful – is a faded memory. The country is going through an identity crisis and has never been more divided. Where there was once Barack Obama, there is now Donald Trump, the figurehead for America’s dark underbelly.

In the current socio-political context, Trump seems to be more focused on his re-election campaign than engaging in meaningful conversations. The commander-in-chief continues to use his platforms only to galvanise his electorate – calling out the national guard, encouraging curfews and using his language to stoke outrage of the protests and signal to his base.

Trump’s political style gave many white liberals further reason to join the protest, making all the difference this time.

This time, white people are aware that passive sympathy isn’t enough.

Many of my colleagues and friends are going through a wave of self-examination, reading more about racism, talking to Black friends, and choosing action and words over neutrality and silence. This unprecedented self-reflection is a direct effect of the video: its violent depiction of indisputable racial inequality in a way that is instantly recognisable and directly affects public conscience. As more and more people become aware of the video, a new online narrative emerged of white people who were prompted into action – whether donating, signing a petition or speaking out.

The visualisation above helps us understand the way people discussed the topic in the days that followed the killing of George Floyd. We can see the emergence of keywords such as “understand”, “anti” and “dismantle”, as many (white) people came to terms with the fact that the burden of racism does not lie on the shoulders of people of colour but on us, white people, to dismantle a system that we benefit from. I cannot help but find similarities with some of the phraseology used by the #MeToo movement – especially Oprah Winfrey’s legendary “Their time is up” speech at the Golden Globes in support of those who had exposed sexual misconduct in Hollywood and beyond.

But is #BlackLivesMatter really at a turning point? We turned to Google to find the answer.

In his book “Everybody Lies”, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz used search data to uncover the hidden, but growing, racist sentiment in America. On Obama’s 2008 election night, the author found that “one in every hundred Google searches that included the word ‘Obama’ also included ‘KKK’” or the n-word. By looking at what people were anonymously searching on Google, the author was able to demonstrate the presence of a racially polarised electorate – one primed to respond to the ethno-nationalist rhetoric of Trump years later. How many of the same people do you think would openly admit to being racist in a survey or on their social media channels?

Ever since reading his book, I’ve been using search data to challenge my hypotheses and complement my research studies.

In wake of George Floyd’s death, we see people following up on their anti-racist declarations on their social media profiles by searching for resources to educate themselves about “white privilege”, or simply looking for ways to donate. In the long tail of the event however, we see a new stream of searches gaining traction from people looking to disprove the racial narrative. There is a major watch out in this data – the battle against racism isn’t won and we must maintain momentum once the news cycle ends. We can already see signs of slowing down. Daily volumes on social media channels are declining fast, going from 6 million average daily posts in the first week to just above 800,000 in the last one.

The death of George Floyd was an act of murder, plain and simple. During the memorial service, reverend Al Sharpton decided to hold 8 and 46 seconds of silence to hammer home the amount of time police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck. As I stood there in silence, my heart sunk and the atrocity of his actions, and the inaction of the other police officers, become apparent. They could have saved his life; they just didn’t care.

The video of George Floyd’s final minutes has taken its place in the public conscious, and in the public moral conscience. As a result I truly hope that it will fuel a new generation in the long fight still ahead against subtle and insidious racism. 

Author: Giuseppe Polimeno
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