While not quite Internet-breaking, Caitlyn Jenner’s appearance at the ESPYs last night dominated social media chatter around the popular sports awards show.
Jenner was presented with the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at last night’s 2015 ESPYs and made a stirring, 10-minute speech telling people to accept people “for who they are.” Her appearance helped the show, which moved from ESPN to ABC this year, bolster the ratings to an all-time high with massive online buzz to match.
According to social data tracked by Amobee Brand Intelligence, there were 600,000 tweets about the ESPYs with Jenner being the most popular topic. Roughly 60,000 tweets mentioned both her name and ESPYs. A full 83,000 tweets featured the #CaitlynJenner hashtag.
In total, 146,000 tweets were tallied centering around Jenner during the three-hour telecast. Twitter sentiment shows that 30 percent tweets were positive, while 19 percent were negative. The majority of tweets, at 51 percent, were neutral.
Prior to Jenner’s presentation, Google aired a shorter version of an ad that it first released on YouTube last month centering around a transgender man’s emotional journey. The hashtag promoted with it, #HerestoCourage, raked in 1,600 tweets with 98 percent of them positive.
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