A study by a UNLV online misinformation expert analyzed conservative and liberal Twitter after mass shootings and found a common theme, enough is enough.
According to a news release by the university, Mary Blankenship, a researcher with Brookings Mountain West at UNLV, examined over 1.3 million tweets to gauge Twitter users’ emotions and found that, no matter the political leaning, people want change.
“Our analysis suggests that the emotional reactions to these horrific incidences of violence are not that far apart from each other,” wrote Blankenship and Brookings Institution researcher Carol Graham.
Recent mass shootings that were examined were the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas and the grocery store in Buffalo, New York that was targeted by a white supremacist.
“The current discourse is overwhelmed with cynicism and pain that seems to unearth every associated injustice felt by right- and left-leaning users. Without compromise from both sides, no consensus is possible,” they added. “We hope this analysis can provide an opening toward a solution where one did not seem to exist before.”
While conservatives and liberals seem to differ on a lot of things, when it comes to gun violence there seems to be a consensus.
“There is consistency across both groups that gun violence is an issue that needs to be addressed,” the authors wrote. “While the main obstacle is the Republicans’ unequivocal refusal to discuss gun control, that refusal will not change unless Democrats show a willingness to compromise on the extent of restrictions and to accept that there are millions of people in the U.S. that are horrified by the violence but are not willing to give up their right to own guns.
