In a bit of news from the "sadly, expected" department, Vox has published a great analysis of the horrific things sent over to Fox News host Megyn Kelly—yes, the very same Kelly who hosted Thursday's Republican debate in Cleveland, Ohio—via Twitter.
Say what you will about the questions, the answers, or the general tone to the debate. As soon as Republican front-runner Donald Trump started up on Kelly after she questioned previous comments he has made toward women, Twitter users went to their keyboards (or mobile devices).
"Rather, it was that Trump's comments, and the overt hatred of women he conveyed, appear to have a real political constituency in America. Looking just at the immediate reaction, despite the backlash among the GOP establishment, his comments have inspired what appears to be an overwhelming wave of online hatred not against Trump but against Kelly," writes Vox's Max Fisher
The analysis, run by Izzy Galvez, took a look at a handful of four letter words sent to Kelly's Twitter account over the past year. As one might expect, she hasn't really been the target of that much Twitter harassment—or, at least, the chart is so skewed based on the results from Thursday, that it's hard to really tell just what kinds of unfriendly things Twitter users have typically sent her (or said about her).
Starting with the debate, however, quite a few unpleasant words were either used alongside her name or sent directly to her—more than 800 mentions in total, and that's just for a small sampling of words. Those who didn't curse Kelly out with that degree of specificity, or found other creative ways to do so, wouldn't be included within the total.
"Fox News viewers had no issue w/ Megyn Kelly for at least 12 months until she asked Trump tough questions," Galvez tweeted.
As for Trump himself, the candidate appeared to lend a bit of support to the Twitter harassment by retweeting the following message on his official account:
"@timjcam: @megynkelly @FrankLuntz @realDonaldTrump Fox viewers give low marks to bimbo @MegynKelly will consider other programs!"
Admittedly, that's not as harsh as some of the tweets in Galvez's analysis, but it's pretty clear from all the other Trump tweets surrounding the debate that he doesn't appear to be the biggest fan of Kelly. And based on Galvez's analysis, he has plenty of people backing him up (and then some).
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