Social Media Discussion about Kirstjen Nielsen’s resignation
Posted by Ying Xiong
On April 7th, 2019, Kirstjen Nielsen, Department of Homeland Security Secretary, resigned from her position. Kevin McAleenan will serve as acting DHS secretary. The Twitter discussion of Nielsen’s news reached to peak at 6 pm on April 7th.
For Nielsen’s news, the majority of influencers on Twitter were news agencies, including ABC News, CNN, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, TIME, CBS News, and many others. Several individual accounts also had huge impacts on Nielsen’s topic, including Ben Shapiro, Donald Trump, and Michael Black.
About Nielsen’s resignation, Trump tweeted that, “Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen will be leaving her position, and I would like to thank her for her service. I am pleased to announce that Kevin McAleenan, the current U.S. Customs, and Border Protection Commissioner, will become Acting Secretary for @DHSgov. I have confidence that Kevin will do a great job!”
On Twitter, many social media users discussed Kirstjen Nielsen’s involvement with immigration policy in the Trump administration. Top words, such as children, kids, families, parents, immigration, anti-immigrant, and separated, were discussed on Twitter. Many tweets included the word “cages” and said, “History will remember her for separating families and putting children in cages.” Additionally, negative words, such as toxic, cruel, were used in Nielsen-relevant tweets. Among all the on-topic tweets, 81.9% of tweets had negative sentiments.
