The Past Isn’t Just The Past- A Look Into The Bachelor
By Jess Barfield.
In this Internet age, what people have done in the past has a tendency to catch up to them.
“The Bachelor” is a popular program on ABC and consists of a Bachelor and his ~25 female suitors competing for his heart, all on national television. This popular show has had more than 8 million viewers, which includes UTK students (and maybe a few faculty).
This season marks a historic milestone for the franchise with its first Black male lead- Matt James, who follows just the second Black bachelorette, Tayshia Adams. A recent controversy erupted when it was discovered that a contestant, Rachael Kirkconnell, attended an “antebellum/ plantation-themed” fraternity formal in 2018. Clearly, this is a racially insensitive action and is just one of many controversial social media discoveries that have come to light.
Prior to this season of “The Bachelor”, there were many calls for change in the franchise citing the lack of diversity in the franchise’s leads (The Bachelor and The Bachelorette themselves) as well as within the contestants. The call for change and diversity also wants ABC and The Bachelor franchise to ensure at least a 35% BIPOC contestants, a task that ABC has yet to follow through on.
Using Social Studio, an invaluable tool within the Adam Brown Social Media Command Center, we see that there are quite a few conversations surrounding “The Bachelor” with nearly 170K posts in the past 30 days, with the start of the show and the finale not included. Looking at the media types and post volume, we see spikes on Mondays, the night The Bachelor airs, on Twitter, and on Tuesdays, we see increases in YouTube posts when bloggers post their reaction videos.
Regarding the topic of conversation, we see that the contestant in question, Rachael Kirkconnell has been a big part of the conversation surrounding this season of The Bachelor as well as many keywords that suggest viewers are unhappy with how the show is handling race and diversity his season.
With many episodes left in this season and ample time for ABC to make changes to upcoming seasons, I, for one, am anxious to see if these changes are implemented and what the future for Rachael Kirkconnell holds.