Twitter Talk and Twitter Sharing in Times of Crisis: Exploring Rhetorical Motive and Agenda-Setting in the Ray Rice Scandal

Social media continues to challenge many of the default assumptions agenda-setting. One particular arena of society that has witnessed the growth of nontraditional content producers has been the sports community, especially when moments of crisis involving broader cultural concerns emerge. This study examines the Twitter content shared and produced regarding the conversation that occurred immediately after TMZ video showing Ray Rice attacking his then-fiancee went viral. By attending to these users' rhetorical purposes and agendamelding activities, we content that, far from safely agreeing with the dominant opinions in their respective social communities or merely being expressive, users debated with and challenged one another, even inviting disagreement.