The Ray Rice Incident Ryan Tapia ASSIGNMENT 1.5 0004667968

What Happened ? On February 15th Ray Rice and his fiancé at the time Janay Palmer were arrested and charged with simple assault. At the time of the incident it was known that the two had gotten into a physical dispute at the Revel Casino in Atlantic City, but it was still unclear as to what exactly took place inside that elevator. That same night Rice’s attorney described the incident as a “minor physical altercation” which began to make waves throughout the world. This was the beginning of a major story and social media explosion.

How the Story Broke When the original story was released by the police and Rice’s attorney, it was described as simple assault and something that was minor. Four days later on February 19th a graphic video surfaced showing Rice dragging his fiancé out of an elevator in an aggressive manor. Even with the release of the video, Ray Rice and his representatives still backed there opinion stating that the incident was minor and would be resolved privately. After sometime it was then the Ravens turn to back Rice and vouch for his character. This only made the situation worse because it showed that not only was Rice in denial of the situation, so was his team and the NFL. The Ravens repetitively told the public no matter what, Rice would be back with the team when the incident was resolved. A week later Rice’s case was presented to a grand jury and he was later indicted on aggravated assault charges. The NFL then issued Rice a two game suspension and gave there opinion on the matter. Finally on September 8th the full video surfaced of what actually took place on the elevator that night. The video showed Rice viciously punching and knocking out his finance while dragging her through the hallway. After the full video made its way to the League and the Ravens, social media began to take this story to another level.

Social Media Coverage Once the full video surfaced social media took the story to another level. Twitter was a huge reason for the explosion of details and news about the story. There where endless tweets from reporters, police departments, and third party sources. The coverage on social media was obviously negative because of the brutality of the incident, most people did not agree with Rice’s actions and the actions of those who supported him. The NFL was also negatively effected through social media because of the way they handled the situation and how they originally issued such a easy suspension of just two games.

Social Media Influence Social Media impacted the Ray Rice Incident in many ways. It was the leading factor in the actual release of the full video and key evidence. The public demanded the truth about the situation by using Twitter as an outlet. Social Media also impacted the way people viewed Ray Rice and the NFL. During the time of the video release there where celebrities, football players, reporters, even the president of the United States commenting on the issue. Social media’s main focus after the release of the video was targeted at the NFL. After seeing the full video evidence how could they still only issue a two game suspension? The overwhelming negative comments on social media also led to the release of Ray Rice from the Ravens. The pressure was so great from the public that even the Ravens had no choice but to cut ties with Rice. In todays society, social media is the way we spread news and information throughout the world weather good or bad, in the case of the Ray Rice incident, it was bad, very bad.

Sources ESPN: The Worldwide Leader in Sports. How the Ray Rice scandal unfolded between the Baltimore Ravens, Roger Goodell and the NFL. Retrieved from http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/11551518/how-ray-rice-scandal-unfolded-baltimore- ravens-roger-goodell-nfl