TikTok: The Role of Social Media and the Internet in the Amber Heard v Johnny Depp Trial

BBC News Brazil

“It wasn’t supposed to be a viral video. I was in my pajamas.” Yasmine Bedward, social media manager, comments on the moment her opinion on the legal battle between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard went viral.

“No one in my real life cared about my ideas on this subject, so how do millennialsI went to TikTok,” said Bedward, 30.

His video comparing the two psychologists who participated in the trial involving the celebrities has already surpassed 4.3 million views – very close to the ratings of the evening news on the American television network CBS.

Another comparison: the number of people who watch the TV news every night in the United States is about 18 million. The number of video views on TikTok with the hashtag #justiceforjohnnydepp is around 18 billion at the time of writing.

The courtroom clash between the two Hollywood stars is a reminder that the concept of “mass media” or a medium dominated by a few news organizations is starting to crumble. In the eyes of some, this can be deeply problematic in some contexts.

There are two cases at issue — one that is decided by the court jury and one that is decided by the public. From the early days of the trial, it was clear that the internet was largely on the side of Johnny Depp and deeply suspicious of Amber Heard.

Online polls and searches for comments on social media appeared to be in direct contradiction to the outcome of an earlier trial in the UK, where allegations that Heard was domestically abused were found to be “substantially true”.

The way in which the actress’ character and her testimony were called into question in the US trial worries activists who defend victims of domestic violence. The question now is: what will be the impact of this verdict? Did Depp save his career and reputation, regardless of what the jury decided?

But there’s also another question in the “parallel TikTok trial”: who is generating all this online traffic — and what is the effect of it?

Cyabra, an Israeli company that tracks disinformation online, has been following the Depp v Heard case for weeks. She checks accounts that are spreading memes, videos and comments and tries to assess whether they are genuine accounts.

The results so far are alarming, says company spokesman Rafi Mendelsohn. “From the beginning of the trial, we were very interested in seeing what people are really saying and how much of this conversation is driven by fake accounts.”

“We were surprised to find that nearly 11% of the online discussion surrounding the trial was conducted by fake accounts, which is a very high number,” said Mendelsohn. “To give you an idea, in online discussions, we average about 3% to 5% of the conversation with fake accounts participating,” he added.

Only big elections are a benchmark for a discussion with this proportion of bots and fake accounts, he said. It’s not just Cyabra that monitors this overwhelming internet support for Depp.

Amber Heard raised the issue early in the trial. Over the course of it, two Heard supporters, Cristina Taft and Daniel Brummit, went to the Virginia courthouse several times to express concerns about this online movement. They wrote a book together called “Amber Heard and Bots”.

“We saw new accounts and new posts in January and February,” Taft said, noting that in those two months, Britain’s Daily Mail posted two audio recordings of the former couple on YouTube. “Then we realized that there are new Twitter accounts that post these audios two days later,” she said.

The problem is proving who is behind the fake accounts. All that can be said is that this pattern of fake accounts is increasingly spreading from politics to other parts of public life, according to Mendelsohn of Cyabra.

“When we talk about disinformation and fake accounts, people often think about big geopolitical campaigns, elections, politics in general,” he said.

“But really, what we’re seeing is that anyone with a public reputation or global reach is an online brand,” he says. “There is an increase in the number of inauthentic profiles, but it is very difficult to know who is behind the fake accounts.”

But 11% fake accounts still means 89% are real. What’s going on with this case? The first response is the videos coming out of the courtroom and photos with the reaction of the main participants.

We are able to observe facial expressions in a way that is impossible even for people in the audience room and there are remarkable moments that have no relation to the main narrative.

There was the testimony of the doorman, Alejandro Romero, who gave his testimony via Zoom from inside his car, while smoking an electronic cigarette and, in the end, simply leaving. It’s something new even for American justice. The expression on Judge Penney Azacarte’s face at the end of Romero’s testimony was proof enough of the new world of online attractions surrounding a serious matter.

It’s also a puzzle. Two people presenting a completely different view of events that took place behind closed doors means that millions can see the evidence for themselves and make their own decisions. We can all be detectives and judges.

But there is perhaps something more important going on. Domestic violence is a topic that affects people’s lives across the planet. This case has become symbolic.

For Haider Ali in Islamabad, Pakistan, it’s a personal matter. The 27-year-old stylist, whose YouTube commentary about the trial has garnered millions of views, said he experienced violence and identifies with what Depp says he faced.

“I was on Twitter and saw a live stream. I watched it for a few minutes and realized there were a lot of things I could relate to when I heard Johnny Depp testify in court,” he told the BBC.

“Because there were a lot of similarities between Johnny Depp’s case and mine. I decided to post the trial videos on my YouTube channel in hopes of creating a community of people who were also victims of abuse,” he said. “My goal was to bring to light people who have been silenced.”

And Yasmine Bedward, who has received millions of views for her TikToks, also feels personally connected to the case. “I identified with him [Depp]… certain people are seen in a certain way and are automatically found guilty or just plain bad people,” she said.

“As a black woman in America, I’ve had experience with this… some people are seen as guilty without proof. That’s what brought me to this.”

And there is another issue that has been raised repeatedly by women who have followed the case. Amber Heard was an ambassador for a movement. In the wake of #MeToo, she became a spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization that also represents victims of domestic abuse.

For Bedward, this is quite problematic. “It’s someone who has become the face of a movement that women have been fighting for for years, and having someone who isn’t real is harmful not only to the organization, but I think to women in general,” she said.

Therefore, to consider the case only as celebrity news is to miss the many ways in which people are connecting with the case. But the size of this involvement and the tone are also causing concern for some people.

Deborah Vagins, head of the American Civil Liberties Union domestic violence network, thinks Amber Heard’s treatment will resonate widely — and not in a good way. “Victims are watching this and are thinking about how they will be treated if they make a report,” she said.

This public judgment on the defamation case will have consequences. But there is also another way of looking at things.

This is a case where everyone had the same access to the content of the process. The journalist in the courtroom sees the same thing as the public at home. The field has been leveled. This access allowed millions of people to engage and discuss the case. It also abolished the boundaries of traditional journalism, its language and stylistic conventions.

There are bots and fake accounts on the internet, but the vast majority of the traffic is real people who want to participate in a noisy global conversation about justice, truth and conflict in relationships.

Everything may have happened in a noisy and abrupt way, but the case mobilized people who often feel that the news is far from the topics that really affect them. This article, for example, will only be read by a tiny fraction of the number of people who follow Yasmine Bedward and Haider Ali. And just to remind you of a number mentioned before here: 18 billion TikTok views.