By: Ashley Myers
On June 1, 2022, millions of people were glued to their streaming devices awaiting the verdict of the six–week long defamation trial between movie star Johnny Depp and former spouse Amber Heard. The trial was high-profile and dramatic, the perfect combination for it to blow up on social media and become the topic of conversation on apps such as TikTok and Twitter. If you showed any interest in the case, it followed you on social media, with the recommendation algorithms constantly pushing case content onto your feed. Even if you did not keep up with the case, you probably had some idea of what was going on. However, the defamation case was misrepresented both in news media and social media and was often reported as a sexual abuse case, causing a major divide between Depp and Heard fans all over the world, as well as creating confusion for indifferent spectators of the case. Social media effectively turned a serious defamation case into a meme-filled virtual circus all while misinforming the public and encouraging people to choose one side or the other based on who they liked better, ignoring what was really important: the facts of the case, and what defamation entails.
Throughout the trial, people began to lose sight of the jury’s task at hand: to determine whether or not Heard had defamed Depp in her op-ed in The Sun published in 2018. Defamation occurs when someone makes a false statement about you which causes harm to your reputation, and Depp sued Heard for making defamatory statements in her op-ed where she described herself as a victim of domestic violence. The jury was responsible to determine four things in order to convict Heard of being guilty of defaming Depp: that the statement was false, that the statement was published, that the statement caused harm, and that the statement would not be considered under free speech. After hearing all of the evidence after six weeks, the jury found Heard liable for three claims of defamation and ordered her to pay Depp $15 million in damages, and found Depp liable for one claim of defamation and ordered him to pay Heard $2 million in damages. Though this verdict pleased many Depp fans and avid watchers of the trial, Heard supporters were furious at the outcome and have since spoken out in articles and social media, with statement such as “Many victims of domestic violence who watched this trial will likely conclude that, if they share their experiences, they will be disbelieved, shamed, and ostracized”. What the writers of these articles fail to realize is that this case was in fact not a sexual abuse trial, and it was not the jury’s duty to determine who was the ‘victim’ and who was the ‘abuser’. It was to determine whether or not Heard had defamed Depp. This misinterpretation of the trial, however, did not begin after the reading of the verdict. It was present throughout the entirety of the trial, with Depp fans blaming Heard and vice versa. Because media narratives tended to frame the case in similar ways to a sexual abuse case, it caused obscure understandings of what the deliberations of the trial were meant to determine. This effectively resulted in misrepresentation and misinterpretation of what the case entailed.
Amy Singer, long-time trial consultant and psychologist, has admitted that the “political-type online mudslinging” between opposing sides in the media made it tough not just for a passerby on the internet to understand what was going on, but also for professionals who were following the trial. Along with expressing this confusion, Singer’s team used a set of social media listening tools to deduce what jurors might be thinking by following social media posts of people with similar demographics and backgrounds. What she ended up finding, however, was beyond just what the jurors might have been thinking. She found that the trial was more like a political debate than a typical legal debate you might hear in conversations concerning abuse or murder cases, as she detected rifts between the two fanbases. She also found that it was a younger crowd who were invested in the case on social media on apps such as TikTok and Instagram, while older people were more concerned with the war in Ukraine.
News media has an enormous influence on our society, as it does not only communicate information, but also offers journalists individual opinions and perspectives on said information. We have long recognized journalists use framing when reporting on any given story, and the frames used during Depp v Heard obscured some of the particular legal issues at play. A prime example of this phenomenon can be seen in the Depp vs Heard defamation case. Many times news media companies want to portray themselves in a specific way, whether that is by promoting a specific political side, or profusely supporting a movement. This can be seen in the overwhelming amount of Pro-Heard articles that popped up after the trial’s verdict, claiming that the #MeToo movement has faced a setback due to the trial ruling. Pro-Depp reports remain largely on social media and are buried in the news media. Many of the articles bashed Depp and his legal team with remarks such as comparing attorney Camille Vasquez to character Regina George from the movie Mean Girls. The same type of misleading reporting on the Pro-Depp side can be seen similarly on different TikTok videos, with content creators accusing Heard of “putting on performance of her life” during the trial. With accounts of the trial on the media largely taking sides, it created confusion and led viewers away from understanding the reality of the defamation suit that was being tried, and into a world of fabricated and glamorized stories that were molded to fit each news outlet’s narrative.
Though the news media failed to provide adequate context concerning the trial, social media seemed to be the bigger perpetrator in distorting trial facts. With fans of both sides flooding apps such as TikTok and Twitter with memes, hashtags, and opinions, social media essentially tried the case in the court of public opinion. Creators went back and forth posting their takes on the trial and creating memes of both celebrities as well as their legal teams and the judge in the trial. There were also a multitude of different hashtags that emerged from the chaos, one of which being #justiceforjohnnydepp which has nearly 7 billion views on TikTok. The fans of both sides were ruthless in their posts, with some people going as far as posing death threats to people involved in the case. However, most of these opinionated posts were not based on the facts of the case and the evidence presented to the jury. They were based more on fandoms and who people decided they liked better, Johnny Depp or Amber Heard. Although the jury did indeed decide the outcome of the case, the future of the actors’ careers will ultimately be based on how they are viewed in the public eye, and both of them were harmed due to content creators going rampant on social media. This meme-filed virtual circus effectively encouraged misrepresentation of the case on social media by the dueling fandoms all while disregarding the legalities of the trial.
Though we have seen high profile cases such as the OJ Simpson murder trial blow up in the media, the Depp vs Heard case was one of the biggest cases since social media has been as prominent as it is today, with Law & Crime’s Youtube page attracting nearly a billion views on content related to the case. The cameras in the courtroom documenting the entirety of the trial is the reason that the case turned into a sensational affair that, in reality, should have been a matter that stayed between the defendant and plaintiff. With the whole world offering their opinions, it is hard to see past the buzz and see the reality: two individuals, neither of which are saints, fighting a legal battle to restore their names that have been plastered all over the media. Not all press is good press, and every main player that was involved in the trial was being talked about in the media, which has affected their lives and will continue to for years to come.
This trial had the opportunity to be a legal lesson for viewers but it instead turned into a war on social media between two ruthless fandoms who did not want to believe that their favorite star was problematic. This effectively created noise that made the trial hard for the public to understand the case, and ultimately distracted everyone following the trial from the legal facts. This analysis of the trials’ presence in the media has shown us how important articulation is between legal proceedings and celebrity culture when it comes to both news media and social media. Without a clear understanding by spectators of how different cases are tried, there is always the possibility that a high profile case could be misrepresented and effectively misunderstood by viewers, thus creating a ruthless environment on social media that negatively affects the outcome of the trial for both parties, no matter the verdict.
