The conservative outrage over the late night host Jimmy Kimmel became apoplectic on Wednesday after Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission chairman, went on a podcast and suggested the regulatory body could use its powers against the network that airs the show.
But the outrage had started to grow online more than 24 hours earlier — first as a whisper, then eventually as a shout, as social media users, influencers and right-wing news outlets began sharing Mr. Kimmel’s monologue, according to an analysis by The New York Times of thousands of posts on social media and mentions on radio, television and podcasts.
It began with a muted reaction on X on Tuesday morning after one user, whose job involves monitoring late night shows for liberal bias, posted a clip of the monologue. Conservative influencers and radio hosts started to take notice throughout the day, and Fox News hosts turned their attention to the clip by the evening.
Then, hours before Mr. Carr’s podcast taping on Wednesday, Elon Musk, the most-followed user on X and the site’s owner, posted that Mr. Kimmel was “disgusting” for the jokes.
The accelerating furor reflects how online outrage does not always emerge organically, but is often the result a small number of prominent voices redirecting their audience’s attention.
“Outrage is fomented by influential figures in both media and politics, for whom outrage is a communication strategy,” said Anthony Kelly, a member of the University College Dublin’s Centre for Digital Policy, who has studied how partisan online outrage spreads. “Lead figures or media outlets wouldn’t be solely responsible. You also have, increasingly, the role of platforms, so outrage is being driven by algorithms.”
Critics have said Mr. Kimmel’s monologue was inaccurate because he said that “the MAGA gang was desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.” According to charging documents, the accused shooter had written of Mr. Kirk, “I had enough of his hatred.”
Mr. Kimmel’s comments ultimately contributed to the show being pulled by ABC indefinitely.
There was only muted criticism online and in broadcasts for nearly 24 hours after Mr. Kimmel’s show, according to data on X from Tweet Binder, an analytics company by Audiense that collects data on the platform, and Critical Mention, a media monitoring company.
Early on Tuesday morning, only hours after Mr. Kimmel’s show aired, articles began appearing in conservative media criticizing the monologue. Breitbart, the right-wing news site, highlighted the show in an article published at 6:40 a.m. Eastern time. But the writer focused on Mr. Kimmel’s commentary about President Trump’s grief. It made only a fleeting mention about Mr. Kimmel’s comment that the shooter was “one of them.”
One of the first posts on X to share a clip from Mr. Kimmel’s monologue came from Alex Christy, a staff writer for NewsBusters, a conservative publication that reports on mainstream media with the goal of “exposing and neutralizing liberal media bias,” according to its website.
That post was published at 9:02 a.m. on Tuesday and gained steam slowly over the coming days as it ricocheted among social media users and across video platforms. The post ultimately gained more than 15 million views on X. It was amplified by top users there including Mr. Musk.
NewsBusters is a publication from the Media Research Center, a media watchdog and nonprofit founded in 1987 by L. Brent Bozell III, a conservative media critic who was also nominated this year by Mr. Trump to be the next ambassador to South Africa. The M.R.C. has repeatedly campaigned against mainstream media in a bid to have shows canceled or networks boycotted.
“We’re going to look for media bias anywhere and everywhere we need to go look,” said David Bozell, the president of M.R.C., in an interview. “Late night included.”
After a handful of mentions of Mr. Kimmel’s monologue on radio programs on Tuesday, Fox News addressed the comments on “The Five,” its prime-time round-table talk show.
“Isn’t it easier for them to pull the plug on someone like Jimmy Kimmel, given the political and media vibe that we are in right now?” Lisa Kennedy Montgomery, one of the hosts, asked.
“It’s certainly easy to give them an opportunity to walk it back or to try and clarify exactly what he meant,” replied another host, Katie Pavlich.
But the tenor was already changing online.
Auron MacIntyre, a host for The Blaze, a right-wing media company, wrote on X on Tuesday night that Mr. Kimmel was promoting a “conspiracy theory” about the shooter’s political ties, concluding: “He must lose his job, this is deeply evil.” The post was seen more than half a million times.
“Jimmy Kimmel is disgusting,” Mr. Musk wrote the next morning.
On Wednesday, Mr. Carr, the F.C.C. chairman, appeared on “The Benny Show,” a livestream and podcast hosted by Benny Johnson, a conservative activist. Mr. Carr appeared to pick up on the online outrage, suggesting that the F.C.C. could use its powers against ABC, the network that airs the show, unless it acted against Mr. Kimmel.
The comments propelled the criticism from a mostly online feud to the mainstream, prompting its own surge of outrage over Mr. Kimmel and the F.C.C.’s potential actions.
“What makes a huge difference here is that you now have people in power, people that are highly visible and powerful, that can make actual change happen, who will pick up things that maybe 5 percent or 10 percent of the population is listening to,” said Kate Klonick, an associate professor at St. John’s University School of Law, who has written about how misinformation spreads by exploiting online outrage.
Calls for Mr. Kimmel’s firing grew online afterward, to hundreds of posts per hour on X from fewer than a dozen accounts, according to data from Tweet Binder.
After ABC announced it was pulling Mr. Kimmel’s show, Mr. Johnson, the podcaster who had interviewed the F.C.C. chairman on Wednesday, took credit for the outcome.
“Mean tweets are great,” he wrote on X. “But they can be ignored. What can’t be ignored are your paying customers organizing against you and FCC investigations. That is exactly what we did.”
Stuart A. Thompson writes about how false and misleading information spreads online and how it affects people around the world. He focuses on misinformation, disinformation and other misleading content.
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