Almost 90% of social media activity on Thursday was dedicated to the ruling made by the Supreme Court of Appeals in Bloemfontein which found Oscar Pistorius guilty of murder.

According to statistics provided by media monitoring agency ROi Africa, 89% of SA’s social media activity in the last 24 hours was about Pistorius.

The Paralympian took up 35% of local news in the same amount of time. He was closely followed by World Aids day which covered 19% percent of the news, while terrorism attacks globally came third with 12.8% and Prince Harry, who came in fourth with 7.5%.

In international news, Pistorius was the fourth most popular news item in the last 24 hours garnering 10.6% of the coverage. He was preceded by the mass shooting in California at which took up 17.9% of the news coverage, followed by the terrorist attack in Paris with 16.8% and the Russian airstrikes in Syria which had 12.6% coverage.

The top countries to report on the SCA’s ruling included the US with 21.7% coverage, South Africa with 18.4% , the United Kingdom with 16.3% coverage and Germany which spent 12.3% of its news coverage on the athlete.

On Thursday morning, the SCA replaced Pistorius’s culpable homicide conviction with murder, ruling that he should have foreseen the deadly impact his four bullets would have in a small bathroom.

Justice Eric Leach told a packed court it was a unanimous judgment that Pistorius should be found guilty of murdering his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

He described the High Court ruling finding Pistorius guilty of culpable homicide as a “fundamental error”. News24