White House correspondents dinner: Social media buzzes over #nerdprom

The White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner, nicknamed the “nerd prom,” had social media users buzzing over Cecily Strong’s jokes, Keegan-Michael Key’s “anger translator” bit and more.

The event Saturday night at the Washington Hilton brought together celebrities from journalism, politics and entertainment. The broadcast of the dinner on CNN drew 187,259 tweets, 49,149 of which were “reactions,” according to data provided by Canvs, a social TV platform created by social media insights firm Mashwork.

The company uses relevant tweets, as measured by Nielsen, to gauge what emotions or “reactions” people have about TV. Of the correspondents dinner tweets, almost 50% contained the hashtag “#whcd.” Obama was mentioned in about 24% of the tweets, a mix of positive and negative.

Canvs reported an estimated 46.3% of the “reaction” tweets contained emotions of love.

“Obama is the man,” wrote one user. “.@WhiteHouse excellent #whcd. POTUS, you rocked and Cecilly Strong was awesome!”

More disgruntled users weren’t as enthusiastic.

“Its a disgrace. CNN can’t miss an Obama love fest even if the country is falling apart,” wrote one social media user.

Though the dinner generated a decent amount of Web chatter, other recent televised events have sparked more social media buzz.

Nielsen reported 972,000 tweets were sent about ABC’s “20/20” special “Bruce Jenner: The Interview,” which aired Friday.

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