In pictures: Americans ask if Charleston suspect 'terrorist' or 'crazy'?

19 June 2015

BBC Trending

What's popular and why

Is the suspect in the attack which killed nine people at an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina being treated differently because he is white?

That's what many argued online. After the arrest of 21-year-old Dylann Roof, several images went viral comparing the way the case has been talked about - and how the suspect was treated by police - to other incidents involving black people accused of much less serious crimes. Here are some of the most shared.

This picture compares the way Roof was arrested with the case of Eric Garner, the unarmed black man in who died after being arrested by New York City police officers in July 2014. The decision of a grand jury not to press charges against officer Daniel Pantaleo was greeted by protests, external, both online and on the street.

The image has been widely shared in the last day across social media - with one version getting over 200,000 shares on Facebook.

This, external was the most circulated image under the "Black Lives Matter", external hashtag in the first 24 hours after the Charleston shooting, and was tweeted by Jerrard Peters, external, a writer at Providence University College. On the right is Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was shot dead by police in the US city of Cleveland after carrying what turned out to be a toy gun in a playground.

The Charleston incident sparked a resurgence of the #BlackLivesMatter, external hashtag on Twitter, with more than 60,000 tweets using the phrase in the first 24 hours after news of the attack broke. The hashtag first made an appearance on social media in 2013 following protests across America after George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch volunteer, was cleared of murdering unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida.

It's subsequently been used in connection with the deaths of other black people across the US, particularly in incidents involving police - including Freddie Gray, Walter Scott, Eric Garner and Michael Brown.

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart also attracted widespread praise online for his reaction to the shootings. Uncharacteristically, he didn't make any jokes about Charleston - instead he spoke emotionally about his frustration about the way the suspect was talked about as "crazy" rather than as a terrorist. "We invade two countries and spent trillions of dollars and lost thousands of American lives and now fly unmanned death machines over like five or six different counties, all to keep Americans safe," Stewart said. "We've got to do whatever we can - we'll torture people. We've got to do whatever we can to keep Americans safe. But nine people shot in a church? 'Hey, what are you going go to do? Crazy is as crazy is, right?'"

The clip was posted to YouTube, external by a user named Kwame Boateng, with the caption "Bravo Jon, for keeping it real". It was viewed 170,000 times.

The second-most shared image was a picture, external of Clementa Pinckney, the church's pastor and a state senator.

President Obama said at a press conference the day of the shooting, that both he and Michelle knew Pinckney personally, and he spoke of their "sadness and anger" at the tragedy. BBC News wrote a profile of Clementa Pinckney here.

Many of the images shared online were comparing reaction to other attacks by different ethnic groups, and asked the question why white suspects were often described as "lone wolves" or mentally unstable.