With the recent strike down of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), same-sex marriage has been a popular and controversial topic in the world of online media. As of July, thirteen states have now legalized same-sex marriage.

Looking into these conversations over the past 5 months, we can see from the trend chart below that dialogue around same-sex marriage in America shot up in late March and June of 2013. This is because the Supreme Court heard arguments in support and opposition of marriage equality in those time periods.

As far as sentiment is concerned, the majority of online chatter surrounding same-sex marriage is positive, at 66 percent. Following behind, 31 percent of sentiment is negative, and 3 percent is mixed.

Looking at the most-used positive words, the word “support” comes up in 25 percent of positive posts. We can infer from this that when people talk favorably about same-sex marriage, they are voicing their support for gay couples. Digging deeper into the word “benefit,” seen in 5 percent of positive conversation, we see that people are speaking of the word in two different ways. Many write that the United States would benefit from same-sex marriage, and then another group speaks positively of concrete benefits that same-sex couples would gain.

Contrarily, the negative words around same-sex marriage do not come up nearly as often as the positive words. The word “wrong” is seen most frequently in negative posts with 3 percent. From this, we can assume that the majority of people that speak negatively about same-sex marriage do so because they think it is wrong.  

When we dig into which gender talks more about same-sex marriage, we can see that males make up 59 percent, and females make up the other 41 percent.

The conversation concerning same-sex marriage will continue to evolve as time goes on. It will be interesting to keep up with what people—those supporting and opposing—have to say as time goes on.