Proyecto-charlie-kirk-reddit/Charlie-Kirk-comments

Dataset Summary

This dataset is used in the following Github repository: "Charlie-Kirk-comments-sentiment-analysis".

This dataset contains Reddit comments related to Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, from 11-2024 to 10-2025, which includes the event of his death in 10th September 2025. Charlie Kirk was a highly polarizing political figure in the United States, often drawing both strong support and harsh criticism. Following his death, many media platforms, included Reddit, became places to discuss his legacy, political influence, and the moral implications of the event.

The purpose of this dataset is to analyze shifts in sentiment and discourse surrounding Charlie Kirk, exploring whether the tone of online conversations changed during the mourning period — whether empathy and respect prevailed, or political hostility persisted.

How to use

You can easily load and explore the dataset using Python and pandas. It is available on Hugging Face under the dataset name charlie_kirk_reddit_comments.

import pandas as pd

# Load dataset directly from Hugging Face or from a local CSV file
df = pd.read_csv("comentarios_charlie_kirk_balanceado.csv")

# Display basic information
print(df.shape)
print(df.head())

# Example: count comments by month
df['timestamp'] = pd.to_datetime(df['timestamp'])
monthly_counts = df.groupby(df['timestamp'].dt.to_period('M')).size()
print(monthly_counts)

You may also use the dataset to:

Assign sentiment labels using AI models with AI models (e.g., BERT, RoBERTa).

Explore temporal patterns in public opinion.

Conduct text classification or hate speech detection research.

Dataset Details

Structure

Each row in the dataset represents a single Reddit comment and includes:

Column	Description
timestamp	UTC datetime of when the comment was posted
score	Reddit upvote score (upvotes - downvotes)
parent_text	Text of the parent comment or post title
comment_text	The actual body of the Reddit comment
subreddit	The subreddit where the comment was found

Collection Process

Comments were collected using the Reddit API via the praw Python library. Relevant subreddits were targeted for political discussions, such as: politics, Conservative, ToiletPaperUSA, news, PoliticalDiscussion, democrats, republicans.

When the monthly minimum comment threshold was not met, additional data was collected from r/all. Queries used included: "Charlie Kirk", "CharlieKirk", "TPUSA", "Turning Point USA", "Kirk AND Conservative", "Kirk AND TPUSA".

Only comments meeting the following conditions were retained:

• Contained at least 5 words.

• Were not deleted or removed.

• Were unique (duplicate comment–parent pairs removed).

Dataset Size

Time range: roughly one year surrounding the reported death.

Comments: ~5,000–10,000 unique comments (balanced by month).

Minimum per month: 200 comments.

File format: CSV (comentarios_charlie_kirk_balanceado.csv).

Limitations

Data is limited to Reddit, which may not represent broader public opinion.

Some comments may contain sarcasm or irony, which affects sentiment classification accuracy.

The dataset may still contain minor duplicates or noisy text (e.g., partial quotes, bot activity).

The time boundaries for “before” and “after” the event rely on available Reddit timestamps and may not perfectly align with real-time reactions.

License

This dataset is licensed under:

• Reddit API.