Narrative Lock-In Under Platform Acceleration: A Real-Time Ethnography of Crisis Discourse on X (January 2026)

This deposit contains a formal interpretive document and 31 original screenshots collected during a 48-hour period in January 2026 documenting crisis discourse on X (formerly Twitter) surrounding a violent law-enforcement incident in Minneapolis. The accompanying document presents a real-time platform-studies ethnography tracing the full lifecycle of narrative formation under platform acceleration: from epistemic fracture and confusion, through moral weaponization and violence normalization, into narrative canonization, evidentiary theater, and post-canon forensic reconstruction. The screenshots are treated as primary ethnographic artifacts capturing behavioral performances, narrative stabilization, and the collapse of adjudication in public view. No screenshots have been altered. Collection was manual, non-interventionist, and chronological. This dataset contributes to research on digital ethnography, platform-conditioned epistemic failure, semantic austerity, observer-induced dismissal, and crisis communication.