The Roll Up: December 9, 2025 

TL;DR: States are approaching the deadlines to lock in their congressional district maps for the midterm elections next year. Pressure from the White House to add more Republican districts has Indiana on the verge of wiping out all its Democratic districts. This political gamesmanship has the potential to drastically alter the outcome of the 2026 midterms, but social media has hardly taken notice over the past week, obsessed instead with the possible purchase of Warner Bros Discovery by Netflix, as well as a last-minute hostile bid from Paramount. Here's what we know:

Indiana's GOP-led House of Representatives ended the week passing a new congressional district map for the state that eliminates the two districts Democrats typically win now in favor of all nine districts leaning Republican. The outlook for passage of the new maps is cloudy as the state's Senate took up the measure this week with some defection among party ranks. Other states are looking on to possibly make changes in their own congressional maps, including neighboring Illinois which could fight back by eliminating all its Republican-leaning districts.

While an issue this partisan and divided happening in red states at the demand of President Donald Trump would seem to be something social media would love to dive into and fight, redistricting has taken a distant back seat to talks about who will be the new owners of Warner Bros Discovery. After weeks of talk about Paramount buying the brand, Netflix swooped in late last week and announced it had a deal to buy WBD for about $83 billion. But yesterday, Paramount was back, saying it would offer a hostile takeover bid of $108 billion directly to shareholders.

Social media users, seemingly concerned with what would happen to some of their favorite entertainment sources, made this one of the top trending topics of the past week. Rolli IQ analysis shows that, in terms of sheer volume of mentions and engagement, it's not even close, with traffic about redistricting dwarfed by talk about Netflix and HBO. First up, a look at the volume and type of traffic the gerrymandering fight was getting.

Rolli IQ Sentiment Summary for gerrymandering and redistricting, Dec. 1-8, 2025

Despite several events to drive posts, including the moves in Indiana and the courts approving the Texas redistricting that started this all, mentions and engagement are relatively low, not even breaking one million engagements throughout the week.

Typical posts that were getting attention were attempts by each side to try to point fingers at the other party for being the side that gerrymanders more. One of the most shared was this post by GOP Tennessee congressman Tim Burchett, which brought ridicule from the left for his claiming states like Vermont and Delaware are gerrymandered, even though they have only one congressional district each.

Compare those numbers and comments to what social media delivered about the pending sale of Warner Bros Discovery. Rolli IQ shows mentions are up more than 22 times the level of the gerrymandering posts, with engagement up nearly four times. Interestingly, half of that engagement is neutral, discussing the merits of various suitors to buy WBD, but not taking a positive or negative position on the possible deals. 

Rolli IQ Sentiment Summary for Warner Bros Discovery sale, Dec. 1-8, 2025

The largely neutral nature of posts about the merger doesn't mean their weren't strong feelings on social media this past week. Looking just at posts about Netflix on social media, not limited to the merger and thus including posts about programming and costs, negative posts run three times as common as positive posts.

Rolli IQ AI Sentiment Summary for "Netflix" Dec. 1-8, 2025

Rolli IQ analysis shows it's clear social media users have a love-hate relationship with Netflix. Users took the streaming giant to task for its monthly pricing, for what it has done to TV programming and what it means for the future of theatrical cinema.

Interestingly, one astute user noted what Rolli IQ analysis is showing this week--that while social media was caught up in the drama of what would happen to its favorite streaming platforms, real news that affects real people was going largely unnoticed.

The bottom line is that the analysis using Rolli IQ to look at online posts about the possible Netflix takeover or Warner Bros Discovery shows this entertainment/business news far outshadowed the most important political stories happening last week.