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The rise of the modern Black Lives Matter movement can be traced back to two key events, the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin and the 2014 death of Michael Brown. Research routinely showed that mainstream media’s narrative choices marginalize and delegitimize protesters and their causes, a pattern known as the protest paradigm. This study provides a lo...
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... Most quantitative media effects studies on Black activism focus on social media protest, media framing, and how different framing/reporting approaches influence non-Black people's attitudes toward Black issues and the Black community as well as media engagement (e.g., Brown & Mourão, 2021). Also, these important existing studies predominantly take the approaches of quantitative content analysis (e.g., Brown et al., 2019;Elmasry & el-Nawawy, 2017) or experimental design (e.g., Brown & Mourão, 2021). To fill these research gaps, the present study takes a survey approach to examine how Black people's use of Instagram and its various content format features might influence their Black activism orientation. ...
During the civil unrest emphasizing the Black Lives Matter movement amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Instagram was widely adopted by activists, journalists, and the general audience to disseminate and gather information about critical social issues and protests. Through a survey sampling Black Instagram users ( N = 402), this study examined how Black people’s use of Instagram and its specific features—Instagram Carousel, Instagram Live, Instagram Story, standard post, and comment section—influenced their Black activism orientation, in-app activism engagement, and Black racial identity ideology. The results indicated that, along with Instagram use, Instagram network politicalness, diversity, and authenticity are also important predictors.
... Media are often considered to play an important role in the social amplification of risk (Kilgo et al., 2019), and this study reveals that OCDs can be used strategically by the public to engage in risk response actions because of the technology's media logic, such as the participatory information release, constructive issue-oriented communication, and controlled information credibility. This information-sharing network was based on practical contributions rather than cultural capital or power confrontation and led to coordination mechanisms that emphasized participation, reciprocity, and reputation. ...
Online collaborative documents (OCDs) have previously been the focus of office efficiency, but today they can be a special approach to risk response in public health and natural disaster situations. Studying the mediatization of the risk response by OCDs can help us understand the interaction between digital technologies, online users, and emotions in a post-pandemic world. A mixed-method design involving online ethnography and focus groups was employed to discuss OCD performance during the 2021 Henan flood. The empirical results indicate that four dimensions of technological affordances (i.e., editability, accessibility, activability, and normability) connected the functional features of the digital platform with users’ potential actions. Risk communication as a contextual element of media exposure and discursive practice provided a participatory and constructive framework for users’ gathering. Therefore, affective ties including anxiety, fear, and encouragement supported the affective publics’ mass deliberation and social mobilization. These findings provide an institutional lens for mediatization research to view OCD as media logic and reveal some methods that can be referred to for risk management and humanistic concerns globally.
... Unlike other human rights protests that have been covered in the mainstream press, these activities were not exaggerated or overemphasized in Instagram media posts. Additionally, the relatively low numbers of emphasis riot framing features indicate that the Women's March was not subject to the anticipation or expectations for violence despite its multisite location and often-massive protest sizes-a delegitimizing feature more prevalent in coverage of human rights protests like the peaceful protest efforts that have followed unjust killings of Black men, women, and children (Kilgo, Mourão, & Sylvie, 2019). ...
This research explores representation of the massive but peaceful demonstrations for
women’s rights in 2017 on Instagram. Employing the framework provided by the protest
paradigm in a content analysis of Instagram posts, results indicate coverage was most
often framed with positive emotional behaviors and movement demands and agendas, by
mainstream media producers, influencers, and other news curators on the site. Findings
indicate media account
... In addition, BLM "relies primarily on direct action and disruptive tactics, and most of its activists disdain mainstream politics" (Milkman, 2017: 23). Social media have been central to spreading its story of police violence against Black people and circulating the narratives of Black activists and their allies, sidestepping mainstream news media and their frequently delegitimizing narratives (Freelon et al., 2016;Kilgo et al., 2019). Foust and Hoyt (2018) have identified three research traditions in the scholarship on social media and social movements. ...
This study examines the global diffusion of Black Lives Matter as digitally networked connective action. Combining social network analysis with qualitative textual analysis, we show that BLM was hybridized in different ways to give voice to local struggles for social justice in Brazil, India, and Japan. However, BLM’s hybridization stirred right-wing backlash within these countries that not only targeted local movements but BLM too. Theoretically, we argue that both transnational contiguities and intra-cultural tensions shape the construction of meanings—or ‘action frames’—as connective action crosses cultural borders. Resonant frames, which are in harmony with the values of the movement, amplify features of the global movement that resonate with local concerns or hybridize it with a local struggle. Reactionary frames, which are hostile to movement values, may also target the global movement or its hybridization. We theorize the different roles of global and local crowd-enabled elites in transnational connective action.
... At the time, this coverage fueled divided public opinion about Black people's right to protest, though today's sentiment about these protests is more positive, a product of sanitized memories of the era (Morgan 2006). However, public opinion about current and ongoing Black civil rights protests is again divided (Updegrove et al. 2018), and the press continues to marginalize these movements (Kilgo et al. 2018b). ...
... Notably, this category of protest was mostly comprised of stories about the Women's March and had a considerable amount of legitimizing coverage. Despite it being one of the largest transnational mobilization efforts in history, stories did not even mention the potential for confrontation, typically presented through coverage that accentuates police preparation for mass mobilizations, as well as calls to nonviolence (Kilgo et al. 2018b). ...
... Most coverage failed to include a debate frame, excluding protesters' voices and demands and thereby ignoring the underlying racial injustice that led to the protests in the first place. This delegitimizing coverage reinforces suggestions that critiques of institutional racism or contemporary movements to remedy and prevent racial injustice will upset the status quo, and coverage of these efforts will delegitimize them, if they are covered at all (Kilgo et al. 2018b;Smith et al. 2001). This conclusion is amplified by the examination of the Dakota Pipeline protest coverage. ...
This content analysis expands protest paradigm research, examining the relationship between Facebook user engagement and newspaper protest coverage. Stories not posted to social media housed more negative frames that delegitimized protesters. For select protests, Facebook users engaged more with articles with legitimizing content, suggesting users, like journalists, follow a paradigm that legitimizes some protests and marginalizes others. We discuss these implications and consider how engagement plays a role in a protest’s ability to gain visibility and public support. Findings show the media and the public marginalize movements within a framework that rebuilds a hierarchy of social struggle on social media.
... Meanwhile, in another sector of journalism research, scholars have also been analyzed coverage of protests of police violence. Like crime coverage, protest coverage is also dominated by official narratives that generally demonize or delegitimize their subject (e.g., Brown, Mourão, & Sylvie, 2019). ...
Analyzing news coverage of the killing of Stephon Clark in 2018, this research contributes to the further theorization of the hierarchy of social struggle by (1) confirming the consistent use of demonizing and delegitimizing framing devices to describe Black human rights protest, and (2) illustrating that the quality of the presentation of grievances and demands must also be considered when assessing the degree to which coverage can be legitimizing for a racial justice movement. In addition, findings show selective social media sharing amplified the limited coverage about police character but amplified sensational reports of injury.
... Recent overviews of existing scholarship have abstracted framing, language devices and sourcing patterns as the three main components of the protest paradigm (Kilgo et al., 2018;Kilgo, Mourao, & Sylvie, 2019;Weaver & Scacco, 2013). In this article, we focus on framing, because sourcing patterns are not reflected in user comments and do not offer fruitful grounds for comparison with news stories. ...
... Following the studies that have observed the interplay between violence and peacefulness (Harlow et al., 2017;Kilgo et al., 2018;Kilgo et al., 2019), we have defined a peacefulness frame, as the opposite to violent depictions of protests. The existence of the frame was noted by explicit descriptions of the protest as peaceful and nonviolent, through remarks that protesters did not cause any violence, or that there was no need for police to be on the streets. ...
This research examines the "protest paradigm" in the digital news environment of a politically polarized media system by considering relations between news and online readers' comments about the Serbian protest Against Dictatorship, which was held in 2017. Applying content analysis to news and comments from two news websites, our study indicates the need to account for opposing framing of the protest (violence/peacefulness, de/legitimizing and un/democratic) in a polarized environment. The results show that the distribution of opposing frames is guided by the media relations with the government. Online readers' comments generally enhance this polarized pattern of frame distribution, with the exception of the performance frame, which remains prolific in the media, but absent from readers' comments.
... The 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman and his subsequent acquittal arguably began the unveiling of the racial divide that still survives in the United States, a divide many believed no longer existed in this supposed post-racial society. While Zimmerman was Hispanic and a neighborhood watch member, the case began an international discussion about the utilization of force against minorities in the United States (Gabbidon & Greene, 2016;Kilgo, 2017;Kilgo, Mourao, & Sylvie, 2018). It forced many in the United States to question their sense of reality and recognize, often reluctantly, the world as they would like it to be, does not exist. ...
https://ccjls.scholasticahq.com/article/11130-cultivating-police-use-of-force-perceptions-through-cinema-maintaining-the-racial-divide
... At the time, this coverage fueled divided public opinion about Black people's right to protest, though today's sentiment about these protests is more positive, a product of sanitized memories of the era (Morgan 2006). However, public opinion about current and ongoing Black civil rights protests is again divided (Updegrove et al. 2018), and the press continues to marginalize these movements (Kilgo et al. 2018b). ...
... Notably, this category of protest was mostly comprised of stories about the Women's March and had a considerable amount of legitimizing coverage. Despite it being one of the largest transnational mobilization efforts in history, stories did not even mention the potential for confrontation, typically presented through coverage that accentuates police preparation for mass mobilizations, as well as calls to nonviolence (Kilgo et al. 2018b). ...
... Most coverage failed to include a debate frame, excluding protesters' voices and demands and thereby ignoring the underlying racial injustice that led to the protests in the first place. This delegitimizing coverage reinforces suggestions that critiques of institutional racism or contemporary movements to remedy and prevent racial injustice will upset the status quo, and coverage of these efforts will delegitimize them, if they are covered at all (Kilgo et al. 2018b;Smith et al. 2001). This conclusion is amplified by the examination of the Dakota Pipeline protest coverage. ...
News coverage is fundamental to a protest’s viability, but research suggests media negatively portray protests and protesters that challenge the status quo (a pattern known as the protest paradigm). This study questions the validity of those claims within the context of digital newspaper coverage, interrogating how topic and region shape coverage. Using a content analysis of coverage from sixteen newspapers in various U.S. market types and regions, this research examines framing and sourcing features in articles about protests. Results suggest media coverage of protests centered on racial issues (discrimination of Indigenous people and anti-Black racism) follows more of a delegitimizing pattern than stories about protests related to immigrants’ rights, health, and environment. A model to understand news coverage of protest based on a hierarchy of social struggle is proposed.
... They can't be doing what they're doing. Donald Trump (2016) Since the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012, the issue of unarmed citizens being killed or otherwise harmed by law enforcement officers has scarcely left the weekly, if not daily, news cycles (Gabbidon & Greene, 2016;Kilgo, 2017;Kilgo, Mourao, & Sylvie, 2018). Those incidents that have consumed the largest amount of media attention have been male officer dominated. ...
... The archetype for most television depictions of law enforcement officers is found in theatrically released films dating back to the early 1970s with films such as Dirty Harry (1971) (Murray, 2016;Rafter, 2000). Although George Zimmerman was a member of a neighborhood watch group, the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin arguably began the longest public discussion of use of force by law enforcement in U.S. history (Gabbidon & Greene, 2016;Kilgo, 2017;Kilgo et al., 2018). In this study we examine how police use of force was depicted in the core cop film genre leading up to the Trayvon Martin shooting in order to understand what patterns, if any, might have existed. ...
This first step cultivation analysis examines the quantity, temporal dynamics, and stance of municipal police officer use of force depictions based on the gender of the officer. The 112 theatrically released films that comprise the core cop film genre were systematically identified. Subsequently, a population of 468 police use of force scenes was identified to serve as the units of analysis for this study. Findings revealed male officer use of force scenes appeared across all 40 years of films. Female officer use of force scenes, however, were highly restricted to specific films, years, and often dwarfed by male scenes within films. Lone female officer use of force scenes saw their highest representation in the 1980s but declined in the 1990s and 2000s, becoming increasingly dependent on a male officer’s presence. Implications of such patterns are discussed as well as potential second step cultivation studies.
