Do Black Lives Matter?

Abstract

This study employs content analysis to examine how the New York Times and St. Louis Post-Dispatch framed “Black Lives Matter” protests in the aftermath of the shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. The researchers examine all New York Times and St. Louis Post-Dispatch articles dealing centrally with the Michel Brown protests during three separate time periods corresponding to heavy protest activity. The coding scheme measured dominant frame direction, article length, sourcing, and mention of protester crimes. Contrary to expectations, the papers provided overwhelmingly sympathetic coverage of “Black Lives Matter” protests. In describing the protests, both newspapers were much more likely to employ a “positive” frame suggesting peacefulness and order than a “negative” frame suggesting lawlessness and deviance. Neither newspaper over-emphasized protester-perpetrated crimes, with both papers making relatively infrequent mention of looting, arson, assault, and gunfire, respectively. Importantly, both newspapers directly quoted protesters much more often than they quoted police officers and other government officials.

KEYWORDS:

• Black Lives Matter
• content analysis
• framing
• Michael Brown
• New York Times
• protests
• race

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank the Department of Communications at the University of North Alabama for providing a grant used to complete this project. The authors would also like to thank their undergraduate research assistants, Kristen Goode and Zach Swiatocha.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The Codebook is published at http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~oliver/PROTESTS/ArticleCopies/codebook2000.htm.

2. For reasons of manageability and feasibility, indirect quotes were not measured as part of this study. Although it is possible that the inclusion of indirect quotes (i.e. paraphrased source remarks) could have added an additional dimension to the relationship between source voice and framing, it is unlikely that their inclusion here would have meaningfully altered the findings on voice. As noted in the findings, there was a nearly four to one disparity (per article) in protesters/sympathizers and police direct quotes. This pattern would likely have have been borne out in an analysis of indirect quotes—direct quotes and indirect quotes typically go hand in hand. It is highly unlikely that reporters would show a propensity to indirectly quote one of the studied source groups and not directly quote them, or vice versa.