Alicia Jackson
Pronouns:
Research Mentor(s): Adi Saleem Bharat
Research Mentor School/College/Department: /
Program: Mellon
Session: Session 7 (4:40pm – 5:30pm)
Authors: Alex Warren, Alicia Jackson, Adi Saleem Bharat
Abstract
As scholars have noted, American media coverage of the Black community has often focused on negative stereotypes such as incarceration rates, absent fatherhood, and poverty, reducing this minority group to antagonistic qualities. Increased circulation of high-profile instances of police brutality, such as the beating of Rodney King (1991), and killings of Eric Garner (2014), Michael Brown (2014), Tamir Rice (2014), Philando Castile (2016), and Breonna Taylor (2020), has further brought this community to the center of news headlines, advancing this negative complex. Perhaps no case of police brutality has reached the amount of news coverage as the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. The case of his slaying, which resulted in the conviction of Officer Derek Chauvin for second-degree murder, became a watershed moment for much of the nation and the globe at large, spawning activist movements and forcing conversations about racial discrimination in both social and political settings. Much resistance was given by the political right, who at times downplayed the seriousness of the brutality, or gave excuses for Officer Chauvin’s actions. With this context, our study seeks to determine the impact of George Floyd’s murder on American right-wing news reporting relating to the Black community. In order to answer this question, our study draws on theoretical and methodological insights and approaches from Critical Discourse Analysis, Critical Race Theory, and postcolonial studies to examine news articles published in the months directly before and after May 2020.
