Lessons from #McKinney: Social Media and the Interactive Construction of Police Brutality
Keywords:
#BlackLivesMatter, #McKinney, #SayHerName, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, African-American, Black women, Black girls, police brutality, use of force, Critical Race TheoryAbstract
Video evidence of police aggression and assault on civilians has previously been considered irrefutable evidence of misconduct; its circulation contributes to the creation of “celebrated cases” of police brutality that draw attention because of their high-profile nature. In June 2015, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter comments on a citizen-captured video of a police officer attempting to apprehend an African-American girl at a pool party in McKinney, Texas, trended as one incident in the #BlackLivesMatter movement’s canon of police mistreatment of African-American citizens. Through the lens of critical race theory, this qualitative content analysis triangulates data from three social media platforms to explore how users interpreted the incident. This study develops insights on how a “celebrated case” of police brutality is constructed by social media audiences. It makes a significant contribution to the literature by focusing on the often-overlooked experiences of African-American women and girls as victims of police brutality.
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Park, S., Holody, K. J., & Zhang, X. (2012). Race in media coverage of school shootings: A parallel application of framing theory and attribute agenda setting. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 89(3), 475-494.
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Scheufele, D. (1999). Framing as a theory of media effects. Journal of Communication, 49(1), 103-122. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.1999.tb02784
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Weitzer, R., & Tuch, S. A. (2004). Race and perceptions of police misconduct. Social Problems, 51(3), 305-325.
Anderson, M., & Caumont, A. (2014, September 24). How social media is reshaping news. Retrieved from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/24/how-social-media-is-reshaping-news/
Baker, A., Goodman, J. D., & Mueller, B. (2015, June 13). Beyond the chokehold: The path to Eric Garner's Death. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/nyregion/eric-garner-police-chokehold-staten-island.html?_r=0
Barthel, M., Shearer, E., Gottfried, J., & Mitchell, A. (2015, July 14). The evolving role of news on Twitter and Facebook. Retrieved from http://www.journalism.org/2015/07/14/the-evolving-role-of-news-on-twitter-and-facebook/
Beauboeuf-Lafontant, T. (2002). A womanist experience of caring: Understanding the pedagogy of exemplary Black women teachers. The Urban Review, 34, 71-86.
Berger, T. L. & Luckman, P. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Garden City: Anchor Books.
Borah, P. (2011). Conceptual issues in framing theory: A systematic examination of a decade’s literature. Journal of Communication, 61(2), 246-263. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01539.x
Brooks, B. (2015, June 6). Cops crash pool party (ORIGINAL) [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R46-XTqXkzE
Chermak, S., McGarrell, E., & Gruenewald, J. (2006). Media coverage of police misconduct and attitudes toward police. Policing, 29(2), 261-281.
Chong, D., & Druckman, J. N. (2007a). Framing theory. Annual Review of Political Science, 10(1), 103-126. doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.10.072805.103054
Chong, D., & Druckman, J. N. (2007b). A theory of framing and opinion formation in competitive elite environments. Journal of Communication, 57(1), 99-118. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2006.00331.
Cohen, S. (1973). Folk devils and moral panics the creation of the Mods and Rockers. St. Albans: Paladin.
Collins, P. H. (2000). Black Feminist Thought. New York, New York: Routledge.
Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (2008) Grounded theory methodology: An Overview. Handbook of Qualitative Research, N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, 1994, pp. 273-285.
Crenshaw, K. W. (1995). Critical race theory: The key writings that formed the movement. New York, New York: The New Press.
Crenshaw, K. W., Ocen, P., & Nanda, J. (2015). Black Girls Matter: Pushed out, overpoliced and underprotected. African-American Policy Forum. Retrieved from www.aapf.org on March 15, 2016.
Crenshaw, K. W., Ritchie, A., Anspach, R., Gilmer, R., & Harris, L. (2015). Say her name: Resisting police brutality against Black women. African-American Policy Forum. Retrieved from: www.aapf.org on January 23, 2016.
Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2001). Critical race theory: An introduction. New York, New York: New York University Press.
Dixon, T. L., & Linz, D. G. (2000). Overrepresentation and underrepresentation of African Americans and Latinos as lawbreakers on television news. Journal of Communication, 50(2), 131-154.
Feagin, J. R. (2013). The White racial frame: Centuries of racial framing and counter-framing. (2nd Ed.) New York, NY: Routledge.
Flyvbjerg, B. (2006) Five misunderstandings about case-study research. Qualitative Inquiry, 12(2), 219-245. DOI: 10.1177/1077800405284363
Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline & punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Random House.
Freelon, D., McIlwain, C., & Clark, M. (2016). Beyond the hashtags: #Ferguson, #BlackLivesMatter, and the online struggle for offline justice. Center for Media & Social Impact, American University. Retrieved from: http://www.cmsimpact.org/blmreport
Garza, A. (2014, October 7). A herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Retrieved from http://www.thefeministwire.com/2014/10/blacklivesmatter-2/
Goffman, E. (1986). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Boston, Massachusetts: Northeastern University Press.
Goodwin, C. (1994). Professional Vision. American Anthropologist 96 (3): 606–33.
Gordon, J., & Patterson, J. A. (2013). Response to Tracy’s Under the “Big Tent”: Establishing universal criteria for evaluating qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 19(9) 689- 695. DOI: 10.1177/1077800413500934
Gruenewald, J., Pizarro, J., & Chermak, S. M. (2009). Race, gender and the newsworthiness of homicide victims. Journal of Criminal Justice, 37, 262–272
Guynn, J. (2015, August 4). Black lawmakers call for more diversity in Silicon Valley. USA Today. Retrieved from: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/08/03/congressional-black-caucus-silicon-valley-tech-diversity/31080247/
Hall, S. (1973). Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse. Birmingham, England: Centre for Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham.
Harring, S. L. (2000). The Diallo Verdict: Another “Tragic Accident” in New York’s War on Street Crime? Social Justice, 27(1).
Hesse-Biber, S. N., & Leavy, P. (2011). The practice of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications Inc.
Holton, A., Coddington, M., Lewis, S., & Gil de Zúñiga, H. (2015). Reciprocity and the News: The Role of Personal and Social Media Reciprocity in News Creation and Consumption. International Journal of Communication, 9, 2526–2547
Jackson, S. J. & Foucault Welles, B. (2016). #Ferguson is everywhere: initiators in emerging counterpublic networks, Information, Communication & Society, 19(3), 397-418, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2015.1106571
Kerner Commission Report Citation: United States Kerner Commission. (1968). Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Washington, D.C.: United States, Kerner Commission.
Lawrence, R. (2000). The politics of force. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Lee, E. J. (2012). That's not the way it is: How user-generated comments on the news affect perceived media bias. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 18(1), 32-45.
Millner, S., & Larsen, E. (2002). 41 Shots. Public Culture, 14(2), 305-310.
National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. (1968, February 29). National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (The Kerner Report), 1967. Retrieved from http://www.blackpast.org/primary/national-advisory-commission-civil-disorders-kerner-report-1967
Östman, J. (2012). Information, expression, participation: How involvement in user generated content relates to democratic engagement among young people. New Media and Society, 4, 1004–1021.
Park, S., Holody, K. J., & Zhang, X. (2012). Race in media coverage of school shootings: A parallel application of framing theory and attribute agenda setting. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 89(3), 475-494.
Rowe, I. (2015). Deliberation 2.0: Comparing the deliberative quality of online news user comments across platforms. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 59(4), 539–555 doi: 10.1080/08838151.2015.1093482
Ruggerio, T. (2000). Uses and gratifications theory in the 21st century. Mass Communication & Society, 3(1), 3-37.
Ryan, C., Carragee, K. M., & Meinhofer, W. (2001). Theory into practice: Framing, the news media, and collective action. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 45(1), 175-182. doi:10.1207/s15506878jobem4501_11
Saldaña, J. (2013). The coding manual for qualitative researchers (2nd Ed.). Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
Scheufele, D. (1999). Framing as a theory of media effects. Journal of Communication, 49(1), 103-122. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.1999.tb02784
Small, T. (2011). What the hashtag?. Information, Communication & Society, 14(6), 872-895.
Springer, N., Englemann, I., & Pfaffinger, C. (2015). User comments: Motives and inhibitors to write or read. Information, Communication & Society, 18(7), 798-815. DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2014.997268
Stuart, F. (2011). Constructing police abuse after Rodney King: How Skid Row residents and the Los Angeles Police Department contest video evidence. Law & Social Inquiry, 36(2), 327–353.
Taylor, K-Y. (2016). From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.
Towns, A. R. (2016). Geographies of pain: #SayHerName and the fear of black women’s mobility. Women’s Studies in Communication, 39(2), 122-126. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/07491409.2016.1176807
Van der Haaak, B., Parks, M., & Castells, M. (2012). The future of journalism: Networked journalism. International Journal of Communication, 6, 2923-2938.
Weitzer, R. (2002). Incidents of police misconduct and public opinion. Journal of Criminal Justice, 30(5), 397-408
Weitzer, R., & Tuch, S. A. (2004). Race and perceptions of police misconduct. Social Problems, 51(3), 305-325.
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