Policing the narrative A critical discourse analysis of reporting on the #BlackLivesMatter social media movement
By Alfred J. Cotton III and Jeffrey Layne Blevins | Protests emerged worldwide during the summer of 2020 in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020, who was murdered two months after the Louisville Metro Police Department killed Breonna Taylor. The #BlackLivesMatter hashtag has trended on social media and reignited a nation-wide social justice movement, all during a global pandemic. Our study is a critical discourse analysis on how news media quote, source, identify and misidentify members of the Black Lives Matter movement as it took shape on social media during June 2020, as reported in four US newspapers.