WHEN BLACK MOVEMENTS MATTER: EFFECTS OF THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT ON LOCAL NEWSPAPER ATTENTION TO BLACK VICTIMS OF LETHAL POLICING Todd Jiajin Lu A thesis submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences. Chapel Hill 2020 Approved by: Neal Caren Kenneth (Andy) Andrews Mosi Ifatunji Deen Freelon © 2020 Todd Jiajin Lu ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Todd Lu: When Black Movements Matter: Effects of the Black Lives Matter Movement on Local Newspaper Attention to Black Victims of Lethal Policing (Under the direction of Neal Caren) Scholars of mass media and racism highlight racial stereotypes and legitimation of racist discourse in coverage of minority communities. However, the Black Lives Matter movement drew widespread media attention to high profile cases of police brutality against Black civilians and racist policing practices in the United States. Using a unique dataset of media coverage of 501 Black victims killed by US law enforcement between 2014 and 2016 in over two hundred local newspapers, this paper tests four main movement pathways—resource mobilization, frame resonance, political process theory, and social media activism—that explain why some Black victims killed by police received more local newspaper attention than others. This paper finds support for resource mobilization and frame resonance theories while no support for political process theory and social media activism. Black victims of lethal policing were more likely to receive local newspaper coverage when they were unarmed, where a local racial justice organization was present, and where local Black Lives Matter protests were present. Furthermore, the effect of protest was mediated through successful frame alignment with an injustice frame rather than a criminality frame. Local protests only mattered for unarmed Black victims and did not matter for armed Black victims. Implications for scholarship of mass media, race/ethnicity, and social movements are discussed. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my co-advisors, Neal Caren and Andy Andrews, for their insightful feedback and continued support throughout my thesis writing process. I would also like to thank Mosi Ifatunji for his guidance in centering scholarship of race and ethnicity into my research program and Deen Freelon for his methodological expertise in social media and computational analyses. I would also like to thank members of the Culture and Politics Workshop and the Race Workshop at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Furthermore, this paper would also have not seen the light of day without the personal support and mentorship from my early mentors at the University of California in Los Angeles: Edward Walker, Zsuzsa Berend, and Ashley Gromis. Finally, I would like to thank my family for helping me to navigate this intellectual marathon of graduate school. To my immigrant parents Zhuanmei Wang and Lushan Lu (known to me as Mom and Dad), thank you for your unconditional support in my pursuit of academia. To my siblings Lisa and Michael, thank you for making our journey in life much more bearable with your sharp wits and inquisitive minds. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES.............................................................................................. vi INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND ................................................................................................ 6 Mass Media and Racism ............................................................................................................. 6 Black-Led Movements in the Making of Media Attention ......................................................... 7 The Case of Black Lives Matter .................................................................................................. 9 Movement Pathways to Media Attention .................................................................................. 12 Resource Mobilization, Injustice Frames, and the Efficacy of Protest ................................. 12 Alternative Explanations ....................................................................................................... 16 METHODS AND DATA ............................................................................................................. 19 Dependent Variable ................................................................................................................... 21 Independent Variables ............................................................................................................... 22 Resource Mobilization ........................................................................................................... 22 Frame Resonance and Victim-Level Characteristics ............................................................. 23 Political Process Theory ........................................................................................................ 24 Social Media Activism .......................................................................................................... 25 Controls ................................................................................................................................. 27 RESULTS ..................................................................................................................................... 29 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION .......................................................................................... 33 TABLES AND FIGURES ............................................................................................................ 40 APPENDIX A: Granger Causality Test ........................................................................................ 48 APPENDIX B: List of Top Ten Nielsen’s Designated Media Area by N Newspapers ............... 49 APPENDIX C: List of Top Ten Newspapers ............................................................................... 50 APPENDIX D: Negative Binomial Regression ............................................................................ 51 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................. 54 v LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1: Local Newspaper Coverage of Black Victims (Two Weeks after Death): One Year Before and After Ferguson….……………………………………..………… 40 Table 2: Descriptive Statistics of Victim-Day Variables……………………………………….. 41 Table 3: Descriptive Statistics of Black Victims…………………………………………….…. 42 Table 4: Correlation Matrix…………………………………………………………………….. 43 Table 5: Logistic Regression: Effects on Local Newspaper Coverage of Black Victims……… 44 Figure 1: Interaction of Victim Armed Status on Effect of Protest…………………………….. 47 vi INTRODUCTION Policing of Black communities in the US has in recent years received widespread national scrutiny from protests around high profile cases of police killings of Black Americans. While Black Americans represent only around 12% of the US population according to the 2010 Census (Humes et al. 2011), they represent around 27% of Americans killed by police between 2013 and 2016 (Mapping Police Violence 2016). Recent protests by the Black Lives Matter movement has drawn national attention to racial disparities in policing, but police brutality in Black communities is nothing new in the United States. In response to the 1960s urban riots, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, more commonly known as the “Kerner Commission.” The commission presented its report in 1968 and underlined the role of police brutality in generating urban uprisings: “The police are not merely a “spark” factor. To some Negroes, police have come to symbolize white power, white racism and white repression. And the fact is that many police do reflect and express these white attitudes. The atmosphere of hostility and cynicism is reinforced by a widespread belief among Negroes in the existence of police brutality and in a “double standard” of justice and protection-- one for Negroes and one for whites” (Kerner Commission 1968) Years after the 1960s, Black communities continued to resist following further cases of police brutality against Black men, most notably in protests and riots in Miami (1980), Los Angeles (1992), Cincinnati (2001), and Oakland (2009), among others. In this latest iteration, the Black Lives Matter movement generated sustained national public attention to Black people killed by police. Instead of isolated events, such killings became tied to a broader narrative of over- policing in Black communities and the systematic incarceration and destruction of Black lives. 1 Whereas the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag emerged initially with public outrage over the 2012 death of Black teenager Trayvon Martin, the movement garnered national news attention following the 2014 Ferguson uprising against the death of Black teenager Michael Brown by white police officer Darren Wilson. In subsequent mobilizations, the movement challenged the color-blind context of the US under the first Black President as it directly brought forward to the national public images and videos of police violence against Black Americans.