Black Lives Matter discourse on US social media during COVID: polarised
positions enacted in a new event
- URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2009.03619v1
- Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2020 09:56:16 GMT
- Title: Black Lives Matter discourse on US social media during COVID: polarised
positions enacted in a new event
- Authors: Gillian Bolsover
- Abstract summary: The largest protests in US history occurred in late May and early June 2020, following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
The protests were notable not only for their size but also that they occurred at a time the US was still struggling to control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Social media data suggest that this was not the case, with discussion of the BLM movement replacing discussion of COVID on US social media.
- Score: 0.0
- License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
- Abstract: Black Lives Matter has been a major force for social change in the US since
2014, with social media playing a core role in the development and
proliferation of the movement. The largest protests in US history occurred in
late May and early June 2020, following the death of George Floyd at the hands
of Minneapolis police. This incident reignited widespread support for the BLM
movement. The protests were notable not only for their size but also that they
occurred at a time the US was still struggling to control the spread of the
COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 20,000 new cases per day. With protest
conditions and police crowd control tactics exacerbating disease spread and
with COVID disproportionately affecting minority populations, it was
hypothesised that participation in and support for the protests would involve a
balancing act between the risks of systemic racism and of disease spread.
However, social media data suggest that this was not the case, with discussion
of the BLM movement replacing discussion of COVID on US social media. Neither
supporters or opposers of the BLM movement or protest action mentioned COVID as
a factor. Framings of the movement by BLM supporters largely replicated those
of earlier studies, with new frames emerging surrounding the opposition the
movement has received from racism, police militarisation and President Donald
Trump. Discourse evidenced worrying levels of polarisation, hate, incivility
and conspiracy content and bore many similarities to previously studied COVID
discourse. This suggests that George Floyd's death, as yet another example of
an African American man killed by US police, was largely seen through
established, polarised identity positions that made reactions to the incident
and resulting protest largely a foregone conclusion, established and
articulated without reference to the ongoing pandemic.
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