This content analysis examines media depiction of events in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting of the unarmed teenager Michael Brown by a police officer. Using images from the Twitter feeds of nine major media outlets in the month following the shooting, it identifies themes present in those images. Descriptive statistics reveal differences in the roles of people who appear to be White and those who appear to be Black. The two groups are rarely pictured together. The visual narrative presented on Twitter depicts two distinct sides. Police are consistently shown prepared for conflict, but rarely are protesters in images with police. The implications of these findings are explored through the theoretical viewpoint of agenda setting.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.