Black Protests in the United States, 1994 to 2010

Oliver, Pamela; Lim, Chaeyoon; Matthews, Morgan; Hanna, Alex

doi:10.15195/v9.a12

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 88 publications

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Section: Black Newspaperssupporting

confidence: 78%

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Comparing Coverage of Black Protests in Mainstream Newswires and Black Newspapers

Oliver,

Lim,

Milewski

et al. 2024

Preprint

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This working paper compares mainstream newswires and Black newspapers in their coverage of Black protest events 1994-2010 with an emphasis on the differences between sources in attention to different kinds of issues. Perceptions of what Black collection is “about” vary by source. There is low overlap between sources. Even though many more events were identified in Black newspapers than newswires and the focus is on Black protest events, 61% of the events identified in the newswires were not mentioned in the Black newspapers. The large majority (70%) of events were reported only once in one news source. Our focus is not on overall comprehensiveness, but on selection and attention: what issues and event types are different sources most interested in. Besides comparing newswires to Black newspapers, we also compare Black newspaper coverage of events in the newspaper’s state to coverage of events elsewhere. All source types gave significant attention to criminal legal issues, especially issues of police violence. All source types give more coverage to larger events, to events that are parts of larger episodes of contention, to events involving more police action, and to events spanning multiple days. Newswires and non-local Black newspaper coverage gives more attention to violent events and to Black history and solidarity events. White-centric newswires give more attention to White-centric issues (affirmative action, Confederate symbols, White supremacist groups) and to inter-group violence involving Black people. Local Black newspaper coverage gives much more attention to issues with a state or local focus and to worker issues. Non-local Black newspaper coverage gives more attention to Black involvement in national issues. We discuss the importance of these differences for the differing collective memories of Black and White Americans and the importance of incorporating the Black gaze into research on Black movements in the US.

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Section: Black Newspaperssupporting

confidence: 78%

“…This report is based on 1,286 newswire and 4,670 Black newspaper articles published between 1994 and 2010. Our initial comparisons are guided by our descriptive report on the Black movement as it appeared in the newswires (Oliver et al 2022) and by the impressions we formed as we coded Black newspaper articles.…”

Section: Methods Of Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing Coverage of Black Protests in Mainstream Newswires and Black Newspapers

Oliver,

Lim,

Milewski

et al. 2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Attending to the specificity of the media sources deepens the analysis. For example, in an empirical report from our data (Oliver et al 2022), we emphasize that our mainstream newswire sources embody the "White gaze" in what they deem important to cover about the Black movement. We have data collection ongoing to compare the newswires to Black newspapers in how they portray the Black movement.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing Relational and Verifiable Protest Event Data: Four Challenges and Some Solutions*

Oliver¹,

Hanna²,

Lim³

2023

Mobilization: An International Quarterly

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We call for a relational approach to constructing protest event data from news sources to provide tools for detecting and correcting errors and for capturing the relations among events and between events and the texts describing them. We address two problems with most protest event datasets: (1) inconsistencies and errors in identifying events and (2) disconnect between data structures and what is known about how protests and media accounts of protests are produced. Relational data structures can capture the theoretically important structuring of events into campaigns and episodes and media attention cascades and cycles. Relational data structures support richer theorizing about the interplay of protests and their representations in news media discourses. We present preliminary illustrative data about Black protests from these new procedures to demonstrate the value of this approach.

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“…Our analysis of newswire stories treats them as White dominant sources and considers them as evidence of the White gaze, of what was interesting to White media elites. We have found that these sources disproportionately focused on incidents of Black resistance to police violence and to incidents involving perceived threats of Black violence (Oliver et al 2022) Christian Davenport (2010) examined the coverage of the Oakland Black Panthers in five different newspapers, finding that the papers not only report different events, they reported different sequences of events and constructed different narratives. The event sequencing in mainstream newspapers declared that Black Panthers engaged in violence and then were brought under control by the authorities, while the event sequencing in the Black Panther newspaper declared that police attacked Black Panthers and the Panthers continued to resist despite repression.…”

Section: Black Newspapersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The 11% of articles that have not yet been reviews could obviously change some of the results, so we focus on major patterns that are unlikely to change as the rest of the data come in. Our initial comparisons are guided by our descriptive report on the Black movement as it appeared in the 6/10/2022 9 of 39 newswires (Oliver et al 2022). This paper is based on the events occurring between 1994 and 2010 identified in 1,208 newswire articles and 3,975 Black newspaper articles (5,183 total articles) published between 1994 and 2010 with a total of 10,848 article-event pairs.…”

Section: Preliminary Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing Coverage of Black Protests in Mainstream Newswires and Black Newspapers

Oliver¹,

Lim²

2022

Preprint

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This working paper prepared for the 2022 Mobilization Conference, San Diego California, June 25, 2022 presents preliminary results from an ongoing project compiling data on Black protest events in the US in the 1990s and 2000s from Black newspapers and comparing it with previously-collected data from mainstream (White) newswires. We have processed 89% of the Black newspaper articles for 1994-2010, the years that overlap with the newswires. We distinguish between Black newspaper coverage of local events that occurred in the same state where the newspaper is published and Black newspaper coverage of nonlocal events. Some broad patterns can be seen. (1) Most events are mentioned only once and there is low overlap among news sources: Of all identified events, only 6% appeared in both newswires and Black newspapers. Of events mentioned in newswires, 21% were mentioned in a Black newspaper. Of events given nonlocal Black newspaper coverage, 15% were covered by newswires, while of events given local Black newspaper coverage, 5% were covered by newswires. (2) All sources give high prominence to issues of police and police violence, but this emphasis is even stronger in the newswires than Black newspapers. All source types also give more emphasis to police and police violence for events in New York than for events elsewhere. (3) Events involving workers and unions receive a great deal of local coverage in Black newspapers, but much less coverage in newswires or non-local Black newspapers. (4) There was a marked drop-off in newswire and non-local Black newspaper and newswire coverage after the 9/11 terror attacks, but not in local Black newspaper coverage of events outside New York. We provide exploratory comparative information on the coverage of other issues and major events. Note: Parts of the introduction to this working paper are drawn from our 2022 article "Black Protests in the United States, 1994-2010." Sociological Science 9(May): 275-312. There are also overlaps in the discussion of methods between that paper and this working paper.

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Black Protests in the United States, 1994 to 2010

Cited by 9 publications

References 88 publications

Comparing Coverage of Black Protests in Mainstream Newswires and Black Newspapers

Comparing Coverage of Black Protests in Mainstream Newswires and Black Newspapers

Constructing Relational and Verifiable Protest Event Data: Four Challenges and Some Solutions*

Comparing Coverage of Black Protests in Mainstream Newswires and Black Newspapers

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