Victim or Villain? Racial/Ethnic Differences in News Portrayals of Individuals with Mental Illness Killed by Police

Frankham, Emma

doi:10.1080/00380253.2019.1593063

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Finally, almost none of the outlets used graphic images of Brown's body lying in the street. This was surprising to us given how much that image circulated on social media, the local outrage about the slow response to his death (Hill 2016), and research that shows that graphic images of police violence are more likely to be included in media accounts when the victim is Black (Frankham 2017). We…”

Section: Picturing Michael Brownmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Media coverage of policing (and more recently, police violence) has long been a critical site in the struggle over racial ideologies (Frankham 2017;Hattery and Smith 2017;Hughey 2015;Owusu-Bempah 2016;Ward 2018). Osagie K. Obasogie and Zachary Newman (2016), for example, find that mainstream journalists have traditionally deferred to the law enforcement perspective, criminalizing the victims of police violence (see also Araiza et al 2016;Stone and Socia 2019).…”

Section: Race and Racism In The News: Constructing Police Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

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Visualizing Injustice or Reifying Racism? Images in the Digital Media Coverage of the Killing of Michael Brown

Phelps

Hamilton

2021

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

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The explosion of Black Lives Matter protests in the mid-2010s rendered visible state violence against Black Americans, producing a barrage of images and videos of lethal police violence and the protests that followed. These images served as a powerful site of contestation about the meaning of race and racism in the United States for both movement supporters and critics. We examine these dynamics through the lens of media coverage of the pivotal 2014 killing of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson and the protests that followed in Ferguson, MO. Drawing from literatures on race, visuality, and media studies, we explore how media outlets pictured the killing of Michael Brown and the protests in Ferguson, either resisting or reproducing the white racial frame through the selection of images in their coverage. We analyze the images in digital media coverage across nine ideologically diverse media outlets in the month after Brown’s death and the month following the non-indictment of Officer Wilson. Across 1,303 articles, we show that most sites did not center images of violence against Brown, preferring instead images of Brown’s life and, more commonly, protesters and law enforcement. While we found few consistent differences in image categories preferred across outlets’ ideological profiles, the specific content and tone of these images starkly diverged, with liberal sites choosing humanizing images of Brown and protesters and conservative sites favoring criminalizing images. We conclude by considering the role media images play in mediating perceptions of race and racism.

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Section: Picturing Michael Brownmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Race and Racism In The News: Constructing Police Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

Visualizing Injustice or Reifying Racism? Images in the Digital Media Coverage of the Killing of Michael Brown

Phelps

Hamilton

2021

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

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“…A third core contribution of this article is to identify a new framing, “Dying on the Streets,” which has received less attention in recent work focused on the nexus of mental illness and violence (Frankham 2020; McGinty et al 2014). The frame accentuates concerns about homeless people articulated in the “Excessive De-institutionalization” frame and partly displaces the safety concerns about “Dangerous Brain Diseases.” As in discussions of the opioid epidemic, this frame “medicalizes” rather than “criminalizes” drug use and disruptive behavior (Netherland and Hansen 2017; Shachar et al 2020).…”

Section: Conclusion: Rewriting the Magna Cartamentioning

confidence: 99%

From the “Magna Carta” to “Dying in the Streets”: Media Framings of Mental Health Law in California

Barnard

2022

Society and Mental Health

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This article analyzes 575 newspaper articles across 53 years of reporting on California’s landmark 1967 Lanterman-Petris-Short (LPS) Act to examine framings of the challenges people with severe mental illness pose to the social order and shifting responses to them. The LPS Act restricted involuntary hospitalization which in the 1960s made it a “Magna Carta” that heralded a “mental health revolution” of voluntary, community-based care. Subsequently, coverage passed between four other framings that linked together different attributions of problems—like homelessness or suicide—with perceived flaws of the Act—such as encouraging the closure of hospitals or imposing barriers to forced treatment. Although previous research has focused on how the media amplifies fears of violence, this article shows how this framing is giving way to one focused on mentally ill people “dying in the streets” and the need for re-institutionalization to save them. By comparing media representations with other documentation from each period, this article demonstrates how these frames have continuously misattributed the consequences of complex policy and social changes to the granting of civil rights by the LPS Act.

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“…Fourth, negative, stereotypical elements about the victims’ lifestyles. Furthermore, a study that examined how individuals with mental illness who were killed by police were portrayed in the news revealed that mental illness is particularly emphasized in news reports about White people with mental illness, and less so in news reports about African American or Hispanic people with mental illness (Frankham, 2020).…”

Section: Portrayal Of Race In Crime Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultivation theory: The impact of crime media's portrayal of race on the desire to become a U.S. police officer

Pollock

Tapia

Sibila

2021

International Journal of Police Science & Management

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The death of George Floyd on 25 May 2020 again left people asking why U.S. police officers so commonly resort to the use of deadly force when interacting with Black individuals. The current article proposes that media, combined with cultivation theory and social cognition concepts may create implicit biases that are potential contributors to this problem. Police officers have a greater vulnerability to these biases because intake of crime-related media positively predicts their interest in selecting law enforcement as a career. Other predictors of an interest in working in law enforcement, and implications of these findings, are discussed.

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Victim or Villain? Racial/Ethnic Differences in News Portrayals of Individuals with Mental Illness Killed by Police

Cited by 5 publications

References 40 publications

Visualizing Injustice or Reifying Racism? Images in the Digital Media Coverage of the Killing of Michael Brown

Visualizing Injustice or Reifying Racism? Images in the Digital Media Coverage of the Killing of Michael Brown

From the “Magna Carta” to “Dying in the Streets”: Media Framings of Mental Health Law in California

Cultivation theory: The impact of crime media's portrayal of race on the desire to become a U.S. police officer

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