TY - JOUR
T1 - A space for countering colorblind discourse
T2 - constructions of police-perpetrated homicides of African-American males
AU - Dawson, Akiv
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, © 2018 National Communication Association.
PY - 2018/5/27
Y1 - 2018/5/27
N2 - This qualitative study assesses how police-perpetrated homicides of African-American males are constructed in the public sphere. Similar studies on the discourse surrounding the topic have focused on newspaper articles as the discourse unit. In this article, I argue that the opinion-editorial (op-ed) pages of newspapers are a space for challenging colorblind frames invoked the discourse about police use of force that dominates in the print media. To demonstrate this point, I conducted an ethnographic content analysis of 168 op-eds from five different U.S. newspapers: Contra Costa Times, New York Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Salt Lake Tribune, and Washington Post. The op-eds focused on the police-perpetrated homicides of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice in 2014. The findings from this study indicate that the op-ed pages provide a unique opportunity for Black voices to be heard, as well as a space for dominant frames about police-perpetrated homicides to be challenged. Paradoxically, the results also impugn the sequestering of Black voices into the openly subjective spaces of print media.
AB - This qualitative study assesses how police-perpetrated homicides of African-American males are constructed in the public sphere. Similar studies on the discourse surrounding the topic have focused on newspaper articles as the discourse unit. In this article, I argue that the opinion-editorial (op-ed) pages of newspapers are a space for challenging colorblind frames invoked the discourse about police use of force that dominates in the print media. To demonstrate this point, I conducted an ethnographic content analysis of 168 op-eds from five different U.S. newspapers: Contra Costa Times, New York Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Salt Lake Tribune, and Washington Post. The op-eds focused on the police-perpetrated homicides of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice in 2014. The findings from this study indicate that the op-ed pages provide a unique opportunity for Black voices to be heard, as well as a space for dominant frames about police-perpetrated homicides to be challenged. Paradoxically, the results also impugn the sequestering of Black voices into the openly subjective spaces of print media.
KW - African-American males
KW - opinion-editorials
KW - Police
KW - qualitative
KW - race
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85042927069&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/15295036.2018.1436763
DO - 10.1080/15295036.2018.1436763
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85042927069
SN - 1529-5036
VL - 35
SP - 300
EP - 313
JO - Critical Studies in Media Communication
JF - Critical Studies in Media Communication
IS - 3
ER -