Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
![Digital Commons Network](http://assets.bepress.com/20200205/img/dcn/DCsunburst.png)
Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
#Iftheygunnedmedown: A Narrative Analysis Of News Media Coverage, Zoe Deal
#Iftheygunnedmedown: A Narrative Analysis Of News Media Coverage, Zoe Deal
Occam's Razor
This study examines the 2014 media coverage of #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, an early example of hashtag activism driven by the social media sub-community Black Twitter in response to the murder of a Black teenager, Michael Brown, Jr., by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Reacting to national reporting on the event, #IfTheyGunnedMeDown criticized the mainstream media for promoting racially prejudiced representations of Brown and utilized this example to critique two historical patterns in American news coverage: the pattern of stereotyping Black Americans as violent to justify police brutality and the pattern of representing journalism informed by a hegemonically white perspective …