Social Construction of a Criminal Justice Issue (Analysis Paper) | Graded

Directions:

This assignment requires that you select an issue in Criminal Justice and Media and analyze it in terms of social construction through the issue’s depictions in the media. The content must be supported by valid academic research, and that research must be properly cited.

Focus on content, not creativity. Follow the rubric and present the concepts required. This is not, for instance, research on police brutality. This is, perhaps, research on the social construction of police brutality (or some other topic), and the product should reflect that. Chapter 2 will be a great resource.

Examples

• Depictions of law enforcement in entertainment media
• Social construction of crime and race
• Media treatment of white-collar crime
• Television news coverage of violent crime
• Social media depictions of police, courts/lawyers, or criminals

Parameters

• Must cite any outside sources used
• A minimum of 2,000 words
• Double-spaced, New Times Roman, 12-point type
• This assignment is worth up to 150 points
• Please note that you may not rewrite or resubmit a paper from a prior class. This will result in a grade of zero. All papers will be submitted to Turnitin.com. APA style and documentation is required. Up to 10 percent (15 points on this assignment) will be deducted from your work if you did not properly cite and document your source(s)
• Refer to An EasyGuide to APA Style, 2nd edition, for guidance on APA style and format
• Please review the paper rubric for details on how a paper is graded
• The paper is due no later than Sunday at 11:59 p.m.

Plagiarism

You are expected to write primarily in your own voice, using paraphrase, summary, and synthesis techniques when integrating information from class and outside sources. Use an author’s exact words only when the language is especially vivid, unique, or needed for technical accuracy. Failure to do so may result in charges of academic dishonesty.

Overusing an author’s exact words, such as including block quotations to meet word counts, may lead your readers to conclude that you lack appropriate comprehension of the subject matter or that you are neither an original thinker nor a skillful writer.

Rubric

Social Construction of a Criminal Justice Issue (Analysis Paper) RubricSocial Construction of a Criminal Justice Issue (Analysis Paper) RubricCriteriaRatingsPtsThis criterion is linked to a learning outcomeAnalysis50 PtsStrongConducts a thorough analysis of the chosen topic. Analyzes that topic through the social construction lens, focusing on the media depictions of the related issues.40 PtsAverageConducts a thorough analysis of the chosen topic. Analyzes the media’s depictions mostly through the lens of social construction.25 PtsBelow AverageConducts an analysis of the chosen topic, but lacks attention of the issue’s social construction.15 PtsWeakAnalysis is incomplete. Little to no attention is given to the issue’s social construction.50 pts
This criterion is linked to a learning outcomeOrganization30 PtsStrongPaper clearly lays out the topic and subtopics analyzed; it is strongly organized, with transitions linking all topics.25 PtsAverageTopics and subtopics are well organized and linked with clear transitions.20 PtsBelow AverageTopics and subtopics are linked but may be poorly organized; student attempts to provide transitions.15 PtsWeakNot logically organized and lacks transitions between sentences and paragraphs.30 pts
This criterion is linked to a learning outcomeReferences30 PtsStrongAt least half of sources are peer-reviewed and professional research. Extensive effort to locate scholarly work is apparent. At least eight sources are used. Current APA rules are followed.25 PtsAverageSources include peer-reviewed or other professional sources. Effort to locate scholarly work is apparent. At least seven sources are used. Current APA rules are followed.20 PtsBelow AverageSources are not peer-reviewed but are generally acceptable. Effort to locate scholarly work is apparent. At least five sources are used. Some APA errors may be present.15 PtsWeakSources are nonexistent or not considered scholarly in nature. Cited sources are not used in the body or are mismatched. Fewer than five sources are used. APA errors are present.30 pts
This criterion is linked to a learning outcomeWord Count20 PtsStrongMinimum of 2,000 words, but not exceeding 3,000 words.15 PtsAverageLess than 2,000 words, but more than 1,600 words.10 PtsBelow AverageLess than 1,600 words.5 PtsWeakLess than 1,400 words.20 pts
This criterion is linked to a learning outcomeGrammar/Formatting20 PtsStrongNo spelling or grammatical errors. Format is consistent throughout.15 PtsAverageGrammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors occur rarely. Format is consistent throughout.10 PtsBelow AverageFew grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors occur in the paper and do not interfere with the analysis. Format has some inconsistencies.5 PtsWeakGrammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors significantly interfere with the analysis. Formatting is inconsistent.20 pts
Total points: 150

Page 284 The Journal of Social Media in Society 6(1)

Lessons from #McKinney:

Social Media and the

Interactive Construction

of Police Brutality

Meredith D. Clark, Dorothy Bland,

& Jo Ann Livingston

Abstract

Video evidence of police aggression and assault on civil-

ians has previously been considered irrefutable evidence of

misconduct; its circulation contributes to the creation of

“celebrated cases” of police brutality that draw attention

because of their high-profile nature. In June 2015, You-

Tube, Facebook and Twitter comments on a citizen-

captured video of a police officer attempting to apprehend

an African-American girl at a pool party in McKinney,

Texas, trended as one incident in the #BlackLivesMatter

Dr. Meredith Clark is an Assistant Professor of Digital and Print
News in the Frank W. and Sue Mayborn School of Journalism at
the University of North Texas. Dorothy Bland is the Dean of the
Mayborn School. Jo Ann Livingston is a Ph.D. student in Inter-
disciplinary Information Science at the University of North
Texas. Correspondence can be directed to
Meredith.Clark@unt.edu

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movement’s canon of police mistreatment of African-

American citizens. Through the lens of critical race theory,

this qualitative content analysis triangulates data from

three social media platforms to explore how users inter-

preted the incident. This study develops insights on how a

“celebrated case” of police brutality is constructed by social

media audiences. It makes a significant contribution to the

literature by focusing on the often-overlooked experiences

of African-American women and girls as victims of police

brutality.

O
n June 6, 2015, the nation’s attention turned

to the Dallas suburb of McKinney, Texas, af-

ter Brandon Brooks posted a YouTube video of

McKinney Police Cpl. Eric Casebolt attempt-

ing to apprehend a group of Black teens at a neighborhood

swimming pool (Brooks, 2015). Casebolt, a White, 10-year

police veteran, forced bikini-clad 15-year-old Dajerria Bec-

ton, who is African-American, to the ground and knelt on

her back as she sobbed, “Call my mama!” Within a day of

the video being posted on Twitter, two hashtags –

#BlackLivesMatter and #McKinney – began to trend as

social media users discussed the incident.

The #McKinney incident was highlighted by indi-

viduals tweeting with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter to

draw attention to allegations of police misconduct through-

out the nation in 2014 and 2015. The movement, co-

founded via the creation of a hashtag and online discus-

sion by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi,

staged more than 1,000 protests to focus on police brutal-

Page 286 The Journal of Social Media in Society 6(1)

ity (Garza, 2014). The videos captured by individuals us-

ing the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag were shared via mo-

bile devices and social media including Facebook and Twit-

ter. This interactivity allows social media users an oppor-

tunity to co-create the news, adding their own interpreta-

tion of events (Lee, 2012; Springer, Engelmann, & Pfaffin-

ger, 2015; Van der Haak, Parks, & Castells, 2012).

This study uses the #McKinney video as it was

shared on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook in an intersec-

tional, critical case study of public commentary on police

brutality toward African-Americans. Through frame

analysis informed by Critical Race Theory (CRT), this

study compares citizen perspectives captured in comments

posted on all three platforms within a week of this inci-

dent, and adds to literature about mediated perceptions of

police and their interactions with African-Americans.

Police and African-American Communities

Tensions between African-American communities

and the police have a well-documented history. In 1968,

the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, ap-

pointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to examine social

and economic factors that contributed to race-related civil

unrest in the late 1960s, leveled criticism at law enforce-

ment and the news media for enflaming tensions between

African-American communities and the police (Kerner,

1968).

The police are not merely a “spark” factor. To some

Negroes police have come to symbolize white power,

white racism and white repression. And the fact is

that many police do reflect and express these white

attitudes. The atmosphere of hostility and cynicism

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is reinforced by a widespread belief among Negroes

in the existence of police brutality and in a “double

standard” of justice and protection — one for Ne-

groes and one for whites (Kerner, 1968, p. 10).

Important segments of the media failed to report

adequately on the causes and consequences of civil

disorders and on the underlying problems of race

relations. They have not communicated to the ma-

jority of their audience — which is white — a sense

of the degradation, misery and hopelessness of life

in the ghetto (Kerner, 1968, p. 18).

Researchers have since argued that affinity for Af-

rican-American victims of police brutality contributes to-

ward the communities’ negative attitudes toward police,

and are compounded by African-Americans’ selective con-

sumption of news that detailed police misconduct (Weitzer,

2002; Weitzer & Tuch, 2004). These findings are supported

by media effects research that indicates race has been a

significant modifier on attitudes toward police (Chermak,

McGarrell, & Gruenewald, 2006), and historical analysis

of police relations and media coverage of Black life in

America.

The Kerner Commission’s warning of a shift toward

“two Americas, one Black and one White,” and its indict-

ment of the media and the police is essential to under-

standing the groundswell of anti-police brutality protests

staged in 2014 and 2015 (Taylor, 2016). These contempo-

rary protests were fueled in part by the public’s ability to

capture and share images of police misconduct, circum-

venting mainstream media channels, which nearly 40 per-

Page 288 The Journal of Social Media in Society 6(1)

cent of African-American adults have said they do not

trust (American Press Institute, 2014). Social media users

who said used the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag to follow

reports of police brutality and protest in 2014 and 2015

said they chose to do so in order to watch news unfold un-

filtered by mainstream media influence and decide on the

issues for themselves (Freelon, McIlwain, & Clark, 2016).

Shared Construction of the News

Berger and Luckman (1966) presented the social

construction of reality as a challenge for researchers to

question the development of knowledge through the study

of everyday social interaction. Social media platforms pre-

sent a contemporary dimension for examining these inter-

actions, adding a layer of complexity to audiences’ abilities

to define their social worlds through selection, consump-

tion, and commenting on news (Östman, 2012). The con-

versation about police brutality is subject to interpretation

through lenses of values, beliefs and attitudes of audiences

who are no longer limited to one- or two-way, broadcast-

style reception of news information and consumer feed-

back (Holton, Coddington, Lewis, & Gil de Zúñiga,

2015).

News counter-narratives via social media. Pew re-

searchers have quantified how social networking sites

have impacted news engagement in the 21st century. In

July 2015, a Pew study indicated about one in 10 U.S.

adults get their news on Twitter, and about four in 10 get

news via Facebook (Barthel, Shearer, Gottfried, &

Mitchell, 2015). YouTube also was identified as a major

“social news pathway,” with 51 percent of U.S. adults us-

ing the site, and about 10 percent of the adult population

getting news on YouTube (Anderson & Caumont, 2014).

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About half of U.S. social network site users say they have

shared news stories, images, or videos via social media,

and about 46 percent have used it to discuss a news event

or issue (Anderson & Caumont, 2014).

These audiences, write Jackson and Foucault

Welles (2016), form a networked counterpublic who use

social media to legitimize and communicate their own re-

alities and challenge the mainstream to acknowledge

these narratives (p. 398). Social media users who comment

online have been described as motivated by a desire to par-

ticipate in journalism and to interact with other users, ar-

guably making online comments on texts shared and con-

sumed on social media platforms a rich site for analyzing

shared social construction of a news event (Springer et al.,

2015). Mindful of scholarly critique that comments left on

the Facebook pages of news websites are comparatively

less deliberate than those posted directly to the organiza-

tion’s website (Rowe, 2015), we triangulated data from the

YouTube video itself, from Facebook comments on news

sites that used the raw video, and from Twitter, where the

strategic use of hashtags has been analyzed as a form of

participatory political speech (Small, 2011).

Framing and Racial Tension

Although racial minorities have expressed mistrust

of mainstream media, there are a variety of social net-

working platforms that serve as venues where otherwise

marginalized voices may present their own interpretation

of news events. From a CRT perspective, these interpreta-

tions serve as “counterstories” of lived experiences that are

otherwise colored from a default frame of whiteness

(Delgado & Stefancic, 2001, pp. 42-43; Feagin, 2013).

Page 290 The Journal of Social Media in Society 6(1)

Frame production occurs on these platforms as users par-

ticipate in public discourse and generate alternative inter-

pretations of news information (Borah, 2011, p. 250). In

particular, Ryan, Carragee, and Meinhofer (2001) found

that “news media represent critical arenas of social strug-

gle” (p. 175). They argue that journalistic frames are influ-

enced by the differing perspectives vying for attention:

“News stories, then, become a forum for framing contests

in which these actors compete in sponsoring their defini-

tions of political issues” (2001, p. 176).

Scheufele (1999) argued that social norms and val-

ues, along with interest group pressure, are among the fac-

tors that can have an influence on journalistic framing,

and that those with differing views “use mass media to

construct opinions and reality, and their societal influence

to establish certain frames of reference” (p. 110). Chong

and Druckman write of this as a “competitive” process that

“does not guarantee that the opposing sides will be equal

combatants or that audiences will receive equal and simul-

taneous exposure to equally persuasive alternative

frames” (2007b, p. 102). Race-related framing and the con-

struction of someone’s identity as that of an “outsider” can

occur through either inclusion or omission, according to

Park, Holody, and Zhang (2012), with a similar finding by

Ryan et al. (2001), who note a propensity by the media to

“privilege frames advanced by political elites and miss

valuable alternative framings” (p. 181). As Lawrence

(2000) writes on law enforcement and the use of force,

groups who believe that police brutality is a serious public

problem find it difficult to win authority for their real

ity.

This difficulty is due to “rhetorical, informational and po-

litical constraints that limit the construction of police bru-

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tality as a public problem” (p. 24).

Power and news frames. Ultimately, the acceptance

of a frame, and the favor with which it is held, coincides

with the holder’s values, according to Chong and Druck-

man (2007b), who found that an individual’s frame produc-

tion represents a melding of already held, available beliefs;

accessibility to new beliefs; and the resulting consideration

given as to which beliefs are held applicable (2007a). A

frame’s ability to assert a dominant position in the public

discourse “depends on multiple complex factors, including

its sponsor’s economic and cultural resources, its sponsor’s

knowledge of journalistic practices, and its resonance with

broader political values or tendencies in American cul-

ture,” write Ryan et al. (2001, p. 176), whose article on the

Media Research and Action Project discusses the use of

frame analysis as a tool toward facilitating voice for mar-

ginalized

groups.

While media framing research has historically fo-

cused on content produced by professional journalists, the

aforementioned studies, provide opportunities to examine

social media users’ perception of an issue and challenge

existing theory that indicates minority groups are unable

to effectively sponsor frames. The context of a social move-

ment such as #BlackLivesMatter, which centers footage

usually captured by citizen witnesses, offers a compelling

test for such research. A critical perspective that examines

the impact of race and power in framing complements the

theories used in studies of social media use in social move-

ments, and is appropriate considering the race-specific na-

ture of the conflicts.

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Video Evidence and the Social Construction

of Police Brutality

In March 1991, the country watched citizen-

captured videotape of four Los Angeles Police Department

officers beat and kick motorist Rodney King during a traf-

fic stop. The video evidence, seen by both the jury — which

acquitted the officers — and the American people, has

since become a key text in analyses of the social construc-

tion of police brutality. As Stuart (2011) observes, “the

King case demonstrated to much of the public … that skill-

ful police and legal professionals are able to transform

even the most ‘obvious’ and condemning video evidence

into proof of their own countervailing claims” (p. 329).

In recent years, several videotaped conflicts be-

tween police and civilians have been captured via cell-

phone cameras, and quickly uploaded to social networking

sites, where they were viewed and interpreted by millions

in minutes. In July 2014, a bystander recorded the last

moments in Eric Garner’s life as he struggled in a choke-

hold after being confronted by Staten Island police (Baker,

Goodman, & Mueller, 2015). His final words, “I can’t

breathe,” were added to the #BlackLivesMatter protest

lexicon as the public grasped to reconcile what they had

seen — and the grand jury’s decision not to indict the offi-

cers involved.

Social media users have commented on Garner’s

death as “the case,” a celebrated case with seemingly ir-

refutable evidence of police overreach and excessive use of

force (Freelon et al., 2016, p. 31).

Social Media Organizing via #BlackLivesMatter

In earlier media eras, celebrated cases of police

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misconduct were often brought to light via photograph and

videotaped evidence that detailed the incident and/or the

victim’s injuries or death. Related literature has examined

the role of photojournalism or videography in the cases of

victims including Amadou Diallo (Harring, 2000: Millner

& Larsen, 2002) and King (Stuart, 2011). The proliferation

of cellphone technology, including smartphones that allow

users to capture images of the social world as it unfolds

around them, has met a powerful force in the publishing

capabilities of social networking platforms.

The videos and the hashtags shared on social media

contribute to an update on “celebrated cases” of police mis-

conduct. Such cases are defined by their prolonged cover-

age in the news media with presentation that differs from

routine crime news (Chermak et al., 2006, p. 262). These

cases may have unique influence on public perception of

the police, including prompting members of the public to

re-evaluate their beliefs about law enforcement and their

actions (Chermak et al., 2006).

Existing scholarship on public perceptions of police

suggests a gap in the literature about social media con-

struction of “celebrated” cases of police brutality, a prob-

lem that is ripe for exploration in the wake of tensions sur-

rounding police use of force highlighted by the

#BlackLivesMatter Movement in 2014 and 2015.

Black women’s erasure in

#BlackLivesMatter.

Much of the existing and emerging literature might lead

the public to infer that African-American girls do not face

the same risk of punitive action as their male counterparts

(Crenshaw, Ocen, & Nanda, 2015). The celebrated cases of

police brutality documented on social platforms in 2014

and 2015 via the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag support this

Page 294 The Journal of Social Media in Society 6(1)

notion. They were overwhelmingly male, leaving critical

questions about how the public constructs police brutality

involving Black women and girls (Freelon et al., 2016).

This finding empirically supports the claim that Black

women’s stories and experiences are and have been erased

from the dialogue about African-Americans and police bru-

tality (Crenshaw, Ritchie, Anspach, Gilmer, & Harris,

2015; Towns, 2016).

Collins (2002) would cite such omission as the work

of interlocking oppressions of race, gender and power that

subjugate Black women and girls’ experiences to the inter-

ests of media gatekeepers. Within this framework, we ap-

ply the characteristics of womanist caring to defend the

selection and analysis of this particular case, noting the

criteria of embracing the maternal in our attention to Bec-

ton’s welfare as a child; political clarity in noting the docu-

mented over-policing of Black girls, and an ethic of risk,

our willingness to commit to scholarship meant to draw

greater attention to the injustices suffered by weak social

actors in opposition to the police (Beauboeuf-Lafontant,

2002, p. 77, via Gordon & Patterson, 2013). Our CRT-

informed analysis of the #McKinney incident’s construc-

tion was performed with an emphasis on Becton’s treat-

ment as a Black girl in the users’ comments.

The #McKinney case presents a point-in-time case

that can be analyzed in the greater context of how social

media is used in the social construction of police brutality

and racial (in)justice. Drawing on this hashtag, we explore

an incident of alleged police misconduct — caught by a so-

cial media user — which became a “celebrated case” in

June 2015 to address the following research questions:

RQ1: What key themes that emerge from the com-

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ments on YouTube, Twitter, and the Facebook

pages of broadcast TV stations contribute to the so-

cial construction of this incident as an act of police

brutality?

RQ2: What do these messages tell us about public

perception of race and police relationships in Amer-

ica today?

Study Design/Methodology

This critical case study applied qualitative content

analysis methodology to a purposive sample of social me-

dia comments from three sources to construct meaning of a

celebrated case of police misconduct. Comments from three

social media platforms, YouTube, Twitter, and the Face-

book pages of three local news outlets, were collected for

analysis. We selected the first 400 comments posted on

Brooks’ original YouTube video the day after it was up-

loaded to YouTube, 940 total comments from the news sta-

tions’ Facebook pages, and 7,100 tweets for analysis, cod-

ing every 10th tweet. Each researcher coded a different

subset of the data. All of the texts were posted between

June 7 and June 15, encompassing a one-week period fol-

lowing the incident.

Examining Frames through a Critical Lens

As an unobtrusive method of inquiry, content

analysis allows researchers to examine texts created by

the public in order to identify mediated representations of

culture, history and current events (Hesse-Biber & Leavy,

2011). We approach this research with the Foucauldian

(Foucault, 1995) assumption that public knowledge ex-

changes are indicative of shifting power relations among

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actors. We build on that assumption to analyze comments

posted by users who were formerly limited to the dichoto-

mized roles of producer and consumer. As explained by

Ruggiero (2000), Internet-enabled activity allows both the

image’s initial producer and its consumers to shift the bal-

ance of power among them — the consumers become pro-

ducers of knowledge about the actions seen in the video.

Interrogating their comments is a means of examining

both cultural dominance and hegemonic resistance as they

are enacted in a text (Hall, 1973).

Intersectionality in news media examination. The

interrogation of these texts is assisted through the applica-

tion of critical race theory, a lens used to examine the rela-

tions of race, law and power. CRT theory — developed by

Crenshaw (1995) and advanced by Delgado and Stefancic

(2001) provides a lens for examining the influences and

impact of race, power and the law in social situations — is

appropriate for this content analysis, which seeks to ana-

lyze public discursive practices in the discussion of power

relations between the police and African-American com-

munities.

Becton’s case meets Flyvbjerg’s (2006) definition of

a critical case of bearing strategic importance to the

broader problem of police brutality as chronicled by the

#BlackLivesMatter hashtag in 2014 and 2015. We selected

this particular incident because of its dynamics: the main

figures in the video represent polar opposites of Collins’

Matrix of Domination (2000), which details how different

forms of power — in this case, articulated along the lines

of age, race and class — form intersections of oppression.

Coding procedures. The data were coded in three

stages: initial coding, followed by values coding, and fi-

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nally, a theming of the data (Saldaña, 2013). For the ini-

tial coding stage, each researcher open-coded one of the

data sets to identify key concepts in the incident’s discus-

sion on each platform. Second, using the descriptive codes

generated across the data sets, we used values coding to

categorize the expression of values, attitudes and beliefs

related to social movements, police-citizen relations, and

media coverage of public disorder (Saldaña, 2013). Fi-

nally, drawing on the major themes from comments on the

YouTube video, we used the constant-comparative method

outlined by Corbin and Strauss (2008) to collapse the cate-

gories from the axial coding stage and refine themes from

emergent in the Twitter and Facebook-based discourse.

We identified three key themes — anti-police sentiment,

social deviance, and racism — that characterized the pub-

lic discourse of this case.

Findings

We analyzed these frames as context for under-

standing how users construct the interaction seen in the

video. The first and second round of coding generated the

following codes for the comments across each platform:

 Anti-police

 Anti-Cpl. Eric Casebolt

 Pro-police

 Pro-Cpl. Eric Casebolt

 Anti-news media

 Out of control teens

 Teens as trespassers, violating property rights

 Racism

 Personal attacks against those sharing opinions

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We first eliminated the personal attacks theme and

focused on the interpretive frames that emerged from the

data. Collapsing these codes into categories, which were

used to refine our findings, we identified three competing

thematic frames throughout the data sets to describe how

social media users constructed this case as symbolic of a

greater epidemic of police brutality:

 Anti-police sentiment

 Social deviance

 Racism

We report some overlap in the construction of these

categories, as some tweets and comments contained mes-

sages of anti-police sentiment, social deviance, and/or ra-

cism. Although the tweets and comments used in this

analysis are publicly available per the Terms of Service of

their respective platforms, we have omitted user handles

in this report as a means of protecting user privacy. The

Table 1

Major Themes Across Platforms
The number of times one of the themes was identified in

each category

Facebook/

TV news

Twitter YouTube

Anti-police

sentiment
29 331 59

Social

deviance

152 86 41

Racism 273 400 55

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original language of each message, including misspellings,

incorrect grammar, and obscenities, have been left in

place. The themes are not presented in any particular or-

der.

Anti-police Sentiment

Across the data sets, one strong message was of

suspicion, mistrust, and occasionally outright hostility to-

ward police forces. One tweet mentioned how you can’t

really call 911 for help when it’s about police brutality.

This theme was characterized by statements expressing

sentiment that the public would be better served without

police presence:

We’ve all seen what happens when people are de-

tained by the police. Nobody trusts them, compli-

ance gets you fucked or shot these days if you aren’t

white. Fuck that. It’s only a matter of time before

citizens take some authority back into their hands

(Personal communication, YouTube, June 11,

2015).

Comments specific to the officer. We note that 21 of

the 59 anti-police comments on the YouTube video in spe-

cifically target Casebolt. One user described the officer as:

an ex military asshole, that thinks he is still in

command….Seen it many times watching these

treasonous felons… (Personal communication, You-

Tube, June 8, 2015)

Others criticized the “good cop, bad cop” narrative,

citing a lack of officer intervention as the girl was being

detained:

RT: @user: The entire time … not one “good cop”

intervened. (Personal communication, Twitter June

7, 2015)

Page 300 The Journal of Social Media in Society 6(1)

I understand it was frustrating with everyone

around him and his backup. But my god he straight

up lost his temper which we as people do not need.

We expect justice and that was not justice with the

violent reaction he had towards teenagers. I am al-

ways on the side of law enforcement but that

crosses boundaries with his actions. (Personal com-

munication, Facebook, June 11, 2015)

Fine officer? LOL! There were many there that day,

but Casebolt was not one of them. (Personal com-

munication, Facebook, June 11, 2015)

… He rolled up … to a teenage pool party … like it

was a war zone. #McKinney (Personal communica-

tion,

Twitter, June 7, 2015)

… girls in bathing suits require pulling a pistol

out? …power trip from a scared little man. That’s

ridiculous. #McKinney (Personal communication,

Twitter, June 7, 2015)

Police mistrust. Of the more than 800 tweets ana-

lyzed, 331 contained messages that reflected an anti-police

sentiment that criticized Casebolt and other officers for

using excessive force in breaking up the party. A total of

117 of the YouTube comments spoke specifically to the

theme of not being able to trust the police because of the

unpredictability of the officer’s behavior. One user men-

tioned the officer “couldn’t wait to kick some civilian ass.”

Another user, who claimed to have trained police officers,

called the video a show of “oppression.”

A competing theme that emerged in the analysis

was a weaker show of support for law enforcement as a

whole, which blamed the teenagers and members of Black

communities for the problems at the pool that day. The

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conflict contributed to ongoing discussions between users,

particularly on the YouTube video, where 34 comments

were volleyed back and forth between commenters.

Social Deviance

The second major theme, social deviance, included

comments that referenced assumptions of absent parents,

a lack of respect for the law and authority:

Yeap, but if the law enforcement shows up, YOU

HAVE TO DO WHAT THEY ASK, if they pull you

over, DO IT, if they say go back home YOU BET-

TER DO IT. THEY ARE to protect us. In the 1950’s

you never seen something like that. Parents today

are not teaching ethical values to their children.

(Personal communication, YouTube, June 7, 2015)

This officer clearly told these girls to vacate the

property no less than five times but they still back

talked and attempted to come back. How about

some parents step up and take responsibility for

their children regardless or not if she lived in that

community. If the officer told her to leave, then go

home until the situation is resolved, and then you

can head back up to the pool. Kids today are taught

to not respect authority and it’s going to be a very

sad future. (Personal communication, YouTube,
June 9, 2015).

um turn on the tv and see the news reports of black

teens roaming stores looting and beating up people

for fun. Of course we are going to be suspect when

your 14% of the population and commit 50% of

murders and violent crime. (Personal communica-
tion, YouTube, June 9, 2015).

Similar comments repeated how the teens seen in

the video ignored commands to leave the area, spoke back

Page 302 The Journal of Social Media in Society 6(1)

to the officers, and otherwise disregarded orders. The lan-

guage linking the action of a few individuals to systemic,

societal issues of deviance is in line with Cohen’s (1973)

definition of a moral panic, in which “an episode, person or

group is defined as a threat to societal values and inter-

est” (p. 9). Becton and the teenagers in the video were

criticized in the “stylized and stereotypical fashion,” (p.

542) through practices which, in previous eras, had been

employed by the news media in biased coverage of Black

and Hispanic subjects (Dixon & Linz, 2000). Status of the

participants in crime stories and the cultural deviance of

their acts have been established as criteria of newsworthi-

ness in stories to criminalize Black subjects (Gruenewald,

Pizarro, & Chermak, 2009).

In constructing this case, YouTube and news site

commenters used such criteria to label the teens as sym-

bols of a greater societal issue problem — lack of respect

for authority. A critical reading of this construction leads

us to note that both pro-police and anti-police sentiments

citing social deviance attempted to use race to strengthen

their arguments. Our analysis indicates that commenters

sympathetic to Becton and the other Black pool-goers most

effectively seized upon the issue of race to bolster argu-

ments that police brutality is, in fact, a public problem.

Race and Racism

The first tenet of Critical Race Theory is that ra-

cism exists, and is, in fact, ordinary. CRT also posits that

White superiority of color has both material and psycho-

logical benefits for Whites, and that race is the product of

a socially constructed hierarchy (Delgado & Stefancic,

2001, pp. 7-9). The first assumption is useful in interrogat-

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ing discourse about the #McKinney incident as an instance

of policing Black existence. However, the definition of ra-

cism solely being socially constructed is fundamentally

flawed logic, a point we discuss in the following section.

Racism, the third and final theme developed from

the data, was most prevalent in the broadcast media/TV

station website comments, where it was mentioned in 273

of the comments, and the tweets, where approximately 400

items mentioned race or racism, signaling overlap with the

other themes. Racism was either mentioned or strongly

implied in 55 YouTube comments. Overwhelmingly, it was

discussed as having a negative impact on the situation,

demonstrating users’ affinity with African-Americans,

which contributes to a sense of resentment, fear or animus

toward law enforcement officers:

There is at least 2 reasons why this video is a show

of racism. One is (from news stories and firsthand

eyewitness accounts) that Caucasian people were

making racist remarks about African-American

people. The other (still from news stories and wit-

nesses) is the cops only targeted African American

people. Also, the Caucasian people stood, watched,

and laughed while this was going on AND people

have said that a Caucasian mother was the one

who started the chain of events. Now, if race wasn’t

involved, people were still at fault. The cops, or

more accurately the one cop, did not have to resort

to actions tha violent and extreme. This video has

showed that racism is very much at large, and if we

lived in a world without racism, violence would be

our main problem. (Personal communication, You-

Tube, June 12, 2015)

The ignorance is mind boggling. This is about race.

AND excessive police force at the same time. Please

do not try to remove race from the scenario to prove

Page 304 The Journal of Social Media in Society 6(1)

your point. The cop was wrong and showed aggres-

sion towards the teens who were Black. It has been

reported and shown that he ignored the other teen-

agers. Also the melee started with two Caucasian

women yelling racial slurs and stereotypical com-

ments. It is about race. Accept it and then do your

part to make a change. Ignoring the problem is why

this is happening all over the country. Sad.
(Personal communication, Facebook, June 8, 2015)

We did not include users’ performed identities as

part of our analysis, leaving us to analyze solely the mes-

sage content as indicative of racially-oriented beliefs.

Discussion

Nearly 50 years ago, the Kerner Commission

warned the country that part of the issue contributing to

ill feelings between African-American communities and

law enforcement was public perception of mistreatment at

the hands of the police. Despite the government and news

industry’s attempts to act on the commission’s suggested

reforms in media and law enforcement policies, modern

videotaped evidence of such mistreatment highlights ongo-

ing tensions between law enforcements and Black commu-

nities. These images, and the discourse they spark, are at

the center of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which has

sought to categorically define police brutality as a public

problem. Although we intentionally selected a video that

focused on a African-American girl, and applied theoretical

analysis that structured our inquiry to consider interlock-

ing oppressions faced by women, youth and other under-

privileged peoples, we note the distinct absence of com-

ments that explicitly mentioned Becton herself, a gap that

underscores the argument African-American women and

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girls have been erased from the online dialogue on police

brutality.

Strengthening the call for intersectional interrogation

Becton’s erasure across the comments emphasizes

the relevant demands of Black feminist scholars who call

for an intersectional approach to reading social interac-

tions in which race, gender, and their resulting power dif-

ferentials come into play. As Crenshaw, Ocen and Nanda

(2015) note in observations drawn from empirical data

about policing Black girls, Becton and others like her ex-

perience racism in disproportionate rates of punishment

as compared to their peers. Executed in forms of punish-

ment ranging from school suspension to expulsion to

searches of both bodies and property, racism has a demon-

strated material and psychic impact on Black girls

(Delgado & Stefancic, 2001).

A closer examination of the #McKinney incident

suggests that racism, through the interlocking oppressions

of race and gender and power, is directly experienced by

Black girls as a power that can violate and crush their

Black bodies with observable, measurable pressure — i.e.,

Casebolt kneeling on Becton’s back — and simultaneously

subject them to the public discourse of whether they are

social deviants who deserve such punishment. While CRT

offers a useful lens for examining the social construction of

racism, analysis of contemporary struggles highlighting

tensions of race, gender, and power — such as police use of

force against women and children of color — requires an

approach informed by Black feminism and one that defines

the metaphysics of racism via the lived realities of these

groups.

Page 306 The Journal of Social Media in Society 6(1)

Social Video and the Public Problem of Police Brutality

Social media contributes to the construction of po-

lice brutality as a public problem through creating sites of

discourse where individuals, even through competing

themes, co-construct a social understanding of what this

misconduct looks like. In cases of contentious interaction

between police and civilians, video evidence has mistak-

enly been purported to “speak for itself,” offering the view-

ing public direct insight into how such encounters unfold

(Goodwin, 1994, p. 615-616).

The evidence must still be processed by viewers and

their way of seeing the world. What may appear to be a

clear-cut case of excessive use of force by police can and

has been construed as an appropriate level of response

when interpreted through the lenses of power afforded to

authority figures. From the early 1990s, when video of a

vicious beating was insufficient to win a conviction of po-

lice misconduct in the Rodney King trial, to 2014, when

the videotaped chokehold death of Eric Garner failed to

provoke even an indictment against the officers involved,

we are reminded that even videotaped witness of such ac-

tions is still subject to the conflicting social constructions

of our realities concerning right, wrong and (in)justice.

Our study of social media comments related to the

video illustrates that competing narratives of the role of

law enforcement, adherence to social norms, and the lin-

gering effects of Black-White racism emerge as part of di-

verse belief systems that complicate audiences’ ability to

position unarmed Black child as a victim of police brutal-

ity.

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Limitations and Directions for Further Research

This exploratory research was significantly limited

by several factors, including:

 Comments posted to the broadcast news/TV station

websites are subject to moderation and removal by

the respective websites, according to individual

policies. The comments that were analyzed were

those present on the websites at the time they were

collected; they may differ from the comments subse-

quently viewed at another time.

 The purposive sample was profoundly limited and

cannot be used to draw sweeping generalizations.

Given that more than 500 million tweets are

posted per day, and YouTube receives billions of

views daily, the data collection was limited to a

week within the week of the June 5 incident and

narrowed to focus on #McKinney and

#BlackLivesMatter.

This research would benefit from repeat analysis on

similar cases involving African-American women and girls

to analyze whether and how the public constructs them as

victims. This research could be further strengthened by

sentiment analysis of the online comments, including how

the online performance of race influences the commenter’s

stated opinions. Finally, we encourage researchers inter-

ested in similar work to consider complementing an analy-

sis of online comments with interview data from the indi-

viduals who post such comments to examine their motiva-

tions and intent.

Page 308 The Journal of Social Media in Society 6(1)

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