Abstract
Fiery nationwide protests in response to a recent string of dubious police killings of unarmed Black men have sparked a renewed social movement, drawing increased attention to fragile police–minority relations and allegations of racial bias in the criminal justice system. A wealth of research exists concerning African American youths’ accounts of poor treatment at the hands of police. To a lesser extent, prior scholarship reveals the importance of looking beyond citizens’ direct police experiences to family, peer, and mainstream media accounts of negative police encounters. Scholarly examinations of social media regarding how individuals make sense of their own and others’ experiences with, and attitudes toward police are limited, however. This is surprising given that social media has become especially important for youths and represents a new mechanism for the American public to learn about unsettling police behaviors. Moreover, social media represents a largely untapped, but potentially rich data source for researchers and policy makers. Special consideration is given to the role that the Black Lives Matter movement plays for obtaining improved understandings of police–minority relations and informing criminal justice.
The fragile relationship between minority youth and the police has earned renewed public attention following a wave of highly publicized and decidedly questionable police-involved shootings of Black youth. On August 9, 2014, Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, prompting over 146,000 posts about the incident using the social media application Twitter; 5 days later, there were over 3.6 million tweets (Hitlin & Vogt, 2014). Michael Brown’s untimely death catalyzed a nationwide social movement centering on the role of police as fair-minded guardians, eliciting fervent calls for immediate police reform, and highlighting the relevance of social media as a driving force for serious public discourse concerning police–minority relations.
When the general public perceives that laws are being applied in a discriminatory manner, it questions whether police have every community’s best interests in mind. This is especially the case in distressed, urban areas where, because of aggressive policing tactics, youth might develop cynicism toward police and the broader criminal justice system. Prior research has demonstrated that children form understandings of their social worlds based not only on what they see, but also from what they learn from those around them, including parents, teachers, peers, and the media (Brunson & Weitzer, 2011; Fagan & Piquero, 2007). To citizens who are less likely to experience frequent, direct police contact, social media, and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement brings an awareness of alleged, widespread police wrongdoing that might have otherwise gone unnoticed.
Because the BLM effort is relatively new and its goals evolving, there are many opportunities for research examining the ways in which grassroots activists use social media to draw attention to and construct narratives around what they consider questionable police patterns and practices. Academic research concerning whether and, if so, how, social media helps shape citizens’ attitudes toward the police is sorely deficient, however. This essay considers how researchers might take advantage of technological innovations to extend scholarship on police legitimacy and police–minority relations. First, we summarize the existing literature on young people of color and the police. Next, we address how future studies might extend prior scholarship regarding police legitimacy and procedural justice. Finally, we highlight how the BLM movement’s mastery of social media has the potential to generate novel methodological approaches and research questions. A wide range of social media campaigns exist that emphasize social and criminal justice reform. We focus, however, on the intensifying, BLM political movement in particular because of its prominence in social and traditional media.
Existing Research
Legitimacy and procedural justice feature prominently in the extant literature on citizen attitudes toward police. Satisfaction with police and the belief that officers deserve deference results from police actions that are perceived to be evenhanded. Tyler and Wakslak (2004) identified three factors that comprise fair procedures: quality of decision-making, quality of treatment, and trustworthiness. Mazerolle, Antrobus, Bennett, and Tyler (2013) also operationalized procedural justice but defined four components: citizen participation, dignity and respect, neutrality, and trustworthy motives. When one of these key elements is lacking, it becomes much more difficult for officers to establish legitimacy in the eyes of the public. Young Black males report viewing proactive, order maintenance policing tactics as physically intrusive and harassing, even when they are legally permissible (Gau & Brunson, 2010). For example, a survey of New York City residents revealed that frequent stops, frisks, and arrests for small infractions were associated with lower levels of trust in the police (Tyler & Fagan, 2012). Police legitimacy can be severely undermined by aggressive policing strategies, especially when direct and vicarious police contacts are routine (Brunson, 2007).
Tyler and Huo’s (2002) process-based model lends an important psychological perspective to understanding how people involuntarily encountering the police make sense of their own behaviors. Subjective judgments about police impartiality made based on ambiguous information can strongly influence whether an individual chooses to comply with an officer’s directives (Tyler, 2003). The manner in which commands are given is central in determining how citizens will respond during police encounters (Shedd, 2012).
Scholars have identified several factors that help to shape persons’ perceptions of police. In fact, research has consistently shown that citizen mistrust of police is more pervasive among Blacks than their counterparts from other racial groups. More specifically, research has pointed to how racial discrimination at the hands of police reduces citizen confidence in and support for officers (Tyler & Wakslak, 2004). Brunson and Miller (2006a) found that Black males living in disadvantaged neighborhoods reported frequent police sweeps, routine disrespect from officers, and widespread harassment directly tied to their race and ecological context. Moreover, their study participants believed that officers’ unmistakable suspicion of neighborhood residents was applied indiscriminately to everyone, even those who were encountered in law-abiding settings.
Immigrants have a unique lens through which to view policing in the United States because they are able to reflect upon experiences in their home countries, an idea Correia (2010) referred to as a “bifocal lens.” Menjívar and Bejarano (2004) found that Latino and Latina immigrants’ perceptions of the police were influenced by fear of deportation and mistrust of the criminal justice system broadly. Even Latino/a youth who are U.S. citizens report being perpetually viewed with suspicion and approached aggressively by officers, attributing the unwarranted scrutiny to their ethnicity (Solis, Portillos, & Brunson, 2009).
Research on citizen attitudes toward and experiences with police tends to employ a wide range of methodological approaches. Cross-sectional surveys are commonly used to collect information about viewpoints among large, nationally representative samples. For example, Brick, Taylor, and Esbensen (2009) surveyed juveniles and found that study participants’ police perceptions were associated with delinquent peers and community ties. Survey data, however, are sometimes limited in its suitability for establishing causality and theory building.
In-depth qualitative interviews have been useful for providing nuanced under-standings of individuals’ police experiences. For example, examinations of urban youths’ police encounters have cast much needed light on the intersection of race, place, and policing (Gau & Brunson, 2010; Weitzer & Brunson, 2009). Although research involving modest samples might have limited generalizability, they provide opportunities for deep exploration of study participants’ experiences, emotions, and thought processes.
Addressing Specific Gaps
A large portion of qualitative research on citizen attitudes toward the police focuses on the experiences of disadvantaged Black youth residing in urban areas. Because conditions found in impoverished Black neighborhoods are ecologically unmatched (see Sampson & Bartusch, 1998; Sampson & Wilson, 1995; Weitzer, 1999), researchers have encountered difficulty in their efforts to include severely disadvantaged youth from other racial backgrounds. A small number of studies have successfully gone beyond the customary examination of inner-city Black adolescents’ negative police experiences (see Brunson & Weitzer, 2009; Carr, Napolitano, & Keating, 2007). We acknowledge that studying the lived experiences of young Black males makes sense because they are at greater risk of frequent, involuntary police encounters. In order to better understand the full spectrum of attitudes and perceptions of police, however, it is also important to broaden the scope of inquiry to include other groups of young people’s viewpoints and novel data obtained from emerging social media applications and technology.
While there is a steadily growing body of literature documenting that Black youths disproportionately find themselves on the receiving end of heavy-handed policing tactics, scant research exists involving females and young people from more affluent neighborhoods. In fact, the handful of studies investigating young women’s police encounters provide mixed results, suggesting that more detailed renderings are necessary, including examining interactions of race and gender (Hurst & Frank, 2000; Hurst, Frank, & Lee Browning, 2000; Hurst, McDermott, & Thomas, 2005). Brunson and Miller (2006b) found that young women reported being treated more harshly by police when in the presence of male peers and relatives. Moreover, female study participants in their sample expressed concerns about police sexual misconduct. Weitzer and Tuch (2002) analyzed national survey data about perceptions of racial profiling. Their findings revealed that even among Black respondents, class was a significant factor helping to shape perceptions. Black respondents from middle-class neighborhoods reported views that more closely resembled Whites than Blacks from disadvantaged neighborhoods. The process concerning how individuals develop perceptions of police legitimacy may vary by both gender and class, warranting further examination.
In order to improve the current state of knowledge regarding police–community relations, it is necessary to understand what leads to positive evaluations and perceptions of police, and how police officers can build trust following tense, involuntary interactions with members of the public. Although disadvantaged Black youth are consistently shown to hold less favorable views of police (Brunson & Weitzer, 2009; Hurst & Frank, 2000; Hurst et al., 2000; Taylor, Turner, Esbensen, & Winfree, 2001), their outlooks may still be malleable. For instance, some ecological contexts have greater potential for recurring, negative police experiences even if they do not result in arrest or citation. Thus, it is important for researchers and policy makers to identify and capitalize on opportunities to increase community members’ satisfaction during every encounter. Research points to the potential of community policing for strengthening public support (Cordner, 2014; Hawdon, Ryan, & Griffin, 2003), but evaluations fall short of identifying specific tactics that can positively influence satisfaction.
BLM and Social Media
The BLM movement has provided a foundation for spirited public discourse about racially biased policing and disparate treatment in the U.S. criminal justice system. People use Twitter and other social media platforms to exchange information about the movement’s social justice goals. Social media provides a largely untapped data source for researchers interested in understanding the BLM movement and its potential impact on politics and public perceptions of injustice.
Social media consists of Internet-based platforms that are used to “share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated content” (Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, & Silverstre, 2011, p. 241). Unlike newspapers and television, social media is highly interactive, offering real-time reactions to unfolding events. For instance, the microblogging platform, Twitter (http://www.twitter.com), has played a particularly strong role in a wide range of contemporary social movements (i.e., Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring, the 15-M anti-austerity movement in Spain, and the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong). According to Twitter’s website, as of December 2015, the service had about 320 million active users. Twitter users create posts, or “tweets,” using up to 140 characters, which are shared to the account holder’s page as well as on account followers’ main pages. Twitter also displays currently “trending topics,” words or phrases that many users are tweeting simultaneously (Kwak, Lee, Park, & Moon, 2012). Twitter users can allow searches on words in their tweets by using “hashtags,” words, or phrases preceded by an octothorpe (#). Tweets can also contain photos, videos, and links to other websites.
Traditional media and news organizations not only act as a source of information about current events but also as a filter, shaping public opinion (Lipsky, 1968). Thus, it serves as a particular representation of reality put forth by producers who often comprise society’s political and economic elite (Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes, & Sasson, 1992). Conversely, social media enables users to bypass time-honored gatekeepers of knowledge and information, impacting what the public knows and the language used when discussing their accumulated lived experiences. Anyone with access to social media has the ability to share personal narratives and attempt to explain how they make sense of a wide range of social phenomena. This mode of communication may be especially important for those whose views are often overlooked or misrepresented in mainstream media, especially young people of color.
Movements use language to shift perspectives of understanding regarding social phenomena, a process referred to as framing (Benford & Snow, 2000). A frame, therefore, is the lens through which events are interpreted. Social movement actors create a space for themselves within the political climate by critiquing the language commonly used by those in power. Social movements generate collective action frames as a new way for people to organize and interpret information about the world in order “to mobilize potential adherents and constituents, to garner bystander support, and to demobilize antagonists” (Snow & Benford, 1988, p. 198). Social media has created a new mechanism by which activists introduce and shape collective action frames; therefore, it is important to understand not only emergent frames themselves, but also how activists use social media to generate new ones.
Several partners within the BLM movement work to advance shared policy goals, influence political decision makers, and generate collective action frames in the hope of shaping public discourse about institutionalized racism within the criminal justice system. First, BLM, whose name was later adopted as a protest chant, is an organic, grassroots organization that formed after a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, FL, shot and killed unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin and highlights the work of “those that have been marginalized within Black liberation movements” (Garza, 2014, Broadening the Conversation section, para. 1). Unlike traditional social movements, however, BLM often uses militant language and disruptive actions to establish physical and virtual presence in the political landscape. For instance, BLM refers to prisons as “cages” and the disproportional representation of Blacks in the criminal justice system as “state violence” (http://blacklivesmatter.com). Furthermore, BLM openly challenges institutions that it considers upholding White supremacy and patriarchy. Direct actions are implemented with the intention of disturbing “normal” life, giving voice to people who are routinely marginalized within mainstream society.
“We The Protesters” was an early activist effort to galvanize Twitter followers and publicize information about demonstrations through a weekly newsletter. Because of the rapid pace of social media, the bulletins summarized important events and provided news updates. The website (http://www.wetheprotesters.org) mainly serves as a hub for information related to planning protests. The site was especially active during the months directly following Michael Brown’s death, when demonstrations were occurring throughout the country on a near daily basis. Recognizing that protest is only a first step in creating lasting political change, the activists who founded We The Protesters then established Campaign Zero, a policy initiative focused on discovering solutions to police violence and the long-standing overrepresentation of Blacks in the criminal justice system (Cornish, 2015).
Organizing masses of people in one space represents a commonly used protest technique. Supporters gather for marches (Specia & Delieda, 2014), stage “die-ins,” and create human chains to impede traffic and public transportation (Valrey, 2014). As a result, the BLM movement gains increased visibility through traditional and social media coverage. For instance, one activist posted on Twitter, “If you don’t understand that [the protest] is about raising black issues on white radars, you’re lost. Uncomfortable visibility is key” (Marie, 2015). Additionally, activists suggest that the very people being inconvenienced by protest actions have the political and social capital to create change, one individual tweeted, “Being uncomfortable brings change. I’m glad Whites are uncomfortable by this. Deal with it” (Harrison, 2015).
Moreover, because of social media, within the BLM movement, the contributions of women and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community are being recognized, despite their underrepresentation in mainstream media. Similarly, public discourse around the politics of respectability (Higginbotham, 1993) has emerged among movement activists. Many supporters vehemently reject the notion that a movement must fit a certain image to be seen as legitimate by broader society (Houston, 2015; Stafford, 2015). Messages disseminated by BLM activists and the mainstream media are vastly dissimilar; as a result, future studies should examine differences in rhetoric and impact of competing narratives on perceptions of policing in the United States. Further, as the BLM movement achieves greater political standing, researchers might perform content analysis to examine whether and to what extent, movement rhetoric becomes normalized, eventually appearing in mainstream media reporting.
Sherman (1993) suggested that perceived unfairness of a sanction results in defiance in the face of directives from authority figures, which might partially explain the unfavorable attitudes that many young people in low-income neighborhoods have toward police. Similarly, Runciman (1966) asserted that social movements stem from collective experiences of injustice and a belief that something deserved is unobtainable given the status quo. Social media exposes the general public to Black citizens’ historic and passionate claims about police wrongdoing. It is important to examine how exposure to this information might alter people’s perceptions of police. Not only can social media cast much needed light on individual experiences, but it also has the potential to connect people’s experiences. After the BLM movement began to gain momentum, many alleged victims of police abuse began to challenge “the bad apple defense” typically used to explain officer misconduct (Reyes-Chow, 2014). In connecting experiences, social media has allowed people to vicariously experience injustice through a wider and more nuanced lens than previously possible.
The impact of social media on changes in perception may vary by race and class. Whites and people from affluent neighborhoods are generally less likely to directly experience aggressive policing than Blacks residing in distressed neighborhoods (Weitzer & Tuch, 2002). Social media might not provide new information about troubled police–community interactions for individuals routinely experiencing aggressive policing. On the other hand, social media might expose the nature and extent of aggressive policing to some people for the first time, resulting in greater changes in those individuals’ trust of and confidence in police.
Social Media and Perceptions of Legitimacy
In 2015, police in the United States killed 1,134 people, of which about 20% were unarmed (Swaine, Laughland, Lartley, & McCarthy, 2015). National media attention regarding how often officers kill suspects has the potential to impact citizen perceptions of legitimacy. As a consequence, the idea of “going viral” may warrant further examination. The phrase is often applied in marketing and communications research (see Dobele, Toleman, & Beverland, 2005; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011; Sevin, 2013). Virtual objects, such as videos, hashtags, and images, can become popular and travel rampantly through the virtual environment to the point where exposure is nearly universal. These viral events punctuate the less dramatic and more ephemeral day-to-day social media landscape. That is not to say that information sharing within smaller networks cannot be impactful, but it may function differently from viral sharing. Therefore, it is important to distinguish the impact of clearly defined events (e.g., the release of dash-cam footage of police-involved shootings) and the virtual elements that follow (e.g., initial use of a hashtag) from slower changes in social media content and users that ebb and flow over time (e.g., trends in hashtag use or interactions between particular accounts).
Social media and contemporary movements such as BLM have had a profound effect on the way the public views policing, as is evident by expanding representations of the movement in pop culture, politics, and academia, but systematic research on the nature and extent to which social media can change perceptions of policing is sorely needed. Callanan and Rosenberger (2011) found that although watching crime shows and television news impacts viewers’ attitudes, actual experiences have an even greater effect. Rosenbaum, Schuck, Costello, Hawkins, and Ring (2005) reported that both negative and positive vicarious police experiences impacted Chicago residents’ perceptions of police. Rosenbaum and colleagues (2005) also uncovered racial differences regarding how study participants became aware of police misconduct. In particular, Blacks and Hispanics were more apt to receive negative information from relatives, friends, and neighbors, whereas Whites typically learned of dubious police behaviors from conventional media outlets. It is important to understand how information shared through social media impacts perceptions for those having less direct contact with the police. Rigorous examinations of social media might yield improved understandings regarding how vicarious police experiences help to shape public sentiment regarding crime control policy. Furthermore, this line of inquiry might assist the general public’s recognition that not all communities are policed the same and as a result, some neighborhood residents’ perceive officers as an occupying army.
Moreover, because the BLM movement has attempted to connect police violence to a narrative of systemic injustice, our understanding of legitimacy would benefit from examining whether youths view policing as part of a larger, morally corrupt, political system. Activists use the same rhetoric when discussing police violence that they employ when drawing attention to similar social harms disparately impacting Black people, emphasizing broader structural issues connected to criminal justice reform. For example, students at Eastern Michigan University staged a protest because the institution supported controversial school-closing measures in Detroit. One student noted, “‘as a black student, my rationale for doing the die-in was that structural racism causes not only police brutality, but also the starving of majority black public schools. This is a subtler form of violence’” (Joseph, 2015, para. 4). The BLM movement has also been connected to efforts to increase the minimum wage to US$15 per hour because “‘[t]his movement cannot be divorced from economic opportunity’” (Washington & Bacon, 2015, para. 15).
Research Methods With Social Media
Social media provides a wealth of easily accessible data that is currently underused in research on police–community relations. The nature of communication through social media may provide keen insights into a person’s thoughts, ideas, and behaviors from a different perspective than is typically provided by face-to-face interviewing or survey-based research. Information about perceptions and thoughts is presented without being prompted by an interview or survey question and it is not necessarily created with academic scholarship in mind. Communication integrates slang, abbreviations, phrases, and visual imagery in ways that are perhaps exclusive to social media. Even within social media, groups use unique language and establish different norms for communication. For example, in one of the few early analyses of the BLM movement and Twitter, Freelon, McIlwain, and Clark (2016) identified six general groups who participated in conversations around BLM. They were not mutually exclusive, though, as some users belonged to multiple networks: BLM (activists), Anonymous/Bipartisan Report, Black entertainers, conservatives, mainstream news, and young Black Twitter. Though all of the groups discussed police brutality, they did so in different ways. For instance, BLM postings are generally more political in nature than entries appearing on young Black Twitter. By studying communication between social media users, researchers can better understand how information travels through networks and the potential for social movements to promote change. There are a number of important methodological issues to consider with regard to establishing systematic approaches for analyzing data drawn from social media.
The first consideration for researchers concerns which social media platforms they might attempt to analyze. Each platform serves a slightly different purpose. For example, Twitter is used for microblogging, Facebook for communicating within friendship networks, Instagram for sharing images and video clips, Periscope for live streaming, and Vine for sharing video clips. The unique features of each application should be contemplated based on the specific research question(s). Our focus herein is on Twitter because it is frequently used by BLM activists. Several aspects of Twitter—including hashtags and trending topics, lack of requirement for mutual following, integration into a smartphone application, ability to share what other people post (“retweet”), low costs, and large number of users—place it at the center of the BLM movement. Twitter may be especially appealing to researchers because anyone can view posts and communications, unless a user’s designation is private.
Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, and Silverstre (2011) put forth a framework for understanding different functional aspects of social media and their implications for users. The seven functional blocks they distinguished are: identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups. Social media platforms emphasize diverse functions. Moreover, activist might take advantage of their respective designs. Finally, careful analysis of social media might yield new information regarding how individuals form and shift attitudes toward the police.
Conducting research with data obtained from social media content presents several potential challenges. For instance, new accounts are constantly being created and existing ones deleted. On many social media platforms, one person can have multiple accounts, and there are automated accounts that are not managed by anyone, posting spam (or nothing at all). Most social media platforms allow users to adjust privacy settings, so some communication is not accessible. If certain users are selected as part of a study, for example, to examine how individuals’ narratives shift over time or to explore how leaders emerged within the movement, researchers should consider whether they are drawing representative samples. Popular users with many followers or frequent posts may share information differently than the “average” user. Conducting research using social media could facilitate snowball sampling because following or subscribing typically connects accounts. Being enmeshed in any one network may limit the generalizability of study findings, however.
Social media can be useful for analyzing trends. Many social media platforms use hashtags or some other form of tagging to connect people and content. Because posts often have a time stamp, researchers can track the volume and pace of different ideas using time series analysis (see, e.g., Huang, Thornton, & Efthimiadis, 2010). Twitter allows users to add their location to tweets, so topics can be tracked over time and geospatially. Sloan and Morgan (2015) found, however, that there is demographic variation regarding who opts in to location-tagged Twitter posts. Chew and Eysenbach (2010) used the phrase, “infodemiology” to describe this type of research, suggesting that it is useful to consider digital information diffusion in the same way that one studies disease transmission.
While Freelon et al. (2016) provided an overview concerning the significance of several popular hashtags during the expansion of the BLM movement, more in-depth content analyses of social media would be useful, especially toward understanding whether perceptions of police legitimacy change over time. In addition to the methodological considerations typically associated with longitudinal and geospatial research, when using hashtags as a way of identifying content to analyze, researchers should carefully determine which hashtags to examine and the associated content. For instance, searching for “#Ferguson” on Twitter will produce different results than searching for “#BlackLivesMatter,” though there is considerable overlap between the two entries. Therefore, it is important that researchers identify all relevant hashtags and their variants (such as those with alternate spelling/grammar or local versions of more popular hashtags) as well consider which terms and phrases are included or excluded from the search domain. In additional to what is shared most, content analyses could also explore which topics are most salient, whose voices are most influential, how information is transmitted through retweets versus originally composed tweets, the influence of counter-movement narratives and “trolls,” or the role of humor and memes in conveying information. Analyses should be considered at both the macro level in terms of content within and between networks and at the individual level as it relates to content within and between individual users.
Images also play an important role in social media and should be included when analyzing content. An improved understanding regarding how the content, meaning, and norms around using visual imagery on social media impacts people’s perceptions of policing and the criminal justice system would be beneficial. Pictures, like text-based content, can serve different purposes. For example, circulating images and videos of police misconduct have the potential to raise awareness, invite others to participate in organized actions, or share more light-hearted jokes and memes. Technology that enables sharing digital photographs and videos in real time has created a situation where news outlets and government spokespeople no longer serve as intermediary sources. As a consequence, the public quickly receives information about events occurring “on the ground” during protests and in the community at large (Garrett, 2006). For instance, during demonstrations in Ferguson, MO, and Baltimore, MD, mainstream media highlighted destruction of property. Activists on the ground, however, were able to counter that narrative, broadcasting pictures of police seemingly indiscriminately unleashing teargas on crowds of protestors (Kang, 2015). While some mainstream media outlets focused on gangs, violence, and looting (see, e.g., Levs, 2014; Mosendz, 2015), protestors tweeted pictures of Bloods and Crips protecting business from looters (Licata, 2014) and community members dancing in the street (Tesfatsion, 2015). By sharing these images, counternarratives emerged regarding what lawful protest looked like and the ways marginalized communities of color might ban together in troubling times.
Some applications also provide platforms for live streaming or broadcasting from cell phones, allowing viewers to act as virtual surveillance. For example, following the arrest of 17 protestors during a weekend of demonstrations in Ferguson, MO, the St. Louis City police chief tweeted, “Protestors now throwing rocks at the police. Arrests have been made for continued illegal behavior” (Dotson, 2014). Other users immediately responded to what they perceived as an outright lie: “Livestream watchers saw where police began arresting folks at the sit-in. There were no rocks thrown #Ferguson” (Kay, 2014. Police later acknowledged that only one rock was thrown, hitting the ground, not an officer (O’Neil, 2014). This incident suggests that future research has the potential to examine whether official and mainstream media narratives drastically differ from social media posts. Scholars might also examine the extent to which traditional news coverage is influenced by live streamed events, presented from an unconventional perspective.
Conclusion
As a new form of mass communication and platform for immediate dialogue, social media has been influential toward galvanizing a contemporary civil rights movement, largely directed by youth. The police-involved killings of Terence Crutcher, Walter Scott, Anthony Hill, Rekia Boyd, Mya Hall, Paul O’Neal, and dozens of other unarmed Black people since August 2014 have cast desperately needed attention on long-standing acrimony between police and communities of color. The purpose of this essay was to review the landscape of existing research on police–minority relations and police legitimacy in the hope of unearthing new research questions and methodological directions. Given the groundswell of global attention to our nation’s policing crisis, we contend that scholars have the potential to expand our knowledge by examining how social media and social movements shape attitudes toward police.
Assessments of trustworthiness and fair treatment play a major role in both a person’s overall perceptions of police legitimacy and behavior in specific instances (Tyler, 2003; Tyler & Fagan, 2012). The vast majority of research has relied on surveys and in-depth interviews to assess differences in attitudes toward the police. While these methodological approaches have steadily produced novel findings, future studies should expand this line of inquiry using social media analyses. Black youths’ police experiences are at the center of a national conversation that does not typically include their voices. Those whose lived experiences are seldom represented in mainstream media are now using social media as a platform to spread awareness and exercise greater agency concerning their own narratives. Additionally, people who do not typically experience nonvoluntary police contact are using social media to gain new perspectives on others’ negative experiences.
Researchers should consider how different types of social media platforms and groups of users within each setting may differ in the data and research questions they produce. Social media affords people the ability to communicate through images as well as with words. In this article, we placed a particular emphasis on Twitter, though the BLM movement has a presence on a variety of platforms. The impact and use of social media could also vary by individual characteristics, such as race, occupation, or socioeconomic status. Analysis of social media data can be useful in examining trends over time and place, including the viral nature of the distribution and transformation of content and ideas.
Ubiquitous social media use, especially among young people, brings a new source of data from which researchers have much to learn. Not only is the content itself potentially rich and informative, social media use has shaped the way the public conceptualizes and discusses police misconduct and inequities in the criminal justice system; it is important to learn more about this process. Addressing some of the existing gaps and new opportunities for research presented herein might help scholars and practitioners better understand the complex relationship between disaffected youths and the criminal justice system. Such an approach recognizes that similar to race, age represents a consistent and strong predictor of attitudes toward police.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.