Whose Lives Matter?: The Newsworthiness of Police Killings of Unarmed Blacks

• In Event: 579 - Section on Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 05. Crises

Abstract

This study investigates why some cases of police killing unarmed blacks become national news stories while others do not. It proposes that cases can be conceptualized as a series of situational components (e.g., method of injury, decedent’s criminal history, number of officers involved, and grand jury proceedings) positioned within a social structural context (e.g., violent crime rate, population size, blacks’ share of the population). It argues that these case aspects influence story availability and story suitability, the building blocks of newsworthiness. This project uses an original quantitative dataset to conduct a media-distortion analysis, comparing the actual occurrence of cases to their presence in national print and television news outlets, and using case aspects to predict their newsworthiness. Results from multivariate models indicate that population size, blacks’ share of the population, video evidence, protests, civil suits, and police identification of the officers involved in the event are positively associated with newsworthiness. In contrast, decedents resisting arrest and being injured by an electroshock weapon are negatively associated with newsworthiness.

Author

• Alicia D. Simmons, Colgate University