Frames and Counter Frames In Pro-Palestinian College Campus Demonstrations: Content Analysis of News Stories, March-June 2024

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Abstract

Israel's response to Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack and subsequent invasion of Palestinian territories, leading to the killing of over an estimated 40,000 Palestinians and nearly 100,000 wounded, spurred worldwide outcry and claims of genocide. This was especially evident across U.S. college campuses, where supporters of the Palestinian people, and notably college students, participated in campus demonstrations to denounce the Israeli government’s actions, call for a ceasefire, and demand that their universities divest from Israel. Yet, despite a history of colleges being sites of social justice activism and free speech, many college administrators denounced Pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations, with some taking punitive action against students who participated in them. This raises questions about how universities, often seen as bastions of free expression and social activism, come to stigmatize students engaged in social justice movements as well as how students contest stigmatized labels. To that end, this exploratory study seeks to identify the frames and counter frames university administrative officials and Pro-Palestinian college campus activists use to describe each other. Our study is guided by two questions. First, what frames do college administrators construct to label Pro-Palestinian campus activism as deviant? Second, what counter frames do Pro-Palestinian activists deploy in response these deviant frames? Employing content analysis of newspaper articles from March 2024 to June 2024, we find that university administrators engaged in discourse that framed activists as law breakers or antisemitic. Activists responded with frames that cast university administrators as complicit in genocide and suppressors of free speech. These findings have implications for understanding how U.S. college leaders and elected officials come to interpret progressive social movements and sanction them.

Authors

• Aria Nebenzahl, Northeastern Illinois University

• Dan Maurer, Northeastern Illinois University

• Caitlin Burkey, Northeastern Illinois University

• Juan R. Martinez, Northeastern Illinois University