Commemorating Wrongful Conviction Day: Social movement organizations’ messages and audience responses to them

• In Event: Critical Methods Towards Addressing Harm in the System.

Abstract

Research estimates that 4–6% of all U.S. convictions are in error, suggesting thousands of innocent people are wrongfully imprisoned every year. Several social movement organizations collaborate annually to commemorate Wrongful Conviction Day (WCD) and to raise public awareness about wrongful convictions. This study conducts a semantic network analysis of transcripts of 2020 WCD events to address questions about the range of messages that organizations convey on WCD, which frames are prominent within this communication, and how audiences respond to these messages through their chat participation. We show that the content of WCD event messages is influenced by participating organizations’ reform or abolitionist goals. We also demonstrate that audiences have mixed reactions to WCD event messages that are politically challenging. We discuss study contributions to the scholarly literature on wrongful convictions and social movements as well the implications and limitations of our research

Authors

• Valli Rajah, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY

• May Rose Pascaud, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY