Student Resistance Movements in Higher Education: An Analysis of the Depiction of Black Lives Matter Protests

• In Event: 47.084 - The Black Student Experience in Higher Ed

Abstract

The growing use of media in higher education practices have heightened the need for institutional leadership to not only understand the general impact of popular media, but also to comprehend students’ representation, and the acquisition and dissemination of media content. In this study, authors present a media content analysis of newspaper coverage of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the periodical, the Chronicle of Higher Education. Ultimately, this study demonstrates how 1.) organizational leadership can be influenced and disrupted to promote racial justice, and 2.) the discursive treatment of the BLM in popular media. Overall, this study suggests that BLM student movements have the capacity to complicate existing discourse about Blackness in higher education and catalyze substantial social change.

Authors

• Molly Sarubbi, The University of Denver

• Meseret Hailu, The Ohio State University