Violent Riot or Peaceful Protest? Elite Attitudes toward George Floyd Protests

• In Event: Poster Session: Race, Ethnicity, and Politics II

Abstract

As social injustice has been one of the most contentious issues in the United States politics, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party have shown dissimilar attitudes toward protests following the killing of George Floyd in May 2020. To what extent do the two parties differ with respect to willingness to publicly express opinions around the issue of racial justice on social media? How is political polarization manifested in the politicians’ social media posts about the nationwide protests?
This study focuses on the role of social media—in particular, how social media platforms are used by politicians, who are most reliant on voters, as a way of expressively demonstrating their opinions on such controversial political issues. Based on a novel dataset that contains Twitter posts uploaded by 100 U.S. Senators about the protests triggered by George Floyd’s death, the study examines the occurrences and sentiments of the posts during the first two weeks since the killing (from May 26 to June 9, 2020), as well as key factors that may influence such issue attitude and expressive behavior.
Evidence suggests that the choice of certain words, as well as the frequency, differs significantly between Republicans and Democrats. For example, Republicans tend to use such terms as ‘violence,’ ‘horrific,’ and ‘looting,’ whereas Democrats seemed to explicitly mention ‘racism’ and discuss the Floyd story within the broader boundaries of social justice, with frequent use of ‘Breonna Taylor’ and ‘Ahmaud Arbery.’ From sentiment analysis, Democrats are more likely to show positive attitudes toward the protests, while Republicans tend to associate them with negative emotions using stronger words. Results from multi-level regression analyses indicate that, at the individual level, Democrats are more likely to publicly express their opinions about the protests and racial issues than Republicans, and that black Senators are more likely than others to share their thoughts about the issues on social media. At the state level, higher Democratic share of the presidential votes and heavier composition of black population increase the number of social media posts by an individual Senator about the issues. In sum, the data find a significant elite polarization within social media channels around the issues of social (in)justice, which may influence potential voters in shaping public attitudes toward such contentious issues in a democracy.

Authors

• Yul Min Park, University of Pittsburgh

• Theodore Charm, University of Texas at Austin