The Power of a Protest Icon: How Anger, Solidarity, and Subjugation Converged in “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” in Ferguson, Missouri

• In Event: ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session I
  In Interactive Paper Session: Ethnicity and Race in Communication Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

The August 9, 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed African American teenager by a Caucasian police officer in Ferguson, Missouri triggered intense public discourse, civil unrest and massive social protests, resonating not only within the African American working-class suburb of St. Louis but both nationally and globally. Our goal with this paper is to contribute to understandings of the construction of race through visual media, both in news coverage and in citizens’ creation and disseminationof images on social networks. In this paper we follow and interpret the contagion of the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” protest gesture as its various performances were captured on Internet imagemacros through the lenses of Critical Race Theory and Symbolic Convergency Theory.

Authors

• Margaret Ellen Duffy, U of Missouri

• Janis Teruggi Page, American University

• Cynthia Marie Frisby, Missouri

• Gregory Pearson Perreault, U of Missouri

• Brad Best, Missouri School of Journalism