ABSTRACT
#BLACKLIVESMATTER: Using Social Media to Challenge Racist Policing Practices and Mainstream Media Representations is about how the Black Lives Matter movement represents itself and the Black community irrespective (or perhaps because) of how the media frame and represent Black people. By using social media platforms such as Twitter, local BLM chapters respond to the incessant violence against Black people and contest Black stereotypes appearing in the news media. In this chapter, we assess and interpret the rhetorical strategies informing BLM’s social media use. Using a mixed method critical discourse analysis, this chapter uniquely examines tweets appearing in the Twitter feeds of the three most active BLM chapters’ Twitter accounts (Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis) during their first nationwide campaign, the Black Xmas protests, in the month of December 2015. Specifically, we found that the chapters through their use of social media represented the movement, and Black people generally, in a manner that counters the Black criminality stereotype. In sum, BLM’s use of Twitter constitutes a discursive structure that contests racist representations socially shared in mainstream media; and by doing so, even amid impunity for state-sanctioned violence, it affirms Black lives matter.
