ABSTRACT
October 2023 will mark the 25th anniversary of the infamous murder of Matthew Shepard. The Shepard murder remains the most highly publicized anti-gay hate crime in the United States. The brutal murder garnered nationwide attention soon after the attack and has inspired numerous books, movies, and plays. Media offers a useful lens to understand how the public remembers tragic events and what is included and excluded from public memory about those events. Accordingly, this chapter presents a frame analysis of recent online and print media coverage of the Shepard murder in three leading newspapers to examine how Matthew Shepard and his brutal attack are being remembered in the public eye after 25 years. Four common frames emerged from the analysis: (1) the brutality of the Shepard murder; (2) Shepard as a “young gay college student”; (3) symbolism of the Shepard murder; and (4) social, legal, and political change for LGBTQ people via hate crime legislation. Drawing on intersectional and queer criminological perspectives, the chapter discusses how these common frames reflect and shape how the public understands anti-LGBTQ violence and remembers its victims. This chapter also evaluates which LGBTQ people's experiences of crime and the criminal justice system are centered, and which are overlooked, by those common frames.
