Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

1-1-2016

School

Communication

Abstract

After the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old African American man, by a White police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, some news organizations included in their immediate coverage a photo of Brown taken from his Facebook page. In a now iconic image, Brown stands in a Nike tank top, unsmiling, and flashing a peace sign (misidentified by some news organizations as a gang sign). Later, less incendiary photos from Brown’s Facebook page surfaced. Within a few days of Brown’s death, the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown appeared on social media. Young African Americans posted two photos of themselves, representing positive and potentially negative images, questioning which photo would be used by the media if they were shot by police. These posts reflected an insight into the notion of media representation that likely escapes most audience members who regularly view news coverage of Black men. These young African Americans perceptively and concisely identified the problems inherent in dominant media representations of Black men as pathological criminals, a persistent representation that affects both racial attitudes and public policy decisions.

Publication Title

Race and Gender in Electronic Media: Content, Context, Culture

First Page

195

Last Page

212

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