“Death at the hands of police has not stopped. Since May 26, 2020 — the day after former officer Derek Chauvin killed Floyd — police have killed at least 223 Black people” These are the type of Images and videos that elicit collective actions. Social media made it possible for everyone to see, first-hand, what happened to George Floyd.
The video was shared by someone whom, by normal standard, would not be considered influential— 17-year-old Darnella Frazier, and viewed millions of times across the world. The public did not need to see the incident through the lens and filters of mainstream media or high-profiled Hollywood celebrities. The video offered resounding proof to indict Derek Chauvin and three other police officers involved, resulting in Mr. Chauvin’s arrest and prosecution.
This post was written as part of Scholarship discourse on media images, especially Social media images: with reference to Images and videos as an important source of information and news coverage.
Images are said to be great influencers, that elicit reactions for collective actions, just as the audio-visual images of George Floyd flooded the social media with greater impact George Floyd’s death in the hands of the Police is one too many. Unfortunately, situations like this continue unabated around the Globe, even in celebrated Democracies. Therefore, events like this are met with spontaneous reactions and sentiments from the public.
Peaceful protests, awareness-raising, and grass-roots campaigns are all forms of political action. Minorities and members of oppressed communities engage in these acts to get their messages out and call attention to their struggles.
These acts are what is called collective action.
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the United States is a great example of collective action. Collective action is any form of organized social or political act carried about by a group of people in order to address their needs: it is mostly for collective good. The magnitude of response and reactions to this murdering act was a protest that took a great cosmopolitan dimension; it became a global movement of collective action. This therefore spurred the inspiration to research into the influence of Images. To conduct the research, I choose the mixed method of qualitative and quantitative method to enable critical evaluation of the linguistic and communication gestures.
I was a bit worried at the onset, but explanations from the lectures and seminars on Research Methods in Media and Communication (RMMC) got me off-the-hook and more interested in reflective and qualitative research process using discourse analysis. Not only should a researcher be very cautious at developing his/her questions (rightly), but employ a discerning method that will impact positively on the research. This guidance and its underlying processes present a win-win situation.
The exercise was a good experience because I was able to understand the hidden signals and underlying meanings analysed and assessed in the reportage linguistic and body language of the participants, compared to using the content or thematic analysis. However, it is recognised that discourse analysis has its limitation, in like of unintended assumptions or bias on the part of the researcher (Phillips and Hardy, 2002).
The qualitative method of discourse Analysis was able to bring out data that captured all salient aspect in terms of ethnographic and framing concepts. Going by this experience, if I am to redo this research, the tendency is to adopt a qualitative discourse analysis in conjunction with a focus group discussions with select people (an audience) to listen to the four digital media television stations, towards a broader perspective.
The social identity model of collective action scholarship literature is largely predictive of collective action aims and (to a lesser extent) behaviour. While information and media material are distributed through a variety of channels for public consumption, the effect of visuals and imagery on collective action is mostly unknown. While mass movements use digital channels and social media to influence social change and relieve societal problems, collective action is a critical method for transforming power relations (Sreedharan et al., 2019).
Within the social structure, research on people' motivations for large protests dates all the way back to the nineteenth century. (2003) (Gitlin): Civil societies react to social injustice in ways that go beyond mere reflection. Movements are sparked by emotions—primarily fear and hope; later, solidarity generates collective rage against oppressors (Castells., 2015). This implies that political and social variables are critical.
The significance of images to movements has been recognised, as seen by encounters with police and the visual iconography used by movements to alter public opinion and garner popular support (Casas and Williams 2018). There is a modest but increasing body of scholarship about the importance of news images in mobilising public participation. Advocacy organisations and their campaigns play a critical role in mobilising citizens to address environmental challenges. Campaigns are launched across a variety of outlets, including television, radio, and new media outlets (Wang, Corner, Chapman, & Markowitz, 2018).
Due to the accessibility and dynamic nature of Facebook and Twitter, they have become a more attractive medium of public communication and instrument for social mobilisation (Bergström and Belfrage, 2018). Thus, the perception of media images may have a considerable influence on collective activities, as seen by the May 2020 BlackLivesMatter campaign and the November 2020 Nigeria EndSars demonstrations. Twitter and Facebook were the primary communication channels for these two events. The spontaneity and communality were enormous.
This raises the issue of what may have been the additional driving factor behind the two demonstrations' near-global participation: The Tweets, Facebook tales, or the Images that circulated alongside the Tweets and Facebook tales. As a result, this research contributes to existing knowledge on the power of shared pictures and imageries as crucial influencers.
Using qualitative content analysis on a data set of 50 initial tweets and information on microblogging services of Twitter and Facebook in reactions to images of George Floyd's brutality by Minneapolis police officers', and in relation to the preceding protests; this study examined the sentiment occurring in reaction to relevant tweets (and retweets) given the feature of "retweeting," while establishing the elicited negative /positive reactions for collective actions.
Fidings
The investigation of the retweets Clearly demonstrates that the network's most prominent members are advocates or authors whose posts and messages are more frequently shared. I began by calculating the average number of words indicating linguistic aspects for each user, emotive processes, as well as their subtypes of happy and negative emotions: IMPACT= POS (0.29) + NEG (0.20) are all substantially greater than the total-sample averages. This suggests that, in addition to other considerations, linguistic features indicating sentiment in Twitter feeds may have a major effect on users' influence, i.e., the retweetability of their posts. TOP AMERICAN CELEBRITIES / ACTIVISTS WHO TWEETED.
To ascertain the influence of social media in mobilizing collective action against police brutality, the research uses the following indices for assessment. The race of Facebook and Twitter users were determined by their social media profile. The gender of Facebook and Twitter users were determined by their social media profile. Study examines the intensity of popular outrage over George Floyd's murder accordingly. 1) Twitter and Facebook comments made by whites and blacks (race) against police brutality. 2) Twitter and Facebook comments made by men and women (gender) against police brutality. 3) Twitter and Facebook comments made by whites and blacks (race) against protest for justice. 4) Twitter and Facebook comments made by men and women (gender) against protest for justice 72% of Tweets and 70% of Facebook comments spoke outrightly against police brutality towards George Floyd. 58% of males (white and black) and 14% of females (white and black) spoke against police brutality on Twitter. The images of police brutality towards George Floyd were met with anger. These same respondents called for collectrive actions against the continued poor policing by the American police system.
The RQ1 research was able to demonstrate that the public responded spontaneously and favourably for the common good in response to the injustice and death of George Floyd, as seen by the call to action to oppose the heinous deed. The findings reinforced numerous experts' claims about the relevance of visuals in RQ2 collective activities. In RQ3, the research examined the extent to which well-known public personalities have influence on Facebook and Twitter.
The massive number of retweets and direct messages from prominent artists and participants in the discussion confirm this conclusion: the influential received many retweets and so seemed to exert a great amount of influence on the whole collective action process.
Twitter messages that contain emotive-process-related keywords are more likely to be retweeted than those that do not. More precisely, tweets expressing joyful or disappointing emotions are quite probable to propagate through Twitter. invariably, such data would not only be easily recognised, but socio-political sentiment as well. This study established the possibility for images/videos to serve as a substantial stimulant for collective action and social activism (identification, efficacy, and wrath) in the context of the many protests after GEORGE FLOYD's death.
A representative sample verified the Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA), implying that almost all causes indicated anticipated involvement in protests. Identity and anger mediated the relationships between event and protest intention, while anger and efficacy mediated the relationships between social media news and protest intention. The findings demonstrate the need of combining ideas from related domains to get a better understanding of the galvanizing potential of collective action through media use.
As a result, the conclusion suggests that news images in social media build 'collective awareness' of protestors and their cause, which Kielbowicz and Scherer (1986) define as "collective awareness," in which viewers may connect with and connect to the concerns of others (Chan 2017, p. 3).
Another assumption is that such media information validates protestors and sustains movement energy, encourages new recruitment, and creates compassion. SIMCA model of social /group/ cause Identification and collective Action While the compilation of these films does not always result in conviction, it does result in a conviction in public. If no officer is ever arrested because of these systems' failures, but public awareness has been created that these incidents continue to occur, then much has been accomplished in the court of public opinion. It provides another perspective through which victimised and disadvantaged populations' experiences become considerably more real and factually accessible to the public.
As long as these films exist, they will continue to assist individuals in visualising their experiences.
The George Floyd tale has once again shown the critical nature of citizen journalism, as several studies have shown. The audio/visual IMAGE was a factor towards the ultimate decision, just like the 2010 Ian Tomlinson inquest in England (Thorsen and Allan 2014) Otherwise no one would have known what truly transpired: Whereas body cameras were meant to show police activity in the field (following a long transition). They are often withheld until weeks or months after an individual has been harmed or criminalised.
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