Framing Physicality and Public Safety: A study of Michael Brown and Darren Wilson

Abstract

Abstract This article examines how contact with the police led to the death of Michael Brown (an unarmed 18-year-old Black teenager from Ferguson, Missouri, who was shot and killed during an altercation with a police officer). And, how Darren Wilson (the White police officer from the Ferguson Police Department who shot and killed Michael Brown) was portrayed in mainstream newspaper articles covering the story of Brown’s death. Using both frame analysis and Hall’s framework of discursive domains for organizing and making sense of events in social life, we analyzed news coverage of Brown in three of the top circulating daily newspapers in the US: The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post. The Lexis Nexis database was used to retrieve a set of newspapers using the search term “Michael Brown.” Articles from the three leading newspapers were collected from the day the event occurred, August 9, 2014, through the end of the year, December 31, 2014. The news articles used in this study were mostly written with an episodic frame. The articles presenting the socioeconomic background of Brown and Wilson were described as profiles on each individual and the neighborhood they came from, rather than a discussion about where they fell on the economic structure of this country and the larger, upstream forces that might influence those positions. The feelings and attitudes of the reader are also likely to be influenced by details included in the articles and how they were presented. The findings contribute to the broader literature looking at the relationships between police and Black communities. Public health can play a role in advocating and facilitating programs that build better linkages between police and community. The public health field can take a leadership role in holding the news media accountable when they are engaging in frenetic inaction. Only by having difficult and challenging conversations that examines the upstream causes of violence and deaths like Brown’s, can we make progress in preventing them.