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This study examines how the relationship between social media discourse and offline confrontations in social movements, focusing on the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests following George Floyd's death in 2020. While social media's role in facilitating social movements is well-documented, its relationship with offline confrontations remains understudied. To bridge this gap, we curated a dataset comprising 108,443 Facebook posts and 1,406 offline BLM protest events. Our analysis categorized online media framing into consonance (alignment) and dissonance (misalignment) with the perspectives of different involved parties. Our findings indicate a reciprocal relationship between online activism support and offline confrontational occurrences. Online support for the BLM, in particular, was associated with less property damage and fewer confrontational protests in the days that followed. Conversely, offline confrontations amplified online support for the protesters. By illuminating this dynamic, we highlight the multifaceted influence of social media on social movements. Not only does it serve as a platform for information dissemination and mobilization but also plays a pivotal role in shaping public discourse about offline confrontations.
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Spatiotemporal Patterns and Driving Factors on Crime Changing During Black Lives Matter Protests
The death of George Floyd has brought a new wave of 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests into U.S. cities. Protests happened in a few cities accompanied by reports of violence over the first few days. The protests appear to be related to rising crime. This study uses newly collected crime data in 50 U.S. cities/counties to explore the spatiotemporal crime changes under BLM protests and to estimate the driving factors of burglary induced by the BLM protest. Four spatial and statistic models were used, including the Average Nearest Neighbor (ANN), Hotspot Analysis, Least Absolute Shrinkage, and Selection Operator (LASSO), and Binary Logistic Regression. The results show that (1) crime, especially burglary, has risen sharply in a few cities/counties, yet heterogeneity exists across cities/counties; (2) the volume and spatial distribution of certain crime types changed under BLM protest, the activity of burglary clustered in certain regions during protests period; (3) education, race, demographic, and crime rate in 2019 are related with burglary changes during BLM protests. The findings from this study can provide valuable information for ensuring the capabilities of the police and governmental agencies to deal with the evolving crisis.
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- PAR ID:
- 10208495
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information
- Volume:
- 9
- Issue:
- 11
- ISSN:
- 2220-9964
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 640
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi9110640
