A CDA analysis of the US mainstream media's coverage of BLM protests 2020

What I have found that mainstream media changing their traditional routine towards the protests

Methodology

• The Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model as framework (Fairclough, 1995).
• The Halliday’s systematical functional linguistic as analytical tool to analyze the linguistic parts of samples (Halliday, 1994).
• Protest paradigm was mainly proposed by Mcleod, which can be as a reference to examine the media’s negative perspectives to the protest (Mcleod, 2007)

Fundings and discussions 

• There are no obvious signs that the US mainstream media using protest paradigm to portray the BLM protests among the 4 news articles.
• It shows that mainstream media tend to report the protest through a positive perspective.
• The dominate discourse of mainstream media is trying to describe that all of US people stand together supporting the protest no matter you are white, black or other minorities.

Also, there are some explanations as below but only represent  my personal opinions

• The video George Floyd brutally by a white policeman spreads throughout the social media, which is unacceptable for most people. It is hard to demonise the protest by mainstream media.
• Many white communities started to join the protest, due to lack of diversity of newsroom in the US, It is hard that journalists hold a negative views to portray these protests which are supported by most white communities.

After I finished the study I found there is a question that how much the audience can feel this changing  perspective towards the protests?

I interviewed 3 Bournemouth university students and listen how the felt about US mainstream media coverage of the protest.

Ifeoluwa

Lawrence

Robert