In the wake of the guilty verdict of George Floyd’s murderer, police officer Derek Chauvin, there is hope for change in the pattern of police brutality against black people in the United States. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas was published three years prior to George Floyd’s death, in 2017, and is a realistic fictional novel in the young adult genre that has gained attention for its relevant contribution in the debate of racism and police violence, as the fictional victim Khalil Harris, an unarmed black teenager, does not receive the same justice as George Floyd. In this essay, reader response to The Hate U Give is analysed in order to examine how it affects the opinions and worldview of the reader during and after the read. A close reading and analysis of pivotal scenes was carried out using affective stylistics, in order to interpret what the text does to the reader word-by-word, and subsequently the reader’s creation of meaning was examined and discussed. The reader’s response was then analysed with Stanley Fish’s theoretical framework of interpretive communities, groups with shared social norms and worldviews, which dictate how individuals create meaning in the first place. The analysis suggests that readers of The Hate U Give, while starting out in different, albeit to a certain extent similar, interpretive communities, will gradually align themselves with the interpretive community of Black Lives Matter through shared ideas and opinions and the increased understanding they develop when they read the novel.

This thesis investigates US state level politics framing of the BLM protests during 2020, by inductively identifying frames and then proceeding to study if and on what grounds securitization occurs in these. Press statements, interviews and documents from eight Mayors and Governors in six of the states where the protests have been the most prominent are analyzed. From this material, four frames have been identified: the alienated outsider frame, the constructive rage frame, the limited guardian frame, and the desecuritizing frame. Recent developments in securitization theory investigate human life and dignity as a reference object, making a case for integrating humanitarianism in terms of grounds for justifying extraordinary measures. Three grounds for securitization are investigated empirically in the identified frames: state, social and humanitarian security. The study concludes that whilst both state security and to a lesser degree humanitarian security are detected in the identified frames, societal security seems to be the most prominent. This suggests that large-scale identities are the most common reference objects in the treated context. Further research is encouraged, especially in terms of distinguishing potential frame alignment processes by looking at a greater number of states over a longer period of time.

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On March 25th 2020 George Floyd, a black man, was killed on the streets of Minneapolis,Minnesota by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer. This sparked new life into the BlackLives Matter movement (BLM), which had been around since 2013. This new found interestin the movement had a remarkable spread on social media, permeating the discoursethroughout most parts of society. The purpose of the essay is to study how the use ofInstagram has contributed to the spread of the BLM movement as well as the socialconsequences the movement had on society. To study this the essay uses Faircloughsperspective on critical discourse analysis to analyze three dimensions of the empiricalmaterial, these being: text, discursive practice and social practice. Interaction, intertextuality,interdiscourse and themes are going to be used as tools to provide the necessary frameworkfor analysis. This in combination with postcolonialism, structural racism and mediatizationfor the theoretical framework. The analysis proved that educational and informative textswere important in conveying messages linked to racism, antiblackness, racial profiling andstructural racism. Aswell as reoccuring themes, such as police violence, antiblackness,slavery, racism, demonstrations. The platform was used to highlight social injustices andsocietal problems. Instagram proved an important medium for spreading the movement'smessage, having voices that are typically repressed in society forming and controlling thediscourse. Due to an increasingly mediated society, the use of Instagram made it possible foreveryone to take part of the discourse.

Syftet med undersökningen är att utforska på vilket sätt representanter för Alternativ för Sverige (re)producerar högerpopulistiska diskurser i anslutning till Black Lives Matter demonstrationerna under sommaren 2020. Undersökningen ämnar skapa förståelse för hur subjektspositionen “svensk” konstrueras, hur en eventuell hegemonisk ståndpunkt utmanas ochhur den förstås inom de högerpopulistiska diskurserna, samt ta reda på vilket sätt mot diskurser konstrueras gentemot Black Lives Matter-rörelsen. Detta undersöks på Twitter, medFaircloughs kritiska diskursanalys. Slutsatserna visar på att Alternativ för Sverige reproducerar högerpopulistiska diskurser genom produktionen av text på Twitter, vilket i förlängningen upprätthåller den högerpopulistiska diskursordningen.

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The aim of a master thesis called Police Brutality in Young Adult Literature is to analyze the portrayal of police brutality in three young adult books, whether it reflects the reality and thus conveys a credible picture of the situation to teenage readers. The three books used for the analysis are The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas, Dear Martin by Nic Stone and Ghost Boys by Jewel Parker Rhodes. The analysis is based on three key areas and their analysis: the environment, language, and the act of police brutality in connection to racial stereotypes. To do so, the theoretical knowledge from the first three chapters of this thesis is applied. This part covers the concepts of police brutality and applies it to the case of the United States. It shows how the American police force has evolved and its current state, including the factors that influence police brutality in the United States. The analysis of individual books shows, that police brutality is portrayed in a credible way and it shows no distortion of reality for the purposes of fiction. This thesis also highlights the possibility of different interpretation of certain scenes, where the authors attempt to portray racial stereotypes and the interpretation depends on the readers' historical and cultural knowledge, which might result in a slight...

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