What can the affect of black rage do in a era of impossibility marked by the circulation of neoliberal post-race post-feminist themes? I argue that black rage is a key weapon in the fight against our impossible era—black rage operates through an affective bursting apart, disrupting circulating narratives connected to a post racial, post feminist world and charting a new path of social unrest that has the potential to transform the social order. I locate political uses of black rage through two case studies: CeCe McDonald, a black Trans* woman who was brutally attacked by a group of transphobic and white supremacist in summer of 2012. And in the Justice for Trayvon Martin March and Rally in Atlanta, Georgia in July of 2013. Both cases studies prove black rage can collectivize the struggles of differing people producing a feeling of possibility during our era of impossibility.

In 2005, Florida became the first state to pass the heavily National Rifle Association, NRA, supported "Stand Your Ground" law. The most notable components of the law were abolishing the duty to retreat for someone who is not engaged in lawful activity and is in a place where he has the right to be, granting civil and criminal immunity to those using lawful force, and presuming that a person who is attacked in his dwelling, residence, and occupied vehicle has a reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm. The law was subject to a substantial amount of criticism because it was a significant departure from Florida's more than a century old common law principles regarding self-defense. Possibly due to Florida not having any precedents for these cases, Florida courts would have conflicting decisions in these matters and law enforcement agencies would enforce the law differently in similar incidents. Regardless of the issues faced by Florida, over twenty states would adopt their own versions. A significant number of these states are in the Southeastern region of the United States and are neighbors to Florida or border Florida's neighbors, such as Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Louisiana. Because of this interesting pattern, the study examines the idea of southern culture playing a role in the passage of "Stand Your Ground" via the "Culture of Honor" theory and the researcher decided to use these jurisdictions and Florida as this study's sample. The researcher also wanted to include these jurisdictions because the existing "Stand Your Ground" literature mainly focuses on Florida and the researcher wanted to add something new to the discussion. The intent of this study to examine Florida's influence on the other jurisdictions, note any commonalties between the statutes of the jurisdictions, compare justifiable homicide statistics for the jurisdictions that provided such data, predict the future of these laws, and explore the "Culture of Honor" Theory as a possible explanation for "Stand Your Ground" laws in the states discussed. The study accomplished these goals by examining how each jurisdiction handled self-defense before "Stand Your Ground," looking at the motives behind the jurisdictions adopting "Stand Your Ground," comparing justifiable homicides in the four jurisdictions that provided them in the years immediate preceding the passage of "Stand Your Ground" to the subsequent years, and looking at amendments and proposals that were presented after the passage of "Stand Your Ground." The results uncovered that all the jurisdictions, except for Georgia and Tennessee, show a very strong Florida influence based on their similarities to Florida's law and legislators in the jurisdictions clearly mentioning Florida as their inspiration for proposing their own versions. In the jurisdictions that provided justifiable homicides, all showed an increase in the number of justifiable homicides after the passage of "Stand Your Ground." The jurisdictions in this study have also shown a strong resistance to any amendments or the complete repeal of this law. Therefore, any drastic amendment or the complete repeal seems unlikely in the future. The "Culture of Honor" Theory does explain why a few of the jurisdictions in the study adopted "Stand Your Ground" but Florida and the NRA's influence explain why others chose this course of action.

The following thesis’s purpose is to target the frames of victims Trayvon Martin and George Floyd. Martin and Floyd were killed by white perpetrators and the events later received mass attention by The United States population and media. The subject matter of the victims’ deaths suggested possible motives of ethnic profiling from the perpetrators. Both cases started a debate surrounding the outcome of American culture where discrimination towards African Americans still existed.    The thesis has chosen four news articles by two different American newspapers as test material. These tells perspectives of the cases involving the victims. The news articles were published during a month period after the victims’ deaths. Chosen test materials are examined by a qualitative content analysis, exploring the theoretical concepts of rhetoric. By analyzing the artistic- and inartistic proofs and the dispositions of the news articles, the study finds perspectives and deeper interpreted meanings that can apply certain framings to Trayvon Martin and George Floyd. The purpose of the examination was to determine the frames’ similarities, differences and if they have changed over the years. Also, by examining frames the study was to find emotional reactions through the rhetoric perspective and discuss what these represent.    The result confirms that there are certain frames that suggest emotional traits from a form of sympathy for the African American society. Some of these emotional reactions are anger and sorrow which determine sympathy and possible empathy for the victims and the ones affected. The analysis also suggests Martin’s frames are similar to Floyd’s but are treated differently. For example, Martin is framed as a young victim of a possible hate crime that caused his death, but Floyd is framed as a symbol for a cause that spread world-wide. The content of the news articles differentiates where for example, the focus lays upon the outcomes of the victims’ deaths. These outcomes depend on the cause at hand and how they were impacted by society and not to mention the Black Lives Matter- movement.

This study explores how participants respond to news coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting based on their colorblind racial attitudes. The purpose of this study is to understand how people’s beliefs about the salience of race and racism, as well as how framing within news coverage, contributes to how people privately respond to racial events and their willingness to publicly express their views in discussions. Participants answered questions about their racial ideology, their views about the role of race in the Trayvon Martin shooting, and whether or not they were willing to express these views in a discussion after reading articles that either promotes an overtly colorblind view of the Trayvon Martin case, a race conscious view of the case, or only states the facts of the case (for the control condition). It was found that there were racial differences in how participants viewed the role of race in the Trayvon Martin shooting, even when controlling for racial ideology, and that beliefs in colorblind ideology impacted views of the Trayvon Martin case and willingness to discuss it, with participants with race conscious views that were shown an article that presented the case from a colorblind perspective reporting being less willing to discuss their views on the case compared to those shown an article that presented the case from a race conscious perspective.

Research has revealed that more Americans than ever are turning to the World Wide Web as their primary source for news and information instead of legacy media outlets such as printed newspapers and magazines and broadcast news. As more and more people rely on the Internet as a primary source for news, it is important to analyze the characteristics and content of online news to expose and correct problems associated with the practices that inform its production and presentation. There are several longstanding practices in the American journalistic tradition that have been adapted to the online news environment. The practices of market segmentation and gatekeeping are two such practices. To date, few studies have explored how internet news coverage differs when the same story is altered to address the perceived interests of specific target audiences. This goal of this study was to collect and examine the characteristics of news stories presented on the homepages of three news websites—the Huffington Post, Huffington Post Black Voices and News One—to arrive at conclusions about the similarities and differences in how news content is reported to a general audience and to an African-American audience. This exploratory study used both Web sphere analysis and qualitative analysis to examine the collected homepage news stories. It used the results of the analyses to explore the possible effects continued market segmentation and selective exposure online could have on discourse in the public sphere. The study found that the legacy media practice of market segmentation was evident when online news reporting on targeted and untargeted news website homepages was compared. The study also revealed that the traditional role of the Black Press in legacy media has been resurrected in new media and is evident on news websites produced by African-Americans, for an African-American audience. Additionally, a qualitative examination of online news coverage of President Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address and the death of Trayvon Martin revealed that the targeted audience influences the editorial slant through which news websites report stories.