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.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-192204 |
Date | January 2021 |
Creators | Eriksson, Josef, Thelander, Linnea |
Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper |
Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
Language | Swedish |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
Format | application/pdf |
Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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