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Which Lives Matter?

Factors Shaping Public Attention to and Protest of Officer-Involved Killings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 September 2023

Traci Burch
Affiliation:
Northwestern University and the American Bar Foundation, Illinois

Summary

This Element explores the factors that lead the public to pay attention to and mobilize in support of victims of officer-involved killings. The author argues that race is the most important factor shaping both attention and mobilization. Black victims are statistically significantly more likely to trend on Google and get protested than victims of other races. Deaths of low threat Black victims are more likely to affect political interest, voter turnout, and protest rates, and only among young Black observers. This Element attributes this pattern to the fact that mobilization around officer-involved killings is responding to anti-Black discrimination, rather than general sentiments about police violence. It also finds that the local density of social justice organizations increases political mobilization.
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Which Lives Matter?
  • Traci Burch, Northwestern University and the American Bar Foundation, Illinois
  • Online ISBN: 9781108982870
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Which Lives Matter?
  • Traci Burch, Northwestern University and the American Bar Foundation, Illinois
  • Online ISBN: 9781108982870
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Which Lives Matter?
  • Traci Burch, Northwestern University and the American Bar Foundation, Illinois
  • Online ISBN: 9781108982870
Available formats
×