Say their names: Resurgence in the collective attention toward Black victims of fatal police violence following the death of George Floyd.

ABSTRACT: The murder of George Floyd by police in May 2020 sparked international protests and brought unparalleled levels of attention to the Black Lives Matter movement. As we show, his death set record levels of activity and amplification on Twitter, prompted the saddest day in the platform's history, and caused his name to appear among the ten most frequently used phrases in a day, where he is the only individual to have ever received that level of attention who was not known to the public earlier that same week. Importantly, we find that the Black Lives Matter movement's rhetorical strategy to connect and repeat the names of past Black victims of police violence-foregrounding racial injustice as an ongoing pattern rather than a singular event-was exceptionally effective following George Floyd's

SUBMITTER: Wu HH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9833594 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature