#FeedThePeople to #FreeThePeople: Safety, Surveillance, Property, and Public Space in Social Movement Framing

Anika Lanser, Columbia University

Relationships to safety, surveillance, public space and property have shifted distinctly during the Covid-19 pandemic. This work seeks to understand how these shifts have influenced the framing by mainstream media of social movements organizing during this period. Previous literature on social movement organizations posits framing as a discursive process where the meaning of the movement is collaboratively created and defined to mobilize future actions and members. Drawing on a case study of Abolition Park, which began as Occupy City Hall in New York City advocating for the defunding of the New York Police Department, this paper uses 500 Tweets and 400 Instagram posts from Abolition Park and 50 articles published in mainstream media outlets to understand how Abolition Park is framed by outsiders and how it resists outside framing through the use of social media. Mainstream media’s framing of Abolition Park focuses on clashes at protest actions and policing, while Abolition Park’s framing emphasizes their direct action and mutual aid work that draws on prefigurative politics. Both mainstream media and Abolition Park’s social media draw on similar themes of safety, surveillance, public space, and property to frame Abolition Park, yet misrepresentation of the community by mainstream media is what led Abolition Park to create social media that reframes concepts like safety and public space within abolition ideology. The differences in framing between Abolition Park and the mainstream media indicate the potential of social media as a space for discursive framing within social movements and as a tool for social movements to reclaim the framing of their work. This work examines what kinds of direct action are legitimized by mainstream media as protest, as well as the potential for social movements to use social media to counter mainstream media’s framing of those movements.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 188. Pandemics and Society