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Following the rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement in 2020, there has been an increased focus on racial equality in library services, including recent modifications of the ALA Code of Ethics. Online library services may eliminate race‐based service discrimination by obscuring the racial identity of the patron. However, racial assumptions based on patrons' names can lead to online discrimination. While prior research shows mixed results, we examine if there is evidence of racial bias in virtual reference in American academic libraries. Initial findings based on content analysis of 946 responses from 255 libraries suggest that Tyrone Jackson received better service than others did. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work‐in‐progress study investigates the information sharing behavior of different levels of Twitter influencers within the context of the #BlackLivesMatter social movement and its related discussions #AlllivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter during the 2‐week period around Derek Chauvin's trial. Using qualitative content analysis and quantitative machine learning methods, we analyzed over one million retweets to test if different levels of influencers tend to spread different kinds of information in the discussions around #All/Black/BlueLivesMatter on Twitter. We found out that different levels of influencers tend to spread different information within and between the #All/Black/BlueLivesMatter, and we offer some explanations through the lens of curation logics. We suggest that different levels of influencers may be exposed to different incentives, and be facing different social norms, which leads to different information behaviors. This work‐in‐progress study contributes to updating the theory of curated logics, virality, and influencers, as well as provides empirical data for the discussions of the #BlackLivesMatter social movement and its related discussions of #AllLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely thought that perceptions of policing have become polarized along political lines following highly publicized episodes of police violence against minority victims spearheaded by the Black Lives Matter movement and associated counter-movements. Yet, little is known about how the general public interprets events involving police officers as typically reported in mass media headlines, and whether these interpretations differ by political leanings. In this paper, we use a novel experimental design informed by affect control theory to show that liberal and conservatives systematically interpret "clickbait" headlines featuring surprising or ambiguous events involving police officers in systematically different ways. Liberals are more likely than moderates to imagine police misbehaving toward victims perceived to be good, while conservatives imagine victims of police violence to be bad, and thus possibly deserving of mistreatment, even when that information is not specified. We close by outlining the theoretical and practical implication of our results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Police violence continues to be one of the most widely debated topics in contemporary American society. The emergence of the Black Lives Matter Movement following the highly publicized deaths of unarmed Black men has further fueled debates surrounding race and police. In this study, we examine the role of racial residential segregation in fatal police shootings. City-level data from the U.S. Census, as well as data on police killings were obtained from Mapping Police Violence (.org) and analysed. Based on index measures of dissimilarity of the 25 largest cities in the United States, we do not find support that more racially segregated cities have more cases of fatal police shootings. Instead, we find support for the racial threat hypothesis, in that, cities that are less racially segregated appear to have more instances of fatal police shootings. These findings are further explored and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Race and the police appeared to be major issues in the 2016 presidential election, though in seemingly conflicting ways. On the one hand, the Black Lives Matter movement appeared successful in drawing public and political attention to the issue of police mistreatment of black citizens. On the other, the election witnessed the re-emergence of racially-coded calls for law and order. Building a theoretical model drawn from work on social movements, race, and the politics of crime and justice, we explore public opinion about the police and race in the context of the election. Using the 2016 American National Election Studies Time Series Study, we investigate contrasting views of the police--affective police support versus perceptions of police racial injustice and support for Black Lives Matter. The results suggest two distinct and divergent stories. On the one side, concern about biased policing and support for the civil rights movement seeking to address it was associated with increased turnout among Democrats and more votes for Hillary Clinton. On the other side, claims about supporting the police appeared to matter mainly to those with high levels of racial resentment. Implications for our understanding of the 2016 election, racial justice social movements, and the politics of the police are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of force by police officers has been a controversial issue in the United States, which has gained media attention in recent years surrounding the deaths of citizens such as Eric Garner and Freddie Gray. Polarization around this issue has increased as movements like BlackLivesMatter receive backlash. Still there is hardly a consensus about where to draw the line between reasonable force and police brutality. Though one thing has become apparent; a racial divide on support for police use of force exists. The purpose of this study is to explore this divide and shed light on the possibility that prejudice plays a role in the attitudes of whites toward police use of force. The results from my findings, using the 2004-2014 GSS, suggest that prejudice plays a role in the racial divide which could hold serious policy implications for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research on Black people in the United States treats blackness as a monolithic identity. However, there are many different groups and ethnicities under the overarching umbrella of Blackness. Recent literature on the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has not taken into account the diversity of Black identities in relation to social movements and identity. This study provides another perspective of the BLM movement from those who are affected but are often not included in the conversation: Afro-Caribbean immigrants in the US. This study builds on theories that explain the circular relationship between social movements and identity. Do Black people agree that all Black lives matter? How do Afro-Caribbean immigrants feel about BLM? Does racialized violence unite or undermine racial solidarity? To address these questions, I conducted 16 in-depth qualitative interviews with Afro-Caribbean people in the US. I found that they do understand themselves to be part of the Black community, especially in the Black Lives Matter Era, but that the variety of understandings that they hold play a larger role. This study contributes to the larger discussion on race and social movements by examining understudied diversity in Black identities of Afro-Caribbean people in relation to the Black Lives Matter movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of diffusion have long drawn substantial interest from social movement scholars. With the rise in social media, scholars have become increasingly interested in how the nature of content on social media might be related to its dissemination across online social networks. In this paper, we examine how content differentiation affects the spread of a social movement. We argue that the various stages of a protest cycle moderate the relationship between the innovativeness of content related to a movement and the rate of diffusion of the movement. To test our propositions, we adopt methods from natural language processing to conduct a computational analysis of content related to the Black Lives Matter movement on Twitter from May 2016 to July 2016. Our findings show that tweets with less differentiated content are more likely to spread during the initial stage of a protest cycle - which we call the ripening stage - but when the movement gains momentum - entering what we call the frenzy stage - tweets with more differentiated content are more likely to spread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a study that explores how theories of power help us understand what may motivate Black Lives Matter activists' desire to bear witness. It mentions that the Black Lives Matter movement has become prominent, sustained, African American social protests of the new millennium. It also mentions that activists like Alicia Garza have launched #BlackLivesMatter Twitter hashtag to protest what they believed to be a travesty of justice and journalism's power to redress grievances.

The article presents a study on the role that group identity cues play in social movement messages through an experiment using a newspaper article featuring a university student speaking in support of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Topics include #BlackLivesMatter as a notable example of a movement for social justice that has largely relied on social media to transmit its message.

The article focuses on a study based on the emergence of the Black Lives Matter Movement presented an ideal site for investigation into the types of narratives produced in a new, digitally enabled type of journalism. It mentions that journalism that portrays racial issues as isolated or individual events and also mentions about coverage of civil-rights movement by Journalism 3.0.

This article studies how two social movement networks evolve in time and place by means of Twitter. Activists campaigning against the deportation of undocumented migrants in the United States introduced the #not1more hashtag in early 2013, which is analyzed as an example of "open source activism", and compared to the #blacklivesmatter movement. The campaign has a distinct topology: there are persistent and well-connected core users and many ephemeral users. The campaign also has a distinct geography: it has four interconnected metropolitan hubs and a large periphery in cities where activism flares up episodically. This topology and geography is explained by analyzing how network communities are constituted. While the exact topology and geography of #not1more and #blacklivesmatter is distinctive, we expect qualitatively similar patterns in other cases of open source activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces a discussion session titled "Media, Ferguson, and #BlackLivesMatter" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.