The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the last decade has gained widespread support for protests against police brutality targeting African Americans. However, some people during these protests have resorted to violence, mostly against property, creating an opening for opponents to shift the debate from protesters’ grievances to the nature of the protests by labeling them as “riots” and depicting protesters as criminals. In recent years, activists have turned to social media networks such as Twitter to counter these claims. The following study draws upon Stanley Cohen’s work on official accounts of denial to analyze how activists during the Ferguson unrest of August 2014 responded to attempts to delegitimize their protests. Based on a qualitative analysis of 4201 tweets by three leading activists who participated in these protests, it shows how they used interpretive and implicatory denial as well as positive representations of events to create a counternarrative that allowed them to garner public support as well as focus attention on protesters’ grievances. Through its examination of these discursive strategies, this study offers a theoretical and methodological framework of analysis that can be applied to different struggles and contentious repertoires.

过去十年来，“黑人生命也是命”（BLM）运动因抗议警察针对非裔美国人的暴行而获得了广泛支持。然而，在这些抗议活动中，一些人诉诸暴力，主要是针对财产，这为反对者将辩论从抗议者的不满转向抗议的性质创造了机会，将抗议者贴上“骚乱”的标签，并将抗议者描述为罪犯。近年来，活动人士转向 Twitter 等社交媒体网络来反驳这些说法。以下研究借鉴了斯坦利·科恩（Stanley Cohen）关于否认官方说法的研究成果，分析了 2014 年 8 月弗格森骚乱期间活动人士如何回应试图使他们的抗议活动合法化的企图。基于对参与这些抗议活动的三位主要活动人士的 4201 条推文的定性分析，该报告展示了他们如何利用解释性和暗示性否认以及对事件的积极表述来创造反叙事，从而使他们能够获得公众支持并引起关注关于抗议者的不满。通过对这些话语策略的检验，本研究提供了一个理论和方法论的分析框架，可以应用于不同的斗争和有争议的剧目。