Objectives

To test whether news images from George Floyd protests and the Capitol insurrection affected feelings about the police differentially depending on respondents’ primary news environment.

Methods

This mixed-methods explanatory study combines national digital survey experiments and structural topic modeling of open-ended questions. Survey experiments were conducted on 990 respondents in June 2020 and 1,174 respondents in January 2021, at the heights of the events.

Results

Respondents who get their news primarily from conservative sources had substantially warmer feelings about the police after seeing Floyd protest images but not after seeing Capitol insurrection images. Topic modeling and qualitative analysis suggest this group distinctively perceived Floyd protesters as “looters” and “rioters,” discussing the Floyd protests but not the insurrection in terms of racialized chaos and anxiety.

Conclusions

Findings suggest asymmetric affective dynamics driven by the racialized anxiety of consumers of mainly conservative news when seeing images of racial justice protests.

中文翻译：

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种族清算抗议、国会大厦叛乱和不对称的社会事实：舆论的混合方法研究

目标

测试乔治·弗洛伊德抗议和国会大厦叛乱的新闻图片是否会根据受访者的主要新闻环境对警察的感受产生不同的影响。

方法

这项混合方法解释性研究结合了国家数字调查实验和开放式问题的结构主题建模。调查实验于 2020 年 6 月和 2021 年 1 月事件高峰期对 990 名受访者和 1,174 名受访者进行。

结果

主要从保守派来源获取新闻的受访者在看到弗洛伊德抗议图像后对警察的感觉要好得多，但在看到国会大厦叛乱图像后则不然。主题建模和定性分析表明，该群体将弗洛伊德抗议者明显视为“抢劫者”和“暴乱者”，他们讨论弗洛伊德抗议活动，而不是从种族混乱和焦虑的角度讨论起义。

结论

调查结果表明，主要是保守派新闻的消费者在看到种族正义抗议的图像时，会产生种族焦虑，从而导致不对称的情感动态。