Turning a Colour-Blind Eye: a content analysis of social media comments on the Black Lives Matter-movement in the Netherlands

During the summer of 2020, several protests and actions for BLM were visible in the media. Due to this media coverage, the discussion of racism was prominent in the Netherlands on social media. This thesis is a qualitative content analysis for Facebook comments on articles reporting the Black Lives Matter-movement. This way, I researched how the comments fit in the existing theories of racism. These theories came from the works of Bonilla-Silva (2018), Wekker (2016), McIntosh (1989) and Essed and Hoving (2014). After researching 163 comments, I found two themes: ‘us vs them’, in which commenters drew a distinct line between the Dutch and non-Dutch, and ‘speaking out’ in which the user spoke out against the racism in the Netherlands. Additionally, I found separate themes which weren’t supported by the literature: accusations of racism, present innocence and (dis)credit to race. These themes are contemporary and/or specific for the Netherlands.