Black Lives Matter in the Media: The liberal and conservative newspaper framing of Black Lives Matter protests in the United States between May 2020 and May 2021

The majority of the literature on the newspaper coverage of BLM protests concludes that the overall coverage was quite negative between 2013 and 2020. This study fills in a knowledge gap by answering the research question: How did liberal and conservative newspaper opinion articles frame the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States between May 2020 and May 2021? The method used is a qualitative content analysis and the data consists of 99 newspaper opinion articles written in the New York Times, Washington Post, New York Post, and Wall Street Journal. Here, the theoretical concepts that guide the analysis are racial grammar and colorblindness. The study finds that the liberal newspaper opinion articles were pro-BLM, and the conservative anti-BLM, in their general protest framing between May 2020 and May 2021. In addition, racial framing through the minimization of racism, cultural racism, and the denial of racism were central in conservative articles, but non-existent or a deviation in liberal articles. The study concludes by stating that the conservative articles deny (systemic) racism to defend its existence and that this is in line with contemporary US conservative ideology.