Whether they’re booing a team’s owner, chanting about racial injustice or boycotting their club, fans use their collective passion to express concerns and call for change. They may seem like a small group, but when hundreds or even thousands of fans demonstrate simultaneously, it can be a powerful force. During the Civil Rights Movement, Black sports fans turned their love for teams into a nonviolent tool of protest by boycotting professional clubs with segregated seating and pressing city leaders to integrate schools, stadiums and public services through newspapers, pickets and pamphlets.
Today, fans are still finding new ways to protest – from boycotting a game to rallying against their clubs’ owners. As such, it’s important for journalists to understand how and why fan activism works and the impact of how it is framed in news stories.
Our research suggests that newsrooms can frame protest stories in a way that reduces the risk of delegitimizing people who are involved in the protest. By humanizing – rather than criminalizing – the person whose death spurs a protest, and by using language that legitimizes the protest itself, journalists can improve the overall impression of the protesters’ legitimacy.
We studied two story areas that we believe are critical to consider when reporting on protests that involve underrepresented groups: 1) whether the person whose death prompted the protest is humanized or criminalized in the news story, and 2) the language used to frame the protest itself (legitimize or delegitimize). Results show that both these aspects can significantly affect the perception of the protesters’ legitimacy and credibility.