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March 7, 2022

After Black Lives Matter formed in 2013, in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, new ways of talking about race gained traction.

A new study co-led by the University of Washington shows how Black Lives Matter protests have changed the way people talk about race.Clay Banks/Unsplash

And with protests sparked by subsequent police killings, such as those of Eric Garner, Philando Castile and George Floyd, the use of and online search for anti-racist terms skyrocketed, indicating a growing common anti-racist lexicon and generating renewed attention to racial justice that continues today.

The growing use of these terms, according to new research, shows how Black Lives Matter has shifted the conversation around racism, raising awareness of issues and laying the foundation for social change. The research, led by Indiana University and the University of Washington, published March 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

When protest happens, it changes the way people talk, said lead author Zackary Dunivin, a doctoral student in sociology and complex systems at Indiana University. Black Lives Matter got people to pay attention when people werent paying attention. The protests got people to care, and that has changed the way people are talking and thinking about race.

In the paper, Dunivin and co-author Jelani Ince, an assistant professor of sociology at the UW, show that how people talk about an issue and how often they talk about it can create momentum and bring attention to a cause. They point to civil rights marches, which led to changes in voting and housing rights, and to anti-Vietnam War protests, which helped shift public opinion and led to Congressional hearings.

To evaluate the impact of Black Lives Matter protest, the researchers turned to social media, news coverage and online search engines. They set out to determine how these protests shifted public interest and conversation by examining attention to and use of related terms and topics.

The researchers chose four different publicly available data sources: Google search, Twitter mentions, national news mentions and Wikipedia page visits. They created a list of more than three dozen terms to search for, such as systemic racism, prison abolition and others that are associated with Black Lives Matters themes and the concept of anti-racism.

The study found that during Black Lives Matter protests, people search for these terms up to 100 times more than they did in the weeks prior to the protests. Over time, these spikes in searches for terms related to Black Lives Matter have expanded to include other ideas: In the early years of the study period, searches for police shootings and the names of victims of police homicide were common; in 2020, searches included topics like prison abolition and redlining.

In addition, the study noted the staying power of ideas: Six months after the George Floyd protests in 2020, social media attention to anti-racist ideas was significantly higher than it was before the protests. Daily visits to Wikipedia pages for Black Lives Matter, for example, were around 10 times greater; for systemic racism, 5.5 times greater; and for prison abolition, 1.6 times greater, from August through December 2020, compared to the same period the year before.

As social scientists, we know that change is not an inevitability, but requires persistence from actors over time. This shift in discourse is a reflection of change in the political terrain, Ince said. It shows that the movement is evolving. Its not just a moment, its an accumulation.

Of course, not every search or use of the designated terms indicates support, the researchers said. Data measuring page visits, for example, doesnt capture why someone visited a page it just tracks the visit. Along the same lines, use of a hashtag doesnt necessarily prove a users intent to support a movement. Further data-driven research could pursue those questions, the study points out, and specifically the role of countermovements and rhetoric in association with the use of anti-racist terms.

But what online searches, media coverage and tweets do show, Ince and Dunivin said, is how the issues and terms raised by Black Lives Matter have grown in public awareness over time. And the terms themselves have expanded beyond their connection to specific incidents of police homicide to broader issues of inequality.

While the study didnt link these terms to social change such as votes or policies, it does show how a current movement is building toward that change, the authors said.

Black Lives Matter is providing an alternative route to the social problems society has created, Ince said. These protests arent just trying to make noise, but to reimagine what community can do. This is an attempt to do what should have been done decades ago.

Other co-authors on the study were Harry Yaojun Yan and Fabio Rojas at Indiana University. The study was funded by the Racial Justice Research Fund at Indiana University and the National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Ince at jince@uw.edu or Dunivin at zdunivin@iu.edu.

Excerpt from:
How Black Lives Matter protests sparked interest, can lead ...

Black Lives Matter's history from Trayvon Martin to George Floyd

From Trayvon Martin to George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter movement continues to highlight Black lives lost to police and racial injustice.

Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

Since the nationwide protestsfollowing George Floyd's murder in summer 2020, misinformation about Black Lives Matter has spread online, ranging from misleading claims about the movement's founderto false assertions about the groups politics.

Anotherclaim surfaced Feb. 15 on Facebook.

BLM burned our cities and destroyed $2B of property. They faced no consequences.Their lawlessness celebrated and excused," reads text in the post, published by a page called The Right View of the United States."So yes, Im absolutely fine with some truckers & farmers clogging roads & bridges for freedom.

The post shows a Feb. 11 tweet fromBryan Dean Wright, an opinion writer and former CIA officer. Combined, the posts accumulated more than 5,000 shares within a week.

The "truckers & farmers"mentioned in the post refer to anti-vaccine mandate protesters in Canada. The protests, colloquially known as the"Freedom Convoy," began in late January after the Canadian government started requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination for drivers crossing the U.S. border. Similar movementshave cropped up across the world, with demonstrations against COVID-19 restrictions also taking place in Belgium and the Netherlands.

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While the post contains an element of truth, it presents a misleading comparison of the Freedom Convoy and Black Lives Matter protests.

Some reports have estimatedinsurance claims for damagesrelated to the 2020 protests totaled about $2 billion. However, the post is wrong to claimprotesters saw no consequences in fact, over 10,000 protesters were arrested, most for low-level offenses.

USA TODAY reached out to Wright and The Right View of the United Statesfor comment.

Damages caused by the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests were estimated to cost $2 billion, a number that could "still go higher," according to a February2021 report published onthe World Economic Forum's website.

The reportwasauthored by the head ofProperty Claim Services, which hastracked protest-related insurance claims for decades. The group found that 2020 protests cost more than any other period of unrest in American history, as the average cost of demonstrations since 1950 has been about $90 million annually.

Other cost estimates support Property Claim Services' $2 billion figure.

Fact check: Posts mislead about crowd size, peacefulness at Canada Freedom Convoy protest

Axios reported inSeptember2020that the Insurance Information Institute, which collects data from Property Claim Services and related firms, estimated that damages could total as much as 2 billion and possibly more.

Contrary to the claim in the post, manyBlack Lives Matterprotesters did face consequences. Estimates vary, but news outlets reported thousands of protesterswere arrested in the months following Floyds death in May 2020.

A June 22, 2020,article from The Washington Post tallied over 14,000 arrests made since May 27.The Hill reported over 17,000 arrests had been made in the first two weeks of protests.

Despite the large number of arrests, The Hill reported most of those protesters were booked not for violent crimes, but for low-level offenses such as violating curfews.Obstructing roadways and carrying open containers were other reasons for the arrests, as well asfailure to disperse.

Some more serious charges were filed as well, however. The Associated Press reportedhundreds were charged with burglary and looting as of June 4, 2020.

In October 2020, researchers writing forThe Washington Post analyzed 7,305 protest eventsand found police made arrests at 5% of them. Only 3.7% of the events involved property damage or vandalism, according to the analysis.

PolitiFactreported in June 2020 that, while protests in several major cities started with violence, most demonstrations across the country were largely peaceful.

Based on our research, we rate PARTLY FALSE the claim that Black Lives Matter protesters caused $2 billion worth of damage and faced no consequences. It's true that, in 2020, protests over Floyd's death were estimated to have caused about $2 billion in damage. But the post is wrong to say demonstrators faced no consequences. News reports indicate more than10,000 protesters were arrested, most for low-level offenses.

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

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Fact check: Thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters ...

2020 was the year a once-in-a-generation global pandemic clashed with a global call for racial equality.

In her excellent new book, Through the Lens: The Pandemic and Black Lives Matter, NYU professor Lauren Walsh attempts to understand the historic year through the vantage point of the photojournalists that were on the frontlines capturing a multitude of unprecedented events. Walsh records the emotional toll that came with covering death, destruction, and endemic racism.

The historic Black Lives Matter protests were the largest demonstrations in US history and reverberated globally, Walsh says.

The devastating Covid-19 pandemic, a once-in-a-century disaster, has impacted the entire world. And both situations collided in 2020, forcing photographers into a terrain defined by new ethical, technological, and safety concerns, as well as innovative attacks on press freedom.

Through the Lens features images that range from lockdowns in Shanghai and Wuhan, to protests in Minnesota and Portland.

Her work, Walsh adds, aims to uncover the ethical dilemmas and the risks and challenges visual journalists encounter to bring us the news in pictures.

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How COVID and Black Lives Matter Converged - VICE

The number of employers implementing new diversity and inclusion drives has almost trebled since the end of the Black Lives Matter protests, new research shows.

A total of 27% of minority-ethnic workers said their employers had introduced new initiatives during the last 12 months in response to the global movement, according to an Opinium survey of 2,000 adults. This was an increase from 10% in 2020, the year in which protests began after George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in the US state of Minnesota.

The latest Multicultural Britain survey, undertaken by the pollsters in partnership with the advocacy organisation Reboot, said that almost half (47%) of minority-ethnic workers had seen their employer take some sort of action to tackle racism and diversity problems up from 40% in 2020.

We were interested in questioning whether promises made by employers after George Floyd were just an example of performative activism or if we were still seeing the action happening today, which is why we specifically asked whether employers have taken action, said Priya Minhas, the lead researcher of the Multicultural Britain series.

In 2020, 73% of minority-ethnic people said they had experienced discrimination, but this year, for the first time since the Multicultural Britain series began in 2016, that figure dropped to 64%. Minhas said that it was difficult to tell whether this was positive change as a result of the global protests or because of people largely working from home and restrictions in socialising due to the pandemic.

While there have been improvements in increased satisfaction in what employers are doing, and more people feeling that businesses and organisations are making an authentic effort to tackle racism, there is still work to be done and clearly there are still issues in the workplaces that need to be addressed, she said.

The survey results show that there have been some positive changes in the workplace somewhat allaying concerns that businesses and companies were committing to anti-racism only in the height of the summer of 2020.

Sereena Abbassi, an inclusion practitioner who has worked with organisations including Sony Music, the NHS and English National Ballet, said there were encouraging signs the protests were a watershed moment.

She said: In some instances, there are businesses and employers who were very performative in their work and the catalyst seemed to be George Floyds murder for them to accelerate their work around diversity, inclusion and equity, but there are also others who have decided to take it very slow and are instead doing the work quietly, rather than showing up just for the optics.

Abbassi added that she had seen a continued appetite from companies and organisations to want to work with her and that the protests had inspired people to change.

From the clients Abbassi has worked with, she feels training sessions and conversations have been successful in contributing to a more diverse and inclusive workspace.

She said: More businesses are thinking about positive action and organisations have developed initiatives like mentoring schemes to ensure junior staff have contact with senior staff. After the protests we saw a lot of rage from people of colour, but also white allies within organisations.

Asked about the survey results that showed people were having fewer conversations about race this year than in the summer of 2020, Abbassi said a possible reason for this was that there was a real sense of fatigue when discussing race, especially for ethnic minorities who carry the burden of educating white people in their workplaces. She added that people may be concerned that having conversations about race would lead to them saying the wrong things and that it could cost them their job.

Lawrence Heming, the assistant director of EYs UK diversity and equity team, said the survey results showed it was important for people to understand how recent events such as the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests had affected things, either positively or negatively, for ethnic minorities.

Heming says although the results showed that some issues surrounding race were still prevalent and that we are nowhere where I would say we need to be, there were findings that suggested things were slowly shifting.

He added: More firms in the corporate sector are introducing initiatives and policies to tackle racism and more people are being more mindful on certain issues this has had a positive impact, but it is important for places to still be held accountable, today, for the commitments they made in 2020.

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Workplace inclusion drives have almost trebled since BLM protests, survey shows - The Guardian

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A tenured Canadian professor who was fired after criticizing Black Lives Matter (BLM) has a proposed arbitration date set during which she intends to lay out her grievances against her former university.

"All of my grievances are going forward together at this time," Frances Widdowson said during a recent interview with The College Fix. She confirmed to Fox News Digital that the proposed dates are Jan. 16-27, 2023, but they have not been confirmed.

A protester waves a Black Lives Matter flag during the demonstration. (Stanton Sharpe/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Widdowson, who taught economics, justice and policy studies, was fired from Mount Royal University (MRU) in Calgary, Alberta, last December after stoking controversy for comments criticizing BLM, which she said "destroyed MRU" to such an extent that she "doesnt recognize the institution anymore."

Widdowson, who studied Indigenization initiatives for 20 years, also took flak for claiming that Canada's controversial residential school program offered Indigenous children the opportunity "to get an education that normally they wouldnt have received." Her comments came amid a national backlash over the discovery of unmarked graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visits the makeshift memorial erected in honor of the 215 indigenous children remains found at a boarding school in British Columbia, on Parliament Hill, June 1, 2021 in Ottawa. (DAVE CHAN/AFP via Getty Images)

A petition later circulated calling her a "racist professor" and demanding her termination, which prompted a response from the university.

Widdowson told The College Fix that she wanted an open arbitration so that journalists can attend as she appeals for her rehiring and presents documentation she has been keeping since 2019 regarding issues she has with Mount Royal University.

Professor Frances Widowsson (Credit: MOUNT ROYAL UNIVERSITY)

"Without upholding academic freedom, we have no ability to explore ideas and pursue the truth," Widdowson said.

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The Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, which is a free speech advocacy group, supported Widdowson in a letter, and she told The College Fix that some of her former colleagues expressed support for her privately.

Mount Royal University did not immediately respond to request for comment.

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Tenured Canadian professor fired after saying BLM 'destroyed' her university - Fox News