Which Lives Matter?: Factors Shaping Public Attention to and Protest of Officer-Involved Killings

This Element explores the factors that lead the public to pay attention to and mobilize in support of victims of officer-involved killings. The author argues that race is the most important factor shaping both attention and mobilization. Black victims are statistically significantly more likely to trend on Google and get protested than victims of other races. Deaths of low threat Black victims are more likely to affect political interest, voter turnout, and protest rates, and only among young Black observers. This Element attributes this pattern to the fact that mobilization around officer-involved killings is responding to anti-Black discrimination, rather than general sentiments about police violence. It also finds that the local density of social justice organizations increases political mobilization. Cover Title page Copyright page Which Lives Matter?: Determinants of Public Attention to and Protest of Victims of Officer-Involved Killings Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 Theory and Plan of the Element 1.2 Contributions 2 Grievances and Mobilization against Officer-Involved Killings 2.1 Officer-Involved Killings, the Racialization of Grievance, and Mobilization 2.2 Race, Grievance, and Visibility 2.3 The Traceability of Officer-Involved Killings 2.3.1 Was There an Intentional Use of Lethal Force? 2.3.2 Was There a Legally Relevant Justification for the Use of Force? 2.3.3 Factors Affecting Public Judgments about Justification 2.3.4 Traceability to Racial Discrimination 2.4 Conclusion 3 A Closer Look at Mobilization in the Aftermath of Officer-Involved Killings 3.1 Data 3.2 Victim Level Analysis 3.2.1 Overview of Officer-involved Killings in 2016 3.2.2 Multivariate Analysis: Methods 3.2.3 Multivariate Analysis: Trending after an Officer-Involved Killing 3.2.4 Multivariate Analysis of Protest after an Officer-Involved Killing 3.3 Observer-Level Analyses 3.3.1 Officer-Involved Killings and Political Interest 3.3.2 Officer-Involved Killings and Voter Turnout 3.3.3 Officer-Involved Killings and Protest 3.4 Summary and Discussion 4 The Role of Organizations 4.1 Changing the Calculus of Participation 4.2 Increasing Victim Visibility 4.3 Tracing Killings to Racial Discrimination 4.4 Analysis of the Effects of Organizational Capacity 4.5 Discussion 5 Summary and Implications 5.1 Implications for Accountability 5.1.1 Official Narratives and Accountability 5.1.2 Repression and Accountability 5.2 Implications for the Movement 5.3 Implications for Research References