Files
Abstract
The present study explored meanings associated with the words protest and riot as they appear in contemporary news media. Drawing inspiration from previous works in sociology and linguistics, this study evaluated both the structural and contextual environments in which news media most commonly use protest and riot and the implications that these regular environments have for descriptions of conflict associated with a racial identity. Upon considering the two words uses in large linguistic corpora and specific accounts associated with both Ferguson, Missouri and Occupy Wall Street, the present study compared single uses of each term to the patterns of use found as news coverage of a conflict changes. While results indicated that protest and riot have both different single uses and different patterns of use, they could not definitively determine if increased frequencies of riot are connected with racial identity or the degree of violence within a conflict.