Analyzing Newspaper Coverage of Vigilantism To Understand American Elites, Media, and the State
(2024) MKVM13 20241Department of Communication and Media
Media and Communication Studies
- Abstract
- The cellphone footage of Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old white man in his twenties, choking the life out of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old Black man, in a New York City subway car during the summer of 2023 made headlines around the globe. The story took off in part because it was identified by the press as existing within the long history of American vigilantism, one that dates to the very founding of the nation. This tragedy mirrored a similar saga nearly 40 years prior when Bernhard Goetz, dubbed the “Deathwish Gunman” and “Subway Vigilante” by the newspapers, shot four Black teenagers whom he deemed to be a threat.
Previous scholarship on the Goetz case has revealed racialized news coverage, the role of surveillance, news narratives, and... (More) - The cellphone footage of Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old white man in his twenties, choking the life out of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old Black man, in a New York City subway car during the summer of 2023 made headlines around the globe. The story took off in part because it was identified by the press as existing within the long history of American vigilantism, one that dates to the very founding of the nation. This tragedy mirrored a similar saga nearly 40 years prior when Bernhard Goetz, dubbed the “Deathwish Gunman” and “Subway Vigilante” by the newspapers, shot four Black teenagers whom he deemed to be a threat.
Previous scholarship on the Goetz case has revealed racialized news coverage, the role of surveillance, news narratives, and parallels to pop culture. While many of these ideas are incorporated into this project, my thesis instead positions itself between the scholarly field of American vigilantism and the political economy of the media. Through a deep engagement with the history and theories behind both subjects historically and contemporaneously, I demonstrate that the study of one without the other is incomplete. Vigilantism can be found in more than just subway cars; it is in C-suites and woven into the very fabric of media institutions. Taking the widely accepted definitions of vigilantism too literally limits one’s understanding of an incredibly influential component of American social, political, cultural, and legal life. The overarching goal of this thesis is to apply the definitional elements of vigilantism to pressing issues of our time: the role of the state, elites, and the media, unearthing the presence of a pernicious ‘vigilante spirit’ in American society.
The theoretical perspectives of radical mass media criticism and vigilantism studies, focused on three actors: the state, the elites, and the media, inform my study of the 169 news articles upon which I conducted frame analysis. The articles range in time, by crime, and by genre of newspaper. Four frames are extracted, two for both vigilantism and my benchmark crime of choice, fare evasion: Anti-hero Vigilante, Urban Realities and its Victims; the Necessity of Police, and Terror Below. My analysis reveals a consistent construction of “others” across coverage of crime, used as scapegoats to generate fear of public spaces that demand violent intervention from state or private individuals. The thesis shows that newspapers owned and operated by elites can’t cover vigilantism and crime without constructing a violent social order, because the institution of media in America is itself vigilante in nature. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9151558
- author
- Rowell, Griffin LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- MKVM13 20241
- year
- 2024
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Vigilantism, journalism, frame analysis, violence, Bernhard Goetz, Daniel Penny
- language
- English
- id
- 9151558
- date added to LUP
- 2024-06-12 08:31:39
- date last changed
- 2024-06-12 08:31:39
@misc{9151558,
abstract = {{The cellphone footage of Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old white man in his twenties, choking the life out of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old Black man, in a New York City subway car during the summer of 2023 made headlines around the globe. The story took off in part because it was identified by the press as existing within the long history of American vigilantism, one that dates to the very founding of the nation. This tragedy mirrored a similar saga nearly 40 years prior when Bernhard Goetz, dubbed the “Deathwish Gunman” and “Subway Vigilante” by the newspapers, shot four Black teenagers whom he deemed to be a threat.
Previous scholarship on the Goetz case has revealed racialized news coverage, the role of surveillance, news narratives, and parallels to pop culture. While many of these ideas are incorporated into this project, my thesis instead positions itself between the scholarly field of American vigilantism and the political economy of the media. Through a deep engagement with the history and theories behind both subjects historically and contemporaneously, I demonstrate that the study of one without the other is incomplete. Vigilantism can be found in more than just subway cars; it is in C-suites and woven into the very fabric of media institutions. Taking the widely accepted definitions of vigilantism too literally limits one’s understanding of an incredibly influential component of American social, political, cultural, and legal life. The overarching goal of this thesis is to apply the definitional elements of vigilantism to pressing issues of our time: the role of the state, elites, and the media, unearthing the presence of a pernicious ‘vigilante spirit’ in American society.
The theoretical perspectives of radical mass media criticism and vigilantism studies, focused on three actors: the state, the elites, and the media, inform my study of the 169 news articles upon which I conducted frame analysis. The articles range in time, by crime, and by genre of newspaper. Four frames are extracted, two for both vigilantism and my benchmark crime of choice, fare evasion: Anti-hero Vigilante, Urban Realities and its Victims; the Necessity of Police, and Terror Below. My analysis reveals a consistent construction of “others” across coverage of crime, used as scapegoats to generate fear of public spaces that demand violent intervention from state or private individuals. The thesis shows that newspapers owned and operated by elites can’t cover vigilantism and crime without constructing a violent social order, because the institution of media in America is itself vigilante in nature.}},
author = {{Rowell, Griffin}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Analyzing Newspaper Coverage of Vigilantism To Understand American Elites, Media, and the State}},
year = {{2024}},
}