Human Rights Violation: A Narrative Analysis of George Floyd’s Case in the U.S. News Websites

Mourad Fahmi, Bassant

doi:10.21608/jkom.2022.232583

Human Rights Violation: A Narrative Analysis of George Floyd’s Case in the U.S. News Websites

Author

Bassant Mourad Fahmi

Associate Professor at Radio and TV Department, Faculty of Mass Communication, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt

10.21608/jkom.2022.232583

Abstract

Media organizations have been interested in producing video stories for their websites. These videos have become an important instrument for expressing ongoing events and focusing on specific aspects of them in order to have a specific impact on the audience. The murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American in Minneapolis on 25 May 2020 by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, has emerged in the content of videos on various news websites of media organizations. George Floyd's case is being viewed as a catalyst for human rights violations in the world's ostensibly most democratic country. The study aims to examine the many stories regarding George Floyd's incident and its implications through videos released on five different news websites in the United States. The methodological approach applied in this study is the narrative analysis to assess the videos regardless of their type - (mini documentaries, feature stories, visual investigations & reports) - in order to analyze their perspectives, narrative and treatment styles in relation to the micro and macro contexts of the recounted stories along with the storytelling techniques employed in these videos. The narrative analysis revealed that the political leanings of each website reflected in the treatment of its stories. The study concluded that the American news organizations under study, except Fox News, dealt professionally with the horrific humanitarian incident, particularly professional documentary production, while not neglecting the influence of the political ideology and exploiting the American elections to further their agendas.

Keywords

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