Boy With Toy or Black Male With Gun: An Analysis of Online News Articles Covering the Shooting of Tamir Rice

• Author: Rebecca Stone,Kelly M. Socia
• DOI: 10.1177/2153368716689594
• Published date: 01 July 2019
• Date: 01 July 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Boy With Toy or Black

Male With Gun:

An Analysis of Online

News Articles Covering

the Shooting of Tamir Rice

Rebecca Stone

1

and Kelly M. Socia

1

Abstract

The current study explores how online media framed the police shooting of 12-year-

old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, OH. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of a

large sample of online news articles published in the first 48 hours following the event.

In doing so, we consider how online media outlets used headlines, narrative, quotes,

and images to frame this emerging story. We find that the online news media framed

the shooting of Rice in ways that largely supported the official police narrative of the

event. Rice was projected as a noncompliant and threatening subject and the police as

reacting out of concerns for public safety. Unlike international sources, relatively few

domestic news sources linked this incident to the larger issues of race and police use

of force in the United States. The dominant frame promotes a moral evaluation of the

event that downplays police responsibility and promotes localized, nonsystemic

solutions as opposed to wide-spread policing reform.

Keywords

deadly force, race and policing, racial profiling, treatment by the police, race and public

opinion, African/Black Americans, race/ethnicity, media

On Saturday, November 22, 2014, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was playing with a fake

gun in a park near the Cudell Recreation Center in Cleveland, OH. Shortly before 3:30

p.m., another park visitor made a 911 call to report “a guy in here with a pistol, you

1

University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, MA, USA.

Corresponding Author:

Rebecca Stone, Suffolk University, Department of Sociology, 73 Tremont St, 7th Floor, Boston, MA 02108,

USA.

Email: rjgstone@gmail.com

Race and Justice

2019, Vol. 9(3) 330-358

ªThe Author(s) 2017

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/2153368716689594

journals.sagepub.com/home/raj

know, it’s probably fake, but he’s pointing it at everybody .... The guy keeps pulling

it in and out of his pants. It’s probably fake, but you know what, he’s scaring the shit

out of me” (Los Angeles Times Staff, 2014). The dispatcher relayed information to a

pair of officers who were dispatched to the park. Soon after arriving on scene, one of

the officers shot Rice, who was transported to a local hospital.

Police released audio of the 911 call later that Saturday evening. ClevelandPolice

Patrolmen’s Association president Jeff Folmer informed the Northeast Ohio Media

Group that the caller’s statements about “probably a juvenile” and theweapon being

“probably fake” were not relayed to the responding officers (Shaffer, 2014). On

Sunday morning, November 23, the Northeast Ohio Media Group reported that Rice

had died overnight as a result of his injuries. On Sunday afternoon, Rice’s name was

released to the public, and on Monday morning, November 24, Cleveland officials

held a press conference and revealed that they have video of the incident but are not

releasing it out of respect for Rice’s family. His family later requested that the video

be released and on Wednesday, November 26, police released the video and the

names of the officers: Timothy Loehmann (who fired the shots) and Frank Garm-

back. The video shows the police car pull into the frame and come to a stop on the

grass near a gazebo where Rice had been sitting. Within 3 s, Loehmann exits the

vehicle with his weapon pointed at Rice, who doubles over and falls to the ground

(Lee, 2014).

The death of Tamir Rice came at a time of heightened public attention to police use

of force, particularly against unarmed African American men and women. Given this

heightened attention to police use of force and interactions with the African American

community, it is no surprise that the shooting of Tamir Rice quickly resulted in a

proliferation of news articles, many published to the Internet just hours after the

incident. The way this incident was framed in online news articles soon after the event

occurred has implications for how audience members define and interpret this event

within a larger context of police use of force and interactions with communities of

color. Frames that oppose police actions in this incident (e.g., “Boy With a Toy”)

could incite public resistance to use of force and promote policing reform. Frames that

support the police response in this incident as an unfortunate but inevitable outcome

(e.g., “Black Male With Gun”) could legitimize such use of force and uncouple this

incident from other contemporaneous incidents involving African American victims

of police shootings.

The current study is a qualitative analysis of online news coverage of the Tamir

Rice story in the first 48 hr after the story broke. Using a sample of 160 articles from

domestic and international digital news outlets, we analyze the media framing of the

event in descriptions of the officers and Rice, the use of photographs alongside the

article text, and the positioning of the story in relation to other high-profile incidents

of police use of force. In doing so, we shed light on how the media begin to define a

tragic event in the hours and days following its occurrence. We update the under-

standing of media coverage of crime, developed through studies of print and television

news, to consider the rapid growth and globalization of online news and the resulting

changes in journalistic practices.

Stone and Socia 331