Event Date and Time
-
Location
1102 Taliaferro/ go.umd.edu/Lewis-20th
The Department of African American and Africana Studies invites you to our upcoming Brown Bag: Dr. Demar Lewis- Before 2020, #Defund Was in the Streets: Unpacking Television News Networks’ Representation of #DefundThePolice, 2011-2019! This talk will be on Wednesday, November 20th from 12:30pm - 2:00pm. We hope to see you there!
Demar F. Lewis IV is an Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland. Demar is also an affiliate faculty member in the Department of African American and Africana Studies. He is a sociologist and critical criminologist trained in Black Studies and public policy whose research examines how historical and contemporary notions of safety influence the ways that Black people organize their lives. This has led Dr. Lewis to develop multiple research studies to advance understandings of how racial violence, police violence, and resource deprivation influence perceptions of safety in the United States in the past and present.
His current projects examine (1) the influence of gentrification and resource deprivation on policing practices and Black Americans’ perceptions of community safety in Cincinnati and across the U.S., (2) the evolution of the “defund” mandate in U.S. politics, (3) the health consequences of carceral violence and racism in the U.S., and (4) the causes and consequences of U.S. lynchings. To pursue his research agenda, Demar uses historical methods, qualitative interviews, statistical analyses, and computational methods.
Before 2020, #Defund Was in the Streets: Unpacking Television News Networks’ Representation of #DefundThePolice, 2011-2019
Abstract: Without question, the movement to “defund the police” gained the unprecedented attention of international audiences in 2020. Although this topic has been featured prominently on television news networks in recent years, one might ask: did the mandate to “defund the police” or “defund policing” appear on television before 2020? If so, was coverage of these mandates in response to excessive use of police force, fatal police violence, or other citizen-initiated demands? This paper addresses these questions leveraging transcripts from individual news segments accessed through the publicly-available Stanford Cable TV News Analyzer dataset. Preliminary findings suggest that mentions of “defund the police” surface beginning in 2011 in response to circumstances that mirror those of 2020, which include–but are not limited to–community-driven demands for municipal accountability in the aftermath of police misconduct. Moreover, this analysis grapples with the significance of historical calls to defund policing from 2011-2019 in light of ongoing efforts to hold municipal leaders across the U.S. accountable for addressing unmet needs that fall outside of the core responsibilities of police departments.
