The British Online Media’s Representation of the George Floyd Anti-Racism Protests from his Murder in May 2020 until May 2021

The framing of the 2020 George Floyd protests is analyzed through the headlines, subheadings, summaries, and captions of three ideologically disparate online publications in the UK: the Mail Online, the Guardian Online and BBC News Online (henceforth, the Mail, the Guardian and the BBC). Following the Hallidayan approach and Kress’ (2009) Social Semiotics, the lexical choice, and syntactic structure contained within these bite-sized news features are deconstructed. Specific attention is given to those aspects most salient to the framing of these protests: (a) references to conflict/peacefulness, (b) predicational strategies (i.e., the actions performed by protesters) (c) the cause, and (d) referentials (i.e., the naming of protesters) (see Hertog & McLeod, 1995). Following this qualitative analysis, coverage of these protests reflects a continuum with the Mail at one end, focusing on hostility and violence, and the Guardian at the other end. The BBC is closer to that of the Guardian as conflict is broadly peripheral to each, although unlike the Mail, both omit aspects of the cause, specifically the circumstances surrounding Floyd’s murder. Different factors potentially explain these observations, for instance, proximity to news events, the political orientation, editorial policies of these publications, and the UK media context.