Social justice in college media : how campus magazines report, reflect, and respond to police killing of Breonna Taylor

Abstract

Campus magazines by nature avoid event and breaking-news content, digging deeper to present social and cultural impacts. However, the killing of a Black woman in her own home–awakened by a flawed no-knock warrant–changed “culture” and “lifestyle” for student editors. Based upon a prior study, this study aimed to examine how student media–as a Community of Practice–would respond, report, and reflect on the social impacts of the police killing of Breonna Taylor. Editions from three nationwide contests were sampled 2019–2022, focusing on three variables: Cover, Table of Contents, and Editor’s Note. Guided by Problematic Integration Theory and informed by semiotic analysis, the authors identified 15 themes from the dataset.