2009
First Published
3.63
Average Rating
262
Number of Pages
Part of Series
This book examines information reported within the media regarding the interaction between the Black Panther Party and government agents in the Bay Area of California (1967–1973). Christian Davenport argues that the geographic locale and political orientation of the newspaper influences how specific details are reported, including who starts and ends the conflict, who the Black Panthers target (government or non-government actors), and which part of the government responds (the police or court). Specifically, proximate and government-oriented sources provide one assessment of events, whereas proximate and dissident-oriented sources have another; both converge on specific aspects of the conflict. The methodological implications of the study are clear; Davenport’s findings prove that in order to understand contentious events, it is crucial to understand who collects or distributes the information in order to comprehend who reportedly does what to whom as well as why.
Avg Rating
3.63
Number of Ratings
8
5 STARS
25%
4 STARS
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3 STARS
38%
2 STARS
13%
1 STARS
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Author
Christian A. Davenport
Author · 2 books
Christian Davenport PhD is best known as a scholar of state repression/human rights violation, genocide, civil war, social movements and protest having written 8 books and approximately 50+ academic articles. While his work mainly concerns global patterns, he has also done research on specific countries as well including the United States (social movements, protest, protest policing and state repression, the Black Power Movement), Rwanda (genocide and civil war), India (untouchability) and Northern Ireland (the Conflict or Troubles). Innovative databases derived from archival sources as well as content analyses are affiliated with both sets of research. Davenport is generally viewed as being one of the founding scholars regarding the quantitative examination of state repression/human rights violation as well as one of the earliest scholars to engage in what has become an effort to explore sub-national, disaggregated, organizational as well as individual-level dynamics within conflict and contention. While most of his research has been concerned with explaining onset, variation and lethality, newer work has moved to explain termination as well as consequences/legacies/outcomes.
