Featured Project
The Murder of
George Floyd
On May 25, 2020, a Black man named George Floyd was murdered by white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin after Chauvin knealt on Floyd's neck and back for 9 minutes and 29 seconds during an arrest after an alleged counterfeit crime. The following day, the Minneapolis Star Tribune published one of the first news articles about Floyd: "Man who died in police incident was good friend and like family to his boss, others." The same day, The New York Times also published a story about Floyd: "Bystander videos of George Floyd and others are policing the police."
Floyd's life, and the story around his death, would come memorialize Black Lives Matter and other civil rights movements in the 21st century, and become a catalyst for change of police immunity.
This data map and accompanying story map how coverage of George Floyd's death changed over a year between the two publications, and the words that were used most frequently in print news articles as a "way in" to news narratives about this important cultural inflection point.
