Featuring marginalized protesters’ concerns: Unicorn Riot's different way of covering Black Lives Matter Protests

Using the example of the independent, commercial-free news organization Unicorn Riot (https://unicornriot.ninja/) the paper presents interim results of a research project on how alternative media construct legitimate/illegitimate political protest on both the verbal and the visual level. Unicorn Riot came to prominence across the US in May 2020, in the course of the protests over the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis. The small, non-profit media collective was founded in 2015 by a group of journalists deeply dissatisfied with traditional media coverage of protests against racial injustice and police shootings of Black people. Those journalists wanted to provide an alternative mode of protest coverage. While most mainstream media narratives pay only little attention to protests that aren’t dramatic or unconventional, Unicorn Riot follows a different approach. The media collective, which operates in Boston, Denver, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Philadelphia, and Durban/South Africa, neither emphasizes spectacle, nor does it aim at creating slick stories. Instead, it sheds light on root causes of protests, and foregrounds motivations and concerns of people involved. The platform covers a broad range of topics and produces livestreams, documentaries, web series, videos, blogs, podcasts, and a weekly news show, but also engages in investigative journalism. Unicorn Riot’s products are broadcasted on the Internet via its website, and via Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, Patreon) and licensed through Creative Commons. The members of the media collective stay at protest sites for hours and even for weeks, and follow a story patiently and as far as possible. In lieu of demonizing the protesters, Unicorn Riot listens to marginalized voices which might otherwise go unheard. It streams uninterrupted on the-ground interviews with non-officials and sustained acts of immediate witness. Such focus draws attention to the complexity of reasons that spark protests, promotes a more pluralistic worldview, and eventually strengthens inclusivity. Furthermore, Unicorn Riot follows a kind of educational approach: The media collective wants to have an effect on how marginalized protesters’ concerns are seen by the public, to strengthen political knowledge, and to increase the quality of democratic debate. Against this backgroud the paper discusses the following questions: - How does Unicorn Riot picture Black Lives Matter protests and what role and agency does it ascribe to protesters? - How noticeable is the claim to make a difference on both the textual and the visual level? - How do other media and officials react to Unicorn Riot’s protest coverage? - Which lessons concerning the empowerment of marginalized groups can be learned from this single case study? The corpus of the multi-modal analysis has been compiled according to the principles of theoretical sampling and geared to its potential to reflect as precisely as possible what is going on in the field. It consists of footage relating to Black Lives Matter protests produced and published on Unicorn Riot’s website and Social Media between May and December 2020. The analytical approach combines quantitative as well as qualitative content analysis, video-sequence analysis and visual context analysis.