The politics of words: A survey experiment on "defund the police"

The movement known as "defund the police" has become a lightning-rod topic amid unprecedented global mobilization against police violence, and increasingly hyperpolarized politics and media coverage. In this article, we discuss new results from a Wisconsin survey experiment that illuminate...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Social science journal (Fort Collins) 2023-06, Vol.ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print), p.1-13
Main Authors: Paulson-Smith, Kaden, Nehlsen, David, Lau, Jacob, Knutson, Jared, Wesner, Jake, Klug, Mackenzie, Beck, Gage, Reinhard, Brady, Weinschenk, Aaron
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abolition
Police
Protest
Public opinion
Race
Reform
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Summary:The movement known as "defund the police" has become a lightning-rod topic amid unprecedented global mobilization against police violence, and increasingly hyperpolarized politics and media coverage. In this article, we discuss new results from a Wisconsin survey experiment that illuminate the power of words and political ideology in shaping public perceptions of social movement demands. We start by describing the broader historical context and abolitionist organizing out of which the defund the police demands arose, and then review changes and continuities to the present. We find that manipulating language to describe defund the police, even by a few words, leads to different levels of support of those demands, and political ideology plays an important role in conditioning support for the framing of reallocation versus defunding the police. We hope future multimethod research will build on our results to further explore what shapes people's views on movement demands and how wording may be used not only to misinform but to inform.
ISSN:0362-3319
1873-5355
DOI:10.1080/03623319.2023.2221604