Black Lives Matter has been a major force for social change in the US since 2014, with social media playing a core role in the development and proliferation of the movement. The largest protests in US history occurred in late May and early June 2020, following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. This incident reignited widespread support for the BLM movement. The protests were notable not only for their size but also that they occurred at a time the US was still struggling to control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 20,000 new cases per day. With protest conditions and police crowd control tactics exacerbating disease spread and with COVID disproportionately affecting minority populations, it was hypothesised that participation in and support for the protests would involve a balancing act between the risks of systemic racism and of disease spread. However, social media data suggest that this was not the case, with discussion of the BLM movement replacing discussion of COVID on US social media. Neither supporters or opposers of the BLM movement or protest action mentioned COVID as a factor. Framings of the movement by BLM supporters largely replicated those of earlier studies, with new frames emerging surrounding the opposition the movement has received from racism, police militarisation and President Donald Trump. Discourse evidenced worrying levels of polarisation, hate, incivility and conspiracy content and bore many similarities to previously studied COVID discourse. This suggests that George Floyd's death, as yet another example of an African American man killed by US police, was largely seen through established, polarised identity positions that made reactions to the incident and resulting protest largely a foregone conclusion, established and articulated without reference to the ongoing pandemic.

中文翻译：

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COVID期间美国社交媒体上关于黑人的命也是命的话语：在新事件中制定的两极分化立场

自 2014 年以来，“黑人的命也是命”一直是美国社会变革的主要力量，社交媒体在该运动的发展和扩散中发挥着核心作用。在乔治·弗洛伊德 (George Floyd) 死于明尼阿波利斯警方之手之后，美国历史上最大的抗议发生在 2020 年 5 月下旬和 6 月初。这一事件重新点燃了对 BLM 运动的广泛支持。抗议活动不仅因其规模而引人注目，而且发生在美国仍在努力控制 COVID-19 大流行的蔓延之时，每天新增病例超过 20,000 例。由于抗议条件和警察人群控制策略加剧了疾病的传播，并且 COVID 对少数群体的影响不成比例，据推测，参与和支持抗议活动需要在系统性种族主义和疾病传播风险之间取得平衡。然而，社交媒体数据表明情况并非如此，美国社交媒体上对 BLM 运动的讨论取代了对 COVID 的讨论。BLM 运动或抗议行动的支持者或反对者都没有提到 COVID 作为一个因素。BLM 支持者对该运动的构想在很大程度上复制了早期研究的构想，围绕该运动从种族主义、警察军事化和唐纳德·特朗普总统那里获得的反对派出现了新的框架。话语证明了令人担忧的两极分化、仇恨、不文明和阴谋内容，并且与之前研究的 COVID 话语有许多相似之处。这表明乔治·弗洛伊德的死，