  The viral video documenting the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police
officer Derek Chauvin inspired nation-wide protests that brought national
attention to widespread racial injustice and biased policing practices towards
black communities in the United States. The use of social media by the Black
Lives Matter movement was a primary route for activists to promote the cause
and organize over 1,400 protests across the country. Recent research argues
that moral discussions on social media are a catalyst for social change. This
study sought to shed light on the moral dynamics shaping Black Lives Matter
Twitter discussions by analyzing over 40,000 Tweets geo-located to Los Angeles.
The goal of this study is to (1) develop computational techniques for mapping
the structure of moral discourse on Twitter and (2) understand the connections
between social media activism and protest.
