“The News with Community Views”
5
circulated and influential black newspapers during this
period but differed significantly in their approaches to
informing their audiences. Data gathered from in-depth
interviews with black press journalists establishes
precisely how black newspapers chose to frame depictions of
African independence and black power organizations. I also
used the methods of content analysis, the “systematic,
quantitative analysis of message characteristics,” and
critical analysis, the detailed review of messages, to
categorize and evaluate a sample of articles and editorials
about African nationalist movements in Algeria, Congo,
Ghana, Guinea and South Africa as well as the Black Panther
Party, Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) and
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) (Neuendorf
2002). This data demonstrates if and how the Afro,
Amsterdam and Defender informed their audiences about the
membership of these movements using the African American
community’s master injustice frame.
In addition, this
research reveals whether these newspapers used this frame
to validate the claims and work of these organizations.
This study has three principal findings. First, the
Afro-American, Amsterdam News and Defender used their
resources to provide information to their audiences about
the membership of the African independence and black power
Convention