Police Violence, Sequelae, and Digital Life: Mental Health Impacts on Black Women
Theoretical Framework: Sequelae and Black Women's Mental Health
Quantitative vs. Qualitative Research: Prior research predominantly used quantitative methods and population-level data to analyze health outcomes of police brutality and killings.
Smith's (2016) Conceptualization of Sequelae: This study utilizes Smith’s framework to qualitatively analyze the specific implications of police violence on Black women’s mental health. Smith expands the traditional medical definition of sequelae (Al-Aly et al., 2021) to encompass "the lingering and expansive health consequences caused by constant gendered, anti-black state violence that disproportionately impacts black women" (Smith, 2016, p. 31).
Police Violence as Gendered Racialized State Violence: Police violence is framed as a form of gendered racialized state violence that induces sustained psychological effects due to the constant threat of loss and violence, alongside racial trauma consequences.
Alignment with Qualitative Health Research: This framework aligns with Timmermans’ (2013) warrants for qualitative health research, focusing on social experiences of health outside medical settings and examining social mechanisms shaping Black women’s mental health.
Contextualizing Existing Research: Smith’s sequelae framework contextualizes research on racialized and gendered beliefs about strength and resilience among Black Americans. Studies show Black women use these ideas as coping mechanisms during stress, which can also exacerbate psychological distress symptoms (Abrams et al., 2019; Donovan & West, 2015).
Mental Health Disparities: Differential policing is known to perpetuate racial (Bor et al., 2018) and gender (Geller et al., 2014) mental health disparities.
Impact of Sequelae: Sequelae helps examine the impact of police violence beyond individual incidents, including the experience of rearing Black children and grieving Black lives lost (Brantley, 2023; Leath et al., 2022; Stewart, 2017). It connects "invisible wounds" across geographies, time, and generations.
Police Violence as a Regime: Police violence and its sequelae are understood as a regime that physically and psychically regulates marginalized populations, forcing them to live under constant threat and fear, and in perpetual mourning for victims of state violence (Smith, 2016).
Necessity of Digital Exposure Analysis: This contextualization makes the analysis of lingering effects from exposure to police violence via social media crucial.
Mediatized Police Violence and the Digital Landscape
Health Implications of Violence Exposure: Exposure to violence, particularly mediatized violence, has significant health implications.
Mediatization of Violence: Communications and media scholars highlight how the mediatization of violence (via photography, TV, social media) is central to documenting and perpetuating both positive and negative outcomes for those engaging with these images.
Definition of Mediatization: Mediatization is the process where society becomes increasingly dependent on media and its logics, with media integrating into other social institutions (Hjarvard, 2013).
Role of Social Media and Technology: The rise of social media and ubiquitous personal cameras on cell phones (Treem et al., 2016) enables widespread documentation, distribution, and consumption of everyday violence.
Digital Landscape: This digital landscape provides opportunities for witnessing (Kelly, 2008), counter-surveillance, legal protection, and organizing civil unrest (Watson, 2019).
Collapsing Time and Space: Through witnessing violence and testimonies, individuals can bridge time and space between themselves and victims of police violence.
Mediatization as Political Propaganda: The mediatization of policing also serves as political propaganda, similar to other forms of state violence (Siapera et al., 2015).
"Copaganda": This term refers to pro-police television shows and films (Bernabo, 2022) that provide narratives reinforcing racialized, gendered, and classed ideas about criminality.
Counter-Narratives: Social media videos and activist voices challenge "copaganda" narratives, creating counter-narratives about policing.
Visualization of Stories: Digital media outlets' choices in visualizing police violence stories are a "site of contestation," influencing how racist logics are perpetuated by either humanizing or criminalizing those in fatal encounters with police (Phelps & Hamilton, 2022).
Social Media as a Tool for Critique: Social media is a tool for localizing critique of the law (Scott, 2019).
Undermining Mainstream Media: Community documentation can both support and challenge mainstream U.S. media, as cell phone videos increasingly contradict police narratives (Farhi & Izadi, 2020).
Growing Pressure to Document: There's increasing pressure for everyday people to document police violence.
Hashtag Monitoring: Social media users intentionally monitor hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter to stay informed without mainstream media influence (Brown et al., 2017) and to build shared political identity (Bonilla & Rosa, 2015).
Uncompensated Emotional Labor: The growth of social media has amplified emotional labor for people of color, with constant exposure to racism leading to "racialized fatigue" (Williams et al., 2019).
Dual Nature of Digital Tools: Daily use of social media and surveillance technologies can both promote violence and offer tools to navigate perpetuating institutions (Lane & Stuart, 2022; Stuart, 2020).
"Digital Afterlife of Police Violence": The persistence of mediatized police violence on social media means users witness its "digital afterlife," where the violence endures long after the initial event through (un)intentional exposure to videos, posts, and victim name hashtags.
Black Feminist Criminology and the Afterlife of Police Violence
Black Feminist Criminology (BFC): Potter’s (2006) BFC framework helps understand how devalued identities shape individuals’ social experiences, recognizing that interconnected identities are influenced by social forces "filtering down" into communities, cultures, familial, and intimate relations.
Non-Linear Pathway: The pathway between social forces and identity is not linear, and BFC resists reducing labels to identities.
Informing Black Women's Experiences: A BFC approach reveals multiple factors influencing how Black women navigate exposure to police violence and associated mental health issues.
Prioritization in Violence Research: BFC and other feminist lenses are crucial for understanding violence and the criminal-legal system (Carlson, 2013; Chesney-Lind & Irwin, 2008; Jones, 2021; Potter, 2013).
Police Use of Force as Structural Violence: Black feminist scholars assert that police use of force constitutes structural violence (Hitchens, 2017; Jones, 2021).
Definition of Structural Violence: "invisible, disproportionate, and excessive death and disability of poor persons as a function of their disadvantages" (Hitchens, 2017, p. ). This restricts the lives of low-income, urban Black women and shapes their perspectives.
Carceral State and Victimization: Feminists of color argue the carceral state increases potential for victimization by both state arms (police) and communities of color (Richie et al., 2021).
Interconnected Identities and Social Forces: Research on diversity and police-minority relations (Malone Gonzalez et al., 2022b) shows Black women use collective memories of violence to understand police power.
Media's Role in Collective Memory: Jackson (2021) notes that sanitized narratives of the Civil Rights movement hindered contemporary media coverage of anti-police violence activism.
"Embodied Carcerality": The co-dependent nature of media and policing reinforces the "criminal controlling image" of Black women and girls, leading to "embodied carcerality" (Friedman & Hitchens, 2021), where a Black child is seen as a source of disturbance rather than a child (Jones, 2021).
Importance of Cultural Assessments: Incorporating cultural assessments of police violence representation is vital alongside structural and public health analyses.
Mothering as Central to BFC Analysis: Beyond higher likelihood of psychological distress (Moody et al., 2022) and physical illnesses (Lee et al., 2014; Sewell et al., 2016), Black women's greater likelihood of engaging in "mothering" is central. "Mothering" is conceptualized expansively as providing care and support (Hill Collins, 2000), an action, not solely an identity.
Sequelae and Social Ties: Paired with BFC, sequelae allows for discussion of how police violence targets social ties and the reproduction of care within Black families and communities.
Socialization and Activism: Grief and fear inform how Black women socialize children to navigate police encounters (Dow, 2016; Elliott & Reid, 2019; Malone Gonzalez, 2022) and publicly process state violence as activism (Al’Uqdah & Adomako, 2017; Pool, 2015).
Multiplicative Effects: Sequelae considers both the inciting incident of police violence and its multiplicative effects, with the digital landscape itself capable of becoming an inciting incident impacting offline lives.
Police Violence as a Chronic Factor: Using sequelae, police violence is analyzed as a chronic factor in Black women’s lives, regardless of direct exposure, highlighting its unquantifiable manifestation within the digital landscape.
Data and Methods
Research Design: Qualitative data was drawn from a larger mixed-methods project involving interviews, field observations, and surveys focusing on police violence against Black women.
Sample Size: This paper specifically uses in-depth, life history interviews of Black women.
Location and Timeframe: Interviews were conducted in an urban, predominantly white southern U.S. city between and .
Participant Recruitment: Participants were recruited through diverse avenues: social clubs, nonprofits, educational institutions, community events centered on Black women and policing, social media, personal/professional networks, and field encounters. Recommendations from prior participants or community members were also influential.
Interview Format: The first author conducted interviews primarily in person, with respondents opting for telephone interviews.
Interview Duration: Interviews lasted up to two hours.
Interview Content: Questions covered respondents' life histories with police as Black women, their views on police, childhood/adulthood experiences with police and related conversations, coping mechanisms for police violence, experiences with police violence on social media, and police reform. This paper focuses on views and practices concerning online police violence.
Recording and Confidentiality: All interviews were recorded except for one due to respondent discomfort. Participants could request the recorder be turned off for sensitive details, during which the first author took notes. Written and audio memos were produced post-interview.
Socio-demographic Characteristics of Participants
Diversity in Recruitment: Multiple recruitment strategies ensured demographic diversity across socioeconomic status, sexuality, and ethnicity.
Gender Identity: Participants self-identified as cisgender () and transgender or gender non-conforming () Black women.
Socioeconomic Status: Annual household incomes ranged from less than to .
Educational Attainment: Educational levels varied from high school/GED to professional degrees.
Ethnic/Racial Backgrounds: Included African, African American, Afro-Latinx, Afro-Caribbean, and biracial/multiracial identities. The term "Black women" is used broadly as participants primarily self-identified this way.
Sexual Identities: Participants included heterosexual (), bisexual, lesbian, and queer () individuals.
Confidentiality: All participants were assigned pseudonyms.
Reflecting Heterogeneity: Allowing self-identification helps account for the diverse lived experiences of Black women, avoiding a monolithic analysis (Erving & Smith, 2022; Small & Calarco, 2022).
Data Analysis
Grounded Theory: Coding embraced grounded theory, a systematic, comparative, iterative, and interactive approach for developing theories from qualitative data (Charmaz, 2006; Charmaz & Thornberg, 2021).
Discourse Analysis: Gill’s (2000) discourse analysis helped assess how women articulated feelings and experiences related to online police violence.
Coding Process (Inductive):
First and second authors independently line-coded sections of interview transcripts in NVivo, using inductive coding to identify emergent codes.
Second and third rounds involved all three authors coding collaboratively via Zoom, identifying similar phenomena between codes/subcodes and deciding how to collapse them.
Identified Themes: Coding revealed themes such as amplification of police violence/social media content, emotional/mental reactions, social/emotional support, self-identification with victims, and confirmation of information legitimacy.
Framework Application: Smith’s (2016) sequelae framework was found appropriate for explaining short- and long-term responses to online police violence exposure, including psychological distress, grief, and coping mechanisms.
Acute and Chronic Effects: Negative effects of witnessing violence were presumed to be both acute and chronic based on participants' descriptions of emotions and references to multiple victims over time.
Positionality and Reflexivity
Author Identities: Author is a Black woman; Author is a multiracial Black woman specializing in race, racism, and digital sociology; Author is a Black woman with research in racial health disparities, particularly among Black women.
Impact on Access and Rapport: Author 's identity facilitated access and rapport, with participants expressing comfort speaking about police violence experiences to other Black women.
Recruitment Strategies: Reliance on recommendations, multiple pre-interview meetings, sharing personal experiences, and allowing participant questions were used (Gonzalez-López, 2010).
Shaping Research: The authors’ social positions and research backgrounds as Black women researchers shaped their engagement with data and the theoretical lenses chosen.
"Epistemological Site of Sociological Knowledge": Drawing on Gonzalez-López (2006), the authors recognize that the "wound" or trauma of police violence against Black people exists not only for participants but also for themselves.
Care in Analysis: The authors contend with their own grief and struggles to analyze and write about these stories with care.
Findings: Manifestations of Online Police Violence's Sequelae
Kristen's Emotional Impact (23 years old): Kristen recounts that watching videos of police violence was deeply traumatizing, draining, depressing, and caused "constant, omnipresent rage" and "constant grieving and mourning." She identified with victims, feeling it "could have been me, could have been my loved one." The emotional toll led her to stop watching these videos, as they were not productive and served as unnecessary "visual reminders."
Cyclical Process: For Kristen and other Black women, this process is cyclical. Continuous exposure to online anti-Black police violence leads to unquantifiable emotional impacts and persistent grief processes.
Key Manifestations of Sequelae: The study identified four manifestations:
Recognition of social media's amplification of police brutality.
Identification with victims due to shared racial and gender communities.
Mental expressions of grief.
Prolonged mourning and practices relating to the digital afterlife of police violence.
Impact of Mediatization: The persistence of images, written descriptions, and videos of police brutality against Black people in news and social media significantly expands long-standing mental sequelae.
Importance of Social Media Influence: Accounting for social media's influence at individual and structural levels is crucial for understanding the extensive effects of policing and racial disparities in mental health (Bor et al., 2018; Sewell et al., 2021).
Amplified Exposure to Mediatized Police Violence
Ubiquitous Content: Respondents consistently described images, videos, and written descriptions of violence as impactful and ubiquitous on social media, often difficult to avoid, leading to adverse psychological responses.
Kristen's Perspective: She found videos unproductive, stating, "I’m still angry whether I watch them or not, I’m sad whether I watch them or not." She didn't need "visual reminders of like the violence that is perpetuated on black people when I’m constantly reminded in many, many different ways every day."
Abena's Perspective (32 years old): Social media has increased awareness of police violence, making visible what Black people have endured for years. While important for awareness, this amplification causes stress. She expressed intense frustration and anger, saying, "I hate it! With a passion…‘Cause you know it’s almost mostly the white people that are killing the black people, you know. And it’s almost like, I don’t want to hear it anymore. ‘Cause it’s EVERY. SINGLE. DAY."
Daily Occurrence: Mapping Police Violence (2022) data shows over people killed by U.S. police annually since , supporting Abena's experience of daily exposure.
Quita's Perspective (27 years old): She acknowledges knowing violence was happening but finds social media "amplifies everything." She struggles with the feeling of knowing "all the details of every single case" and works to forgive herself for stepping away, highlighting the tension between mourning and self-care.
Danielle's Perspective (25 years old): She found constant exposure so upsetting she stopped using social media. She understands the need to record but is traumatized by "seen people die on my social." This reflects the tension between documenting violence and the spectacle of Black death (Downs, 2016; Weissman, 2019).
Indirect Exposure: Some, like Toya (23 years old), avoid social media but are still exposed indirectly, describing events like Philando Castile's shooting (2016) as deeply affecting.
Keisha's Experience (24 years old): Workplace and educational settings also expose Black women to discussions of police violence. As an educator, Keisha notes that even first and second graders are aware, creating a dilemma about protecting their innocence while fostering conversations.
Strategic Engagement: Keisha strategically bookmarks videos/articles, waiting days to process them, often not returning to them due to the emotional difficulty. This highlights boundaries that are often insufficient.
"Ah, Shit. That Could Be Me": Racial and Gender Identification With Victims
Kristen's Identification: She identified with victims as fellow Black people ("other black people"), acknowledging that it "could have been me" or a "loved one," and affirming the victims' inherent humanity regardless of personal connection.
Audrey's Hyper-awareness (35 years old): Social media makes her "keep mental track" of police violence, maintaining hyper-awareness. She worries about Black men's safety, including her husband and best friend, given their heightened risk. She explicitly identifies with Black women victims like Sandra Bland, articulating her fear of being arrested and dying mysteriously.
Coping by Avoidance: Audrey avoids watching videos to function, stating, "I know if I watch the video, it’s done…Just thinking about watching the video is making me wanna cry." Social media allows for awareness through hashtags and discourse without direct video exposure.
Dana's Acute Awareness (27 years old): Sandra Bland's death (2015) was a turning point for Dana, as she resonated with Bland more than "younger men" victims she couldn't "really relate to." She explicitly states, "With Sandra Bland it’s like, ‘Ah, shit. That could be me.’" She connected other male victims to her brother or fiancé.
Misidentification as Slippage: Dana's potential misidentification of "Tamir Bell" instead of Sean Bell (or Tamir Rice) may illustrate the mental slippage that occurs when tracking numerous victims.
Collective Mourning Practices: Dana engaged in collective mourning by visiting memorials for Sandra Bland in Prairie View, Texas, and attending vigils.
Joy's Frustration (31 years old): Joy struggles to remember victim names due to the sheer volume. She describes frustration with white social media users who suggest Black people "police each other up," implying victims deserved their fate. She sees this as a racial demarcation, where white people are perceived as individuals while Black people are viewed collectively in relation to policing.
"I Just Cried and Cried, and Cried, and Cried, and Just Slept": Narrating Grief
Universal Grief: All Black women interviewed reported experiencing grief from online police violence, compounded by identification with victims and constant exposure.
Kristen's Description: Referred to grief as "fucking them up" and a "constant grieving and mourning."
Nema's Experience (18 years old): Describes anger and upset, leading to crying and excessive sleeping (indications of depression). She feels despair and powerlessness, questioning, "What can I really do about it?" and whether education will lead to change, highlighting the rigidity of anti-Black social structures.
Ella's Emotional Draining (26 years old): For Ella, whose father was murdered by police, witnessing online incidents is profoundly draining, as it compounds her personal loss with vicarious trauma. Her job in media makes avoidance difficult. She needs to "unfollow…all the black activists" and avoid social media at certain times, as advised by her therapist, to manage emotional responses.
Danielle's Emotional Labor: Danielle finds it hard to discuss police violence with white friends, engaging in "emotional labor" to educate them about her grief and mourning experiences. This indicates the ripple effect of online videos on interpersonal interactions.
"I Don’t Click On Them Shits": Sequelae and the Digital Afterlife of Police Violence
Prolonged Mourning: Sequelae involves prolonged mourning and varied practices for processing police violence.
Kristen's Critique of "Shock Value": She views the use of videos for "shock value" or consciousness-raising as a "misuse," as it fails to account for those already "cognizant of violence" and empathetic to victims. She notes that the perpetual presence of police violence cannot be quantified.
Shelia's Doubt-Giving (25 years old): Shelia watches videos hoping "to try and give the police the benefit of the doubt," but always ends up empathizing with the victim, realizing "that was somebody’s life." She lacks coping mechanisms or support groups for this vicarious trauma, wishing one existed.
Sadia's Frustration (31 years old): Sadia articulates multiple layers of the digital afterlife, describing endless violent image consumption as "continuously feeding ourselves violence" and repeated traumatization. She points blame at both users who post/consume and the social media platforms themselves for incentivizing participation in a "whole world that you have to exist in just to be important." She refuses to click on violent content, curating her "rhythms and algorithms" like a diet, recognizing the harmful impact on her mind and soul.
Alexis's Anger at Inaction (27 years old): Alexis acknowledges the utility of recording for counter-surveillance but expresses frustration and anger at bystanders who record instead of intervening, questioning, "What could you have actually done in that moment?" She avoids videos where victims die, advocating for different approaches to address violence and grief, seeing the perpetuation of pain as unproductive.
Teyana's Impact on Activism (33 years old): Teyana experienced such profound emotional reactions ("aggravated, angry, super sad") to online police violence that it "really messed [her] up," causing her to stop protesting for several weeks due to feeling powerless. She resumed activism only after reframing what she could control, showing how sequelae can inhibit resistance.
Varied Lingering Effects: Sequelae manifested as prolonged sadness/anger, being triggered by activities like protesting, and a desire for support groups. Behavioral changes regarding social media were often ineffective due to the pervasive nature of this violence.
Discussion and Conclusion
Sequelae as Multifaceted Trauma: Sequelae highlights the complex, reverberating, and compounded trauma resulting from gendered, anti-Black state violence.
Digital Landscape as Intermediary: The digital landscape is crucial in understanding the link between online police violence and Black women's psychological health.
Transcendence of Effects: Police violence creates mental and emotional effects that go beyond physical and digitized contexts, persisting long after initial exposure.
Impacts of Social Media's Amplification:
Ubiquity: Black women experienced police violence as omnipresent, whether through direct or indirect exposure.
Identification with Victims: This process, central to sequelae, occurs in multiple ways: recognizing victims' humanity, seeing similarity to loved ones, and confronting their own risk of violence due to shared racial/gender social positions.
Emotional and Physiological Distress: Consistent witnessing of anti-Black state violence leads to sadness, anger, anxiety, fatigue, and fear.
Lingering Grief and Anger: Sequelae encompasses ongoing grief and anger due to constant duress from online engagement.
Implications for Research: The study offers insights into policing experiences across race and gender:
Racial/Gender Divisions: Black women perceive intimate connections between victims, the Black community, and collective experiences, explicitly separating themselves from white social groups who are less likely to be victimized (Bryant-Davis et al., 2017; Edwards et al., 2019) or psychologically impacted (Alang et al., 2021; Eichstaedt et al., 2021), and may express less empathy (Johnson & Lecci, 2020).
Intentional Outcomes: These reverberating effects are seen as intentional outcomes of racist, sexist, and anti-Black systems.
Burden of Witnessing: Participants feel obligated to watch videos, despite the immense psychological toll (sadness, anger, fatigue).
Connection to PTSD: Findings align with research linking online police violence witnessing to PTSD symptoms in Black and Latinx youth (Campbell & Valera, 2020; Williams, 2021).
Coping Mechanisms: Women coped by turning off phones, evading social media, curating algorithms, or seeking therapy. Some ceased witnessing videos (retrenchment), while others memorialized victims or visited incident sites (activation).
Critique of Digitization: While critiquing the monetization and spectacle of Black death, respondents advocate for documentation that informs about victims and counters criminalizing narratives.
Critique of Systemic Issues: They admonish the impunity of state actors, persistence of anti-Black state violence, and capitalist structures that force them to endure and process trauma without adequate support, turning witnessing into "content" for engagement.
Ongoing Tension: The tension between trauma and memorializing will continue to be a research area, especially with AI influencing engagement and social media's role in activism.
Future Directions
Understanding Sequelae: Future scholarship should integrate people’s digital lives to understand the full extent of sequelae, vicarious discrimination, and spillover effects. Accounting for digital life provides a framework for understanding the health consequences of police brutality and killings.
Qualitative Contributions: This study qualitatively builds on existing health scholarship that demonstrates physiological (Sosoo et al., 2022) and psychological (Alang et al., 2021; Moody et al., 2022) impacts of indirect exposure to police violence.
Resistance to Quantification: The authors reiterate Smith’s (2016) resistance to quantifying sequelae, suggesting that simply adding a social media variable to a model may not capture the "ever-present grief and drawn-out mourning" described by respondents.
Police Presence in Schools: Research should explore how police presence (or school resource officers) in schools affects the mental health of youth of color following high-profile incidents of racialized police violence, given police contact is linked to anxiety, stress, depression (Sugie & Turney, 2017), and lowered academic performance (Legewie & Fagan, 2019).
Broken-Heart Syndrome: Researchers are encouraged to investigate "broken-heart syndrome" (Virani et al., 2007)—where physical and emotional stress weakens heart muscles—in contexts of secondhand police violence, particularly for direct networks of victims (e.g., Eric Garner, Atatiana Jefferson's families) and those who witness deaths online and identify with victims.
Funding
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (grant no. ), the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (grant no. ), and the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy.