Exploring Online Narratives of Inequitable Policing in Ontario: An Analysis of Tweets and Initial Web-Based News Articles in 2020

Despite long standing narratives of policing as public protection in the colonial nation state of Canada, policing in this country constitutes an enduring and multifaceted health inequity for Indigenous, Black, and Mad populations. To create change it is vital to understand current conversations in our society around police interactions with the groups most harmed by these inequities and how these conversations inhibit or enable change. To this end, 2020 Ontario-based Tweets regarding interactions between these populations and police, and initial online news articles reporting on police use of lethal force against these population are analyzed. The articles are found to display baseline understandings of policing that reflect and promote the longstanding hegemonic narrative and, by minimizing harm done when police use lethal force, may inhibit change. The Tweets show counter-hegemonic understandings of policing as a source of injustice, but nonetheless are silent on racial issues when compared to Mad issues.