Murder, the Media, and the Politics of Public Feelings: Remembering Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr.

In 1998, the horrific murders of Matthew Shepard -- a gay man living in
Laramie, Wyoming -- and James Byrd Jr. -- an African American man dragged to his
death in Jasper, Texas -- provoked a passionate public outrage. The intense media
coverage of the murders made moments of violence based in racism and homophobia
highly visible and which eventually led to the passage of The Matthew Shepard and
James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009. The role the media played in
cultivating, shaping, and directing the collective emotional response toward these
crimes is the subject of this gripping new book by Jennifer Petersen. Tracing the
emotional exchange from news stories to the creation of law, Petersen calls for an
approach to media and democratic politics that takes into account the role of affect
in the political and legal life of the nation.