Why Reform Stalls

Case study

From question to public source.

Each row separates the human question, the evidence, the method, Jonathan's role, the contribution, the public source, and the limits of the claim.

Question

How do justification and outrage operate as public responses to police violence, and how do those responses relate to reform discourse?

Evidence / design

257,401 YouTube comments from 57 widely viewed videos, plus an experiment (N=159).

My role

Conceived and led the project; conceptualization, methodology, data curation, formal analysis, validation, investigation, visualization, and writing.

Method / approach

LLM-assisted text analysis with human conceptual framing and validation, paired with experimental reasoning.

What it contributes

A public IPR working paper using large-scale YouTube comment analysis and an experiment to study how justification and outrage relate to reform discourse.

Public source

Preprint / IPR working paper, Northwestern Institute for Policy Research Working Paper Series, WP-25-31, 2025. Open public source

Limits / what not to overclaim

Shown as a Preprint / IPR working paper. Automated classifications were reviewed and interpreted within a broader conceptual framework rather than treated as self-explanatory outputs.