Professor Mark Brewin explains how political identity shapes public response to ICE in the media.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has dominated headlines and social media in recent months, intensifying national debate following the fatal videotaped shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers in Minnesota. Footage of the confrontations spread online, prompting protests and backlash on social media platforms. At the same time, conservative commentators have taken to social media to justify these uses of force.
According to Mark Brewin, Associate Professor of Media and Communication at the University of Tulsa, the divide says a lot about how people process information in today’s media environment. “It’s particularly dramatic,” Brewin said. “People are looking at the exact same events, often the same recording, and then coming away with different meanings.” One viewer might see a state-sponsored execution, while another would find a self-defending officer. Neither interpretation comes directly from the video itself, but instead from prior beliefs.
Prominent Political Scientist researchers, Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler conducted a study titled “When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misconceptions,” in which the two discovered the boomerang effect. They found that when individuals with deeply held political beliefs are presented with contradictory information, they often respond by holding even more tightly to their original views. In doing so, they rationalize away challenging evidence and because political identity is oftentimes tied to personal identity, being wrong can be a threat to the ego. Today, digital videos and images of violent and disturbing events are framed politically and absorbed into preexisting beliefs, often failing to provoke reconsideration.
Brewin explained that another reason coverage of ICE is so polarizing is tied directly to the fragmentation of modern media. Around the late 1990s or early 2000s, Americans stopped receiving their information from a shared set of sources, like the television. Instead, anyone can find “an explosion of sources” of any topic “all of which might provide their own interpretation on events, and so that splintering of the media audience therefore leads various people to create their own sets of socially constructed realities.” Audiences are able to choose sources that reinforce preexisting views, keeping their information bubbles secure. The common factual baseline ceases to exist.
Increasing social division further complicates things. According to the Federal Reserve Q3 2025 data, the bottom 50% of households held just 2.5% of total wealth. Shifts in power and money find Americans leading very different lives, perpetuating loss of understanding or empathy.
At the University of Tulsa, Brewin sees higher student engagement in politics. “When you see a video of someone who looks a lot like you — this is the kid from Tufts … ICE agents just come out of an unmarked van and grab her right off the street, put her in the van, and drive off. Oh my God. So when you see something like that, you’re like, that person looks a lot like me, and so it hits home.” Abstract policies become personal concerns. Brewin stresses the importance of critical thinking in such a charged environment — recognizing one’s own biases and the limits of a single video or report.
