Student Leaders 10/5
#Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States
Summary:
#Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States” discusses how social media platforms have been used as activism around issues of racial inequality, state violence, and media representations. When an unarmed African American teenager Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, Missouri, a large series of protests erupted calling to arrest the officer who shot him. A #Ferguson quickly spread throughout social media as a way to convey messages about the event. Through this, the benefits and limits of “hashtag ethnography” are illustrated. While hashtags can be used as a quick and easy way to retrieve information on unfolding events, it is difficult to assess the context of its usage. The major questions addressed in this article is how social platforms, like Twitter, document racial misrepresentation and whether or not hashtag activism has replaced actually activism?
A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement by Alicia Garza
Summary:
Alicia Garza explains the history of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the many complications that the movement was faced with. Blacks were constantly being targeted in society and being portrayed negatively in the media, so when the murderer of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was not held accountable for this crime, Garza, Cullors, and Tometi felt compelled to form this movement. They want this movement to empower African Americans to assert their basic human rights and remind them that they have this community of support. Garza describes how the movement is grateful for its allies, but not when they try to erase the existence of the Black Lives Matter movement. This movement is not implying that Black’s are the only lives that matter; all lives matter, but this specific movement is just acknowledging the value of Black lives and the importance of them. Garza explains how the political framing of Blacks in the media has gotten out of hand, and that people need to examine the intentional and unintentional ways that they might be participating in it.
Black Protests vs. White Riots
Summary:
The video “Black Protests vs. White Riots” highlights the difference in how media covers black and white protests. When the protestors are black, for example, the media uses jarring words such as “lawlessness,” “wild animals,” and “criminals;” however, when the protesters are white they are just “young people” doing “stupid things.” It further notes the difference in police treatment, and it asks why the leadership of the black of community is always called into question when it isn’t for whites. The purpose of this video is show how language plays a huge role in how the public perceives current events, and further demands fairness in media coverage.
Critical Questions:
- Twitter allows its users to look through multiple windows at once as it offers an experience of “real time” engagement. How has this affected the news and media that people receive? Is the live action news on Twitter reliable?
- Think: who are you receiving this information from? How do you know it’s reliable?)
- How has the rise of hashtag ethnography (description of customs of individual peoples and cultures) illustrated the effects of technological determinism? How has this influenced the power structure between technology and society?
- Think about how technology determines how we live our lives/determines cultural values….
- Hashtags are like call numbers: allows “quick retrieval” (Ferguson)
- Alicia Garza discusses how one can learn to fight racism by looking at the intentional and unintentional ways they may be participating in it. What are some examples of these implicit and explicit forms of racism? How does she think we can combat this problem if it is unintentional at times?
- hyper-criminalization and sexualization of Blacks
- How does the Black Lives Matter movement challenge the negative ideology surrounding African Americans? What type of agency is this movement asserting in relation to the structure of Blacks in the media?
- How does “White Riots and Black Protests” illustrate social inequality? In what ways does this content exemplify how creators of media reproduce inequalities in society? (race, class, and gender) Is this overt or inferential racism?