How Black Twitter and Other Social Media Communities Interact with Mainstream News
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University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Departmental Papers (ASC) Annenberg School for Communication 2018 How Black Twitter and Other Social Media Communities Interact With Mainstream News Deen Freelon Lori Lopez Meredith D. Clark Sarah J. Jackson University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation (OVERRIDE) Freelon, D., Clark, M., Jackson, S. J., Lopez, L. (2018). How Black Twitter and Other Social Media Communities Interact With Mainstream News. Knight Foundation. At the time of publication, author Sarah Jackson was affiliated with Northeastern University. Currently, she is a faculty member at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/773 For more information, please contact [email protected]. How Black Twitter and Other Social Media Communities Interact With Mainstream News Disciplines Communication | Social and Behavioral Sciences Comments At the time of publication, author Sarah Jackson was affiliated with Northeastern University. Currently, she is a faculty member at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. This report is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/773 Deen Freelon University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill How Black Lori Lopez Twitter University of Wisconsin-Madison Meredith D. Clark and other University of Virginia Sarah J. Jackson social media Northeastern University communities interact with mainstream news 1 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors gratefully acknowledge research assistance from Ana Lezama, Jamie Meyer, Hibba Munir and especially Griffin Rowell for completing a critical last-minute task in short order. We also thank Luz Gomez for initially approaching one of us (Freelon) with the basic idea for this project, and all our interview participants for generously volunteering their time to speak with us. 2 How Black Twitter and other social media communities interact with mainstream news Deen Freelon [email protected] is an associate professor in the School of Media and Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Lori Lopez [email protected] is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Meredith D. Clark [email protected] is an assistant professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. Sarah J. Jackson [email protected] is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northeastern University. 3 Executive summary. 7 Overview 11 Producing and sharing news without journalists 13 A skeptical view of news 16 Subcultures as a source of news 23 Community-focused sections 29 Black Twitter. 36 What (or who) is Black Twitter? 38 Surveillance 40 Use of sources 42 Journalistic authenticity 44 Covering the diversity of Black America 46 Feminist Twitter . 48 (Intersectional) Feminist Twitter makes the news 53 News, trust and Feminist Twitter 55 What Feminist Twitter wants from the news 57 Asian-American Twitter. 60 Asian-American Twitter as temporary anti-racism coalition 64 Developing trust with Asian-American journalists 66 Asian-Americans want more coverage 68 Asian-American journalists engage in media activism 69 4 Table of Contents Recommendations for journalists . .72 Synthesis and implications? 77 How do community participants interact with journalists and news content? 77 How do journalists report on and interact with communities and their participants? 79 How can the relationship between the professional news media and these online communities be improved? 81 Inclusion 81 Representation 82 Acknowledgment 83 Protection 84 Appendix . .85 Identifying news-related links and Twitter accounts 85 Net favorability index 86 Rank differences 87 Interviews 87 Endnotes 91 5 #iamanimmigrant #asianamerican #immigrantheritagemonth #justice4liang #peterliang #amc #makemulanright #intothebadlands #freshofftheboat #emergingus #aaironfist #whitewashedout #oscarsstillsowhite #tildaswinton #aapi #beingasian #starringjohncho #feelthebern #bobbyjindalissowhite #myasianamericanstory #ihm2015 #berniesanders #asian #jindian #feelthebern #doctorstrange #emergingus #thisis2016 #onlyonepercent #underratedasian #abc #muslimneighborhood #stillsanders #emergingus #alllivesmatter #thanksgivingclapback #blackgirlmagic #blackout #blacktwitter #blm #growingupblack #trump #feelthebern #freddiegray #betawards #blacklivesmatter #notmypresident #blackoutday #thanksgivingwithblackfamilise #sayhername #oscars #altonsterling #staywoke #imstillwithher #batonrouge #tcot #ferguson #uniteblue #ripvine #concernedstudent19506 #obamaday #sandrabland #dallas #ichoosebey #famousmelaniatrumpquotes #baltimore #oscarssowhite #iamanimmigrant #asianamerican #immigrantheritagemonth #justice4liang #peterliang #amc #makemulanright #intothebadlands Executive #freshofftheboat #emergingus Summary #aaironfist #whitewashedout People have been forming communities #oscarsstillsowhite #tildaswinton using digital communication technologies #aapi #beingasian #starringjohncho since long before the web as we know #feelthebern #bobbyjindalissowhite it today. Social media are only the latest #myasianamericanstory in a long series of digital forums that have enabled global conversations and #ihm2015 #berniesanders connections around nearly any topic #asian #jindian #feelthebern imaginable. With its emphasis on public #doctorstrange #emergingus accessibility and real-time content #thisis2016 #onlyonepercent production, Twitter has become a major #underratedasian #abc hub for communities of all types and sizes. #muslimneighborhood #stillsanders The issues and voices of people of color and women have attracted much attention #emergingus #alllivesmatter from professional journalists over the #thanksgivingclapback past few years.1 Yet many such individuals #blackgirlmagic #blackout have criticized journalists’ portrayals and #blacktwitter #blm coverage of issues that are important to #growingupblack #trump them. In response, some participants have assumed the role of news creators and #feelthebern #freddiegray distributors, focusing on their communities’ #betawards #blacklivesmatter particular concerns.2 #notmypresident #blackoutday Understanding these emerging social #thanksgivingwithblackfamilise subcultures will allow more accurate #sayhername #oscars portrayals of diverse communities and yield #altonsterling #staywoke insights for better journalistic engagement #imstillwithher #batonrouge #tcot in the digital age. #ferguson #uniteblue #ripvine #concernedstudent1950 #obamaday 7 #sandrabland #dallas #ichoosebey #famousmelaniatrumpquotes #baltimore #oscarssowhite This report, commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and co-written by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Virginia, Northeastern University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains the complex interactions between journalists and three specific Twitter subcultures: Black Twitter, Feminist Twitter and Asian-American Twitter, each of which has been the subject of extensive news coverage in recent years. Based on computational analyses of large-scale Twitter data and interviews of community participants and journalists, our research sought to answer three related questions: 1. How do community participants interact with journalists and news content? 2. How do journalists report on and interact with communities and their participants? 3. How can the relationship between the professional news media and these online communities be improved? 8 Our findings support several broad conclusions about relationships between the news media and these Twitter subcultures, in relation to these questions: Participants produce and share news without journalists: Community agenda setting: Participants often use Twitter to circulate and raise awareness about issues of concern on their own terms without waiting for professional journalists to take interest. Some community participants use Twitter itself as a curated news source to avoid problematic portrayals by mainstream news outlets. In this role, Twitter allows traditionally marginalized communities to set their own agendas rather than merely being raw material for unengaged journalists. Gaps in news coverage: Comparing the most prominent issues within each community to what media outlets mentioned most often (and deemed newsworthy) revealed several differences. For Asian-American Twitter and Black Twitter, some of the underrepresented hashtags appeal to highly specific community interests not likely to be shared by outsiders (such as #thanksgivingclapback or #ryanpotterfortimdrake). However, this was not the case on the topic of rape in Feminist Twitter, which was underrepresented in news coverage despite its societal importance and prominence. Media relies on Twitter subcultures as a source of news: News gathering: Individual explorations of each community reveal that journalists view Twitter as a highly productive tool for gathering story ideas and insights. News coverage of Feminist Twitter mostly dealt with long-standing issues such as sexism in STEM fields(#ilooklikeanengineer , #distractinglysexy), insulting behavior from male elites (#nastywoman, #askhermore) and transphobia (#girlslikeus). Black Twitter coverage focused mostly on anti-black police 9 violence