The Pennsylvania State University
The Graduate School
College of the Liberal Arts
DIGITAL ACTIVISM AND CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL MOVEMENTS:
A CASE STUDY OF THE BLACK LIVES MATTER GLOBAL NETWORK
A Thesis in
Communication Arts and Sciences
by
Breanna N. Mapston
2018 Breanna Mapston
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
August 2018
ii The thesis of Breanna N. Mapston was reviewed and approved* by the following:
Mary Stuckey Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences Thesis Advisor
Anne Demo Assistant Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences
Kirt Wilson Associate Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences Director of Graduate Studies of the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences
*Signatures are on file in the Graduate School
iii ABSTRACT
This thesis explores the digital activism used by contemporary social movements by examining the Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLM). I explore several components of BLM’s digital ecology, including the organization’s website and social media accounts, to offer a renewed understanding of social movements as they appear in online contexts. I seek to understand how online messages operate rhetorically for social movements. I argue the modern movement needs an online component, although I find digital activism cannot replace the offline protests of the rhetoric of the streets.
Ultimately, I offer a qualitative contribution to the study of digital activism which will serve as a prevalent form of communication for social movements now and in the future.
iv TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... v
Introduction. Digital Activism and Contemporary Social Movements ...... 1
Digital Activism ...... 2 Outline of Study ...... 5 Conclusion ...... 10
Chapter 1. A Digital History of the Black Lives Matter Global Network ...... 13
Introduction ...... 13 The Merging of Digital Protest Rhetoric in Online Spaces ...... 14 The Digital Evolution of Black Lives Matter ...... 25 Conclusion: A Model of Digital Activism ...... 34
Chapter 2. Injustice, Freedom, Inclusion: The Rhetorical Strategies of the @BlkLivesMatter Twitter Account ...... 43
Researching Twitter ...... 44 Analyzing @BlkLivesMatter ...... 47 #JusticeFor_____:@BlkLivesMatter’s Engagement with State Violence and Beyond ...... 52 #Free_____: The Dual Nature of the Idepgraph
Chapter 3. Translating Tweets to the Streets: The Relationship between Black Lives Matter’s Digital Presence and “Offline” Activism ...... 88
Introduction ...... 88 Social Movements, Social Media, and Mobilization ...... 91 Confrontational Rhetoric in the Case of Ferguson ...... 102 Conclusion: Toward A Future of Digital Protest Rhetoric ...... 113
Conclusion. Toward a Future of Social Movement Digital Activism ...... 123
Building a Movement Network ...... 124 BLM and the Future of Digital Activism ...... 126
Bibliography ...... 131
v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A thesis is not merely the product of one’s individualized efforts. I am thus deeply indebted to many for their help and support in the process of this project. First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor, Mary Stuckey, for agreeing to work with me and providing invaluable feedback, encouragement, and guidance. I am grateful for my committee members, Anne Demo and Kirt Wilson, for their suggestions and direction for this project. I am much obliged to Ben Goldman and the Penn State library staff for their help in researching Internet archives. I am appreciative of Suzanne Enck, Kyle Jensen, and Mark Hlavacik for encouraging me to attend graduate school. I would also like to thank the rhetoric faculty and graduate students of the Communication Arts and Sciences department for their various conversations and support over the years.
On a more personal note, I would like to thank my parents and Gramma for engaging me in “writing breaks” and conversation, even if they had no clue what my work entailed. I am further appreciative of the friends who helped support a work-life balance—namely Derek Lewis, Tony Irizarry, Kellie Marin, and Kasey Foley—as well as my dog, Rhett, who encouraged time away from the computer. Finally, I am forever and always grateful of my partner, Patrick Corrigan, for his unrelenting support, care, and belief in me.
Introduction
Digital Activism and Contemporary Social Movements
#BlackLivesMatter. #Ferguson. #BringBackOurGirls. #LoveWins. A little over a decade ago these phrases would not make sense to someone seeking social change.
Today, however, social media and the protest campaigns that take place online have shifted the way society conceives social issues and activism.1 Digitalization has changed the rhetoric of activism. Social movements are adapting. Protest is taking place in new spaces at staggering speeds. One movement that fully engages in digital activism efforts is the Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLM). BLM began with a single hashtag and has since grown into a multi-national, highly recognizable network with a huge social media presence.2 BLM serves as a prime example of a contemporary social movement engaged in digital activism, which makes it an ideal object of study for this thesis.
My project utilizes BLM as a case study to understand how social movements are operating within a largely digitalized society. This project combines work on digital spaces, social media, and the relationship between online and offline protests to articulate an updated model of social movement rhetoric. I do not presume a holistic theory of the contemporary social movement, but seek to offer reconceptualization of social movement efforts as they appear online. I believe this is merely a step in analyzing the modern movement, but it is a necessary one as social movements increasingly utilize the Internet.
2 This introduction offers two important synopses. First, I provide an overview of digital activism in modern social movements and explain why the study of such activism is important to the field of rhetoric. Second, I offer a brief outline of each chapter of this thesis. Each of the three content chapters is focused on different parts of BLM’s online presence, including the organization’s website, social media accounts, and online practices that lead to offline mobilization. The concluding chapter combines each piece to examine the whole of BLM’s online manifestation. The conclusion will also examine how digitalization has changed the rhetoric of activism for contemporary movements while offering some hypotheses about the future of digital activism.
Digital Activism
Digital activism can be defined as utilizing digital technologies in campaigns for political and social change.3 Digital activism operates in a digital network and is contextualized both by the technology that is used for the activism as well as the socio- political environment in which the activism occurs.4 The term encompasses the quick speed and vast scale of a low-cost “set of digitally networked campaigning activities—or practices” that take place on the Internet.5 Since digital activism occurs online, these practices can reach wide audiences almost instantaneously. This form of activism is often cheaper than traditional activism in multiple ways. For instance, sending an email requires only the cost of human power and Internet access as opposed to the paper, envelopes, stamps, and other materials for letter writing campaigns of the past. Further, the feasibility and interconnectedness of digital activism’s network structure allows social
3 movements to do more with less. In one scholar’s estimation, “when large numbers of citizens are able to more easily connect to one another, to send and receive original content, and to coordinate action, they are able to create effective political movements.”6
Digital activism, therefore, can lead to social change.
Digital activism can be a useful tool to social movements, which I define broadly as networks of individual actors connected through shared beliefs who are working collectively toward social change. Digital activism is particularly helpful to these groups, as the discursive spaces of the Internet “aid in transforming dissatisfaction to mass collective action quickly and efficiently.”7 In essence, operating online allows social movements to recruit, circulate information, organize, and coordinate more easily than they could in the past.8 Further, the structure of digital activism works well with the often decentralized nature of social movements, as anyone with Internet access can communicate and organize with members of the movement. For instance, a movement could make several people administrators on their official Facebook page, which cuts out the need for one leader and instead allows multiple people to post on behalf of the movement.
The Internet itself offers several potentialities for collective action.9 The Internet can help movements discover information through providing greater access to publications and reports. Online platforms like websites, social media, and blogs allow information to be circulated efficiently and, if used correctly, effectively. These platform also allow a movement to recruit members to offline activities or report any happenings that occurred in the streets. The Internet can also aid movements in coordination and organizing processes as members can “follow” an organization to stay up to date on
4 information or join in group discussion. Event pages can also help a movement see who is planning to attend an offline meeting or protest, as well as provide readily accessible information to movement members. Finally, the Internet can help facilitate coalition building as members interact and form collective identities.
While the Internet is helpful for social movements, organizational structure is still necessary for a movement’s longevity. The “instant insurgent communities” formed by digital activism are great for short campaigns or one time protests.10 However, networks maintained solely online are often temporary and unstable.11 Maintaining a permanent online space supplemented with offline activities and continuous goals can augment a movement’s staying power. This is one reason I will later argue that while online components are necessary for the modern movement, offline protest is still critical in the fight for social change.
The study of digital activism is predominately comprised of case studies, and my thesis is no different.12 I do not use the case study, however, to make anecdotal claims with an ascribed truth value. Instead, I use the case of BLM as an investigative tool to comprehend how digital activism is working within the ecology of a movement to make claims about the practices of digital activism and social movements more generally.
5 Outline of Study
Chapter 1: A Digital History of the Black Lives Matter Global Network
The first chapter of this thesis provides needed context and history of both digital activism and BLM. I build on the overview of digital activism in this introduction to track how protest rhetoric has merged with online spaces through the evolution of the Internet.
In this chapter, I also make the case for using digital ecology as a rhetoric heuristic. A digital ecology, put simply, is an interconnected structure of people and technologies that are related in various ways. An ecology allows scholars to toggle between parts and wholes within a particular context (or set of contexts) and provides helpful vocabulary to describe the networked systems of digital social movements. In other words, thinking ecologically allows for analysis of a single comment on a Facebook post while still examining an entire movement. An ecological perspective is used in each chapter of this thesis as I evaluate small portions of the larger BLM matrix.
I begin this work in Chapter 1 by examining the official BLM website, www.blacklivesmatter.com. After summarizing the history of BLM as an organization, I turn to the evolution of their website. The website first appeared in November of 2014 and was rebranded in October 2017. I argue this shift is an effort to revitalize the organization and its members, as well as an attempt to attract more activists to BLM. I find BLM’s portrayal online evolves alongside its activism practices, which demonstrates the interrelatedness of a movement and their digital presence. I conclude this chapter by examining the BLM website as a model of digital activism. The website utilizes many of
6 the affordances of the Internet while still maintaining an organizational structure insistent on long term change, making it a good example of successful digital activism practices.
Chapter 2: Injustice, Freedom, Inclusion: The Rhetorical Strategies of the @BlkLivesMatter Twitter Account
Twitter is a crucial component of BLM’s digital ecology and plays an important role in the network’s digital activism. The organization began on Twitter and continues to promote its ideologies and activities to over a quarter of a million followers via its official account, @BlkLivesMatter.13 The account also creates hashtags that initiate viral conversations inclusive of millions. For instance, #Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatter were the first and third most popular Twitter hashtags relating to social causes, respectively.14
#BlackLivesMatter was actually used 172,772 times in one day following a grand jury’s decision not to indict Darren Wilson, who was the officer involved in the shooting of
Michael Brown that sparked the unrest in Ferguson in 2014.15 The account is a viable object of study, I argue, because it helps shape conceptions of BLM as both an organization and a hashtag.
This chapter begins with an overview of extant literature regarding Twitter as a research topic as well as a survey of the @BlkLivesMatter account. I offer a synopsis of the 1,695 tweets BLM produced between the account’s inception in July 2013 and
January 2017. I collected and archived each tweet and discovered a handful of ideas that continuously appeared. The chapter discusses three of them, injustice, freedom, and inclusion, as rhetorical strategies used by @BlkLivesMatter to influence user perception and encourage engagement in collective action.
7 The first theme I study, justice, looks at @BlkLivesMatter’s engagement with violence at the hands of the police alongside other forms of racialized oppression. The
Twitter account uses the rhetorical processes of association and amplification to expand their user’s understanding of BLM’s views of injustice. The account amplifies multiple examples of individuated injustice, such as the death of Trayvon Martin, and ties them together as a collective representative of structural forms of injustice. The account also links multiple forms of injustice, such as unequal pay for equal work, under the larger
#BlackLivesMatter umbrella. These associations allow BLM to amplify their ideologies to a wide audience who may assume the organization is solely concerned with police brutality. Association becomes a way for BLM to move beyond a single issue organization in the minds of its followers.16 The linking of ideas can also aid BLM’s activism efforts as they work against systemic injustices to enable freedom for all Black individuals.
The BLM Twitter account engages in discussion of freedom, the second theme I analyze, in two distinct ways. In both forms,
@BlkLivesMatter to reconceptualize
8
Collective action is the desired outcome of the third theme, inclusivity. This theme is reflective of BLM’s goal of centering all marginalized voices, including those that have been oppressed within the Black community such as queer folks, women, the incarcerated, and those with disabilities.18 In using inclusive language, @BlkLivesMatter is able to construct collective communities that may be motivated toward collective action as particular individuals connect with those working toward social change.
Inclusivity also allows a wider audience to identify with the movement, and can increase visibility for the organization. Ultimately, a more inclusive organization has the potential for growth and success as more members join. Discussion of the activism of BLM, however, is reserved for the following chapter.
Chapter 3: Translating Tweets to the Streets: The Relationship between Black Lives Matter’s Digital Presence and “Offline” Activism
Like each chapter preceding it, Chapter 3 discusses elements of BLM’s digital ecology; however, this chapter differs from the rest in that it analyzes offline activism alongside the digital. This chapter takes up (#)Ferguson to examine the relationship between online and offline practices. Here, I am interested in mobilization and what transitions digital activism to the rhetoric of the streets. I make two arguments: 1) contemporary social movements need an online presence, and 2) offline activism is still necessary for successful engagement in confrontation that leads to change.
9 I begin this chapter with some context about social movements and mobilization via social media. I track several affordances social media provides, including speed and dexterity in communicating to many followers who occupy widespread geographic spaces. I also discuss the “new public sphere” created by social media that allows more people to participate in activist activities.19 Further, I find the rhetorical practices of online and offline spheres are necessarily interconnected as they form a type of feedback loop in regards to mobilization tactics. In this chapter, I take up the case of Ferguson to examine the online and offline mobilization strategies of BLM.
#Ferguson was one of the most prevalent hashtags in 2014 with over 21 million uses on Twitter.20 The social media platform became a space for organization as many planned local protests in response to the shooting of Michael Brown. BLM, for instance, used Twitter to plan a Freedom Ride that gathered over 600 people in Missouri, which showcased how digital protest can become operationalized as offline activism. I claim the online calls to action enabled the large turnout to offline demonstrations, making online communication a crucial component of contemporary activism.
After articulating why people showed up to the Ferguson protests, I turn to analyzing the confrontational practices present in the demonstrations. Here, I take up
Robert L. Scott and Donald K. Smith’s theory of confrontational rhetoric and provide a brief history of its application in rhetorical scholarship.21 I claim BLM is necessarily confrontational as the movement brings visibility to power disparities and works to end social problems such as police violence. BLM’s digital activism certainly uses elements of confrontational rhetoric, but it is the offline protests that led to measurable changes like the DOJ investigating the Ferguson police department or Officer Wilson submitting
10 his resignation due to safety concerns.22 While social movements increasingly utilize forms of digital activism that can be incredibly beneficial to a movement’s cause, I find offline protest is still a necessary element of enacting social change.
Conclusion
This thesis offers a needed contribution to the study of rhetoric and social movements. Through an analysis of BLM, I offer sustained examination of a contemporary social movement’s rhetorical use of digital activism via social media and the Internet. While many disciplines have examined the digital aspects of social movements from a quantitative lens, few have looked at what the messages circulating online mean. Studying how these digital messages operate allows us to better understand how they persuade and, sometimes, motivate individuals. Scrutinizing texts has always been of interest to rhetoricians; this thesis continues this line of work in an updated manner. My hope for this work is to provide a basis for investigation of modern texts of digital activism, as they will undoubtedly remain a viable form of communication for social movements of the future.
11 Notes
1 Tanya Sichynsky, “These 10 Twitter Hashtags Changed the Way we Talk about Social Issues,” The Washington Post, March 21, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/03/21/these-are-the-10-most- influential-hashtags-in-honor-of-twitters- birthday/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4e6022b4359f.
2 Gene Demby, “Combing Through 41 Million Tweets to Show How #BlackLivesMatter Exploded,” NPR, March 2, 2016, https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/03/02/468704888/combing-through-41- million-tweets-to-show-how-blacklivesmatter-exploded.
3 Mary Joyce, Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change, ed. Mary Joyce (New York, NY: International Debate Education Association, 2010).
4 Mary Joyce, “Introduction: How to Think About Digital Activism,” in Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change (New York, NY: International Debate Education Association, 2010), 1-14.
5 Mary Joyce, Digital Activism Decoded, viii.
6 Mary Joyce, “Introduction,” 2.
7 Anastasia Kavada, “Activism Transforms Digital: The Social Movement Perspective,” in Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change (New York, NY: International Debate Education Association, 2010), 101-118.
8 Anastasia Kavada, “Activism Transforms Digital.”
9 Anastasia Kavada, “Activism Transforms Digital.”
10 Manuel Castells, Communication Power (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2009).
11 Anastasia Kavada, “Activism Transforms Digital.”
12 Mary Joyce, “Introduction.”
13 Jamilah King, “#BlackLivesMatter: The Evolution of an Iconic Hashtag,” Occupy February 17, 2015, https://www.occupy.com/article/blacklivesmatter-evolution-iconic- hashtag#sthash.h1GdSOAj.dpbs. Information on followers gathered February 2018.
12
14 Tanya Sichynsky, “These 10 Twitter Hashtags Changed the Way we Talk about Social Issues.”
15 Monica Anderson and Paul Hitlin, “The Hashtag #BlackLivesMatter Emerges: Social Activism on Twitter,” Pew Research Center, August 15, 2016, http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/08/15/the-hashtag-blacklivesmatter-emerges-social- activism-on-twitter/.
16 Johnathan M. Cox, “The Source of a Movement: Making the Case for Social Media as an Informational Source Using Black Lives Matter,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 40, no. 11 (2017): 1847-1854.
17 Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York, NY: The New Press, 2010).
18 “About,” Black Lives Matter, accessed October 19, 2017, https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/.
19 Nikita Carney, “All Lives Matter, but so Does Race: Black Lives Matter and the Evolving Role of Social Media,” Humanity & Society 40, no. 2 (2016): 180-199.
20 Gabriel Stricker, “The 2014 #YearOnTwitter,” Twitter, December 10, 2014, https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/a/2014/the-2014-yearontwitter.html.
21 Robert L. Scott and Donald K. Smith, “The Rhetoric of Confrontation,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 55, no. 1 (1969): 1-8.
22 Christine Byers, “Darren Wilson Resigns from Ferguson Police Department,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 30, 2014, http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and- courts/article_a8cfa6e7-408c-520c-b9d2-de2a75e8983d.html.
13 Chapter 1
A Digital History of the Black Lives Matter Global Network
Introduction
Social movements are taking place online. From hashtag campaigns like #MeToo or #LoveWins, to demonstrations like Occupy Wall Street or the Arab Spring that utilize digital forms of communication, the Internet has become a platform for social justice (and of course, also its opposite). The evolution of the Internet has changed many practices in daily life, and social movements are not immune to new technology. In fact, the “Internet can enhance political mobilization and increase awareness of important social issues outside the control of the dominant media corporations.”1 In other words, the Internet is putting movements more firmly in the hands of the people.
Social movements have become mediated for several reasons. Social media serves as the main (and most frequently studied) component of online social movements. Social media also serves as a new mode of organization that can lead to mobilization of collective action.2 As social media has become interwoven into many people’s daily experience, it can shift awareness of political processes and oneself as a subject capable of enacting change in the world.3 Through social media, individuals from different identities, regions, and belief systems can communicate with one another almost instantaneously. Social media has thus led to “networking cultures that are a fundamental trait of reflexivity and action in our contemporary societies.”4 In other words, social media has changed the ways in which we communicate.
14 Many scholars in disciplines like mass communication, information and technology studies, and media studies have examined social movements and social media, but rhetoricians have been slow to follow suit. I seek to provide a more qualitative understanding of the relationship between digital spaces and social movements. This chapter provides several contextual groundings that serve as a foundation for the remainder of my thesis. First, I track the digitization of social movements to online spaces. Here, I make the case for using digital ecology as a heuristic that aids in developing the understanding of digital networks, social movements, and protest. I then transition to looking specifically at the Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLM) as a case study. I outline the history of the organization, which was founded online and continues to operate through digital means. I pay specific attention to how the organization’s official website, www.blacklivesmatter.com, has developed since its founding. Finally, I question whether this site might serve as a good model for digital activism. Before delving into the specific case of BLM, however, I explore how and why social movements in general made the move to online spaces.
The Merging of Digital and Protest Rhetoric in Online Spaces
A few things have contributed to the digitalization of modern social movements and the rhetoric of protest. First and foremost, the invention and increased utilization of the Internet is foundational for online movements as it provides a new platform for activists that once occupied the streets. The Internet has produced a digital ecology, or an online, interconnected environment, where relationships are forged and mediated. Social
15 movements actively occupy a niche in this ecology as they engage in online networks through social media sites. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are operationalized by movements as powerful tools for information circulation and methods for mobilization, making them an important area of focus for scholars interested in studies of contemporary movements.5
This section provides an overview of some of the contributing factors of social movements migrating, at least in part, online. I begin with an explanation of digital ecology and why it works as a heuristic for a rhetorical understanding social movements.
I then provide a brief overview of the discursive spaces made available on the Internet while primarily focusing on how the Internet changes protest and activism. I end the section with an overview of the migration of social movements to digital arenas before transitioning to a case study of BLM.
Digital Ecology as a Rhetorical Heuristic
Ecology is a branch of science that examines the relationship between organisms and their environments.6 Ecologists study the interactions of organisms with one another, as well as their interactions with the physical spaces they occupy. The complex interrelationships of creatures and spaces can be thought of in terms of ecosystems, or communities of both living and non-living components that cannot be separated from one another.7 For Arthur Tansley, who first used the term, ecosystems are “basic units of nature” in which there is a consistent give and take between living organisms and their
16 environments. Looking at ecosystems as a whole allows for an understanding of life alongside the matter that sustains it.
Ecological systems can be useful heuristic for scholars in the humanities, as they provide a framework for examining people in conjunction with their environments.
Human Ecology developed in the late 19th century and can be understood as study of the relationships between humans and their environments—both natural and socially constructed.8 This is an interdisciplinary field that examines topics such as physiological and social adaptations to new environments, the effects of social, cultural, and psychological factors of people on ecosystems, and, importantly, the relation of technology and its applications on changing environmental factors.9 This last consideration is helpful when looking at people and technology in a digital ecology.
A digital ecology is an interrelated system of people and technology. While a biological ecosystem has components such as air, soil, and living creatures, a digital ecosystem is forged of websites, social media, and the people who use online resources.
There are two main lines of thinking that operate conjunctively within ecological thinking—systems and networks. An ecology is comprised of systems which is comprised of networks. Ecological understanding derives from study of the whole, as well as each part.
Systems thinking draws from Aristotle’s view that the whole is more than the sum of all its parts.10 In other words, it is important to examine an entire system because the system contains properties than cannot be contributed to any of its individual parts. The study of properties that are “meaningless for the parts, but crucial to the whole, constitutes the basis of the ecological way of thinking.”11 An ecological system contains
17 patterns of organization of parts that construct relationships along physical elements to create a whole.12 In other words, a system’s structure is “the physical embodiment of its organization.”13 Several ecologists explain this relationship through the metaphor of a bicycle. Physical components of a bike may include handlebars, wheels, and pedals, which can differ based on system; for instance, a mountain bike and a road bike will have slightly different types of parts. However, both a road and a mountain bike can be understood as a bicycle through the organization of their parts. While the actual tires may differ, both are recognized as the same mode of transportation. The structure remains the same in each system, even as the parts differ. The same can be understood of networks.
As one ecologist wrote, “to understand ecosystems will be ultimately to understand networks.”14 Digital social movements cannot only be understood through study of the whole Internet system, but through an ecological network of online users, social media sites, blog posts, web links, and more. Further, each part of a network can have a network of its own, as is the case with social media users. Each individual has groups they follow and interact with, each member of the group has their own community, and so on. Networks demonstrate that a part can be broken down into increasingly smaller parts. To return to the bicycle image, wheels can be examined as the whole of spokes, rubber, and wires. These components form the network of a wheel; when combined with other networks they form the system of a bicycle. When looked at in total, this can be thought of as an ecology.
Adopting an ecological way of thinking can be beneficial for rhetoric.
Rhetoricians are often trained to look at parts and wholes—one has to look no further than speech analysis to find examples. With increasing amounts of data available via the
18 Internet terminology like networks, systems, and ecologies can provide helpful classifications. Studying a digital ecology allows for examination of something as microscopic as a comment on a tweet while simultaneously looking at an entire social movement. Further, thinking ecologically contextualizes rhetoric temporally, historically, and through lived experiences at the same time.15 An ecology, in other words, does not confine rhetorical analysis to a single situation. Ecology understands a whole through its parts and their relationships and interactions to one another; rhetoric, in other words, does the same.
Using a heuristic of digital ecology for a social movement is no more complex than examining the interconnectedness of the parts of a movement in light of the movement as a whole. Some media and communication scholars are already engaged in this work. Lindsay Ems, for example, examines technological artifacts in light of social forces.16 Paolo Gerbaudo argues for an understanding of ideology within digital activism as a value system that interacts with technology to shape activist practices.17 He notes that activism is defined by multiple contextual systems, such as technology, culture, and social relationships. Jelani Ince, Fabio Rojas, and Clayton Davis examine networks specifically in the context of hashtags on Twitter.18 Each hashtag is piece in a vast, interconnected network that shapes larger concepts and ideas. Victor Pickard has claimed movements that operate online reflect the logics of a networked environment.19 As the work of these scholars makes abundantly clear, the ecology of a social movement must now include the relationship between the movement and the digital spaces it occupies.
Social movements were once understood as a rhetorical heuristic, but technology is rapidly changing and expanding movement structure.20 Thus, it is time to implement a
19 new heuristic of digital ecology that offers a better way to understand digital social movements. Before looking at the ecology of a particular movement as an example, it is necessary to understand how and why social movements have developed different ecologies as they have transitioned online.
Social Movements and the Internet
The Internet allows people to do almost anything. It can be used to acquire necessities of life, such as food and clothing, or can simply be a source of entertainment though streaming television or games. More importantly for my purposes, the Internet can be a resource for an individual to find connections and forge relationships. The latest
American generations are living in a culture that has never not known the Internet; digital technology now mediates much of life and can be viewed as a discursive space that aids in identity formation.21 In other words, the newest activists are figuring out who they are and what they care about in online contexts. In this way, the Internet is shaping activism, protest, and social movements.
The Internet is also changing the ways we theorize social movements. For instance, modern movements like Occupy Wall Street and BLM are thought of as
“leaderless,” since they adopt a decentralized structure rather than relying on one or two figureheads. In fact, some scholars suggest the Internet has “transformed political action and long established mechanisms of social movement organization, communication, and mobilization” though the reduction of participation costs and the feasibility of information circulation.22 The Internet moves quickly and allows people to send and
20 receive information almost instantaneously. The structure can facilitate collaboration with ease as it “lowers the obstacles to grass-roots mobilization and organization, and speeds the flow of politics.”23 The Internet is more efficient than past methods of organizing, as it streamlines information, communication, and mobilization.
In other words, the Internet has changed our understanding of political and collective action. As Yannis Theocharis and his colleagues note, reducing participation costs to almost nothing allows people to participate in protests from almost anywhere in the world. This results in “a new model of flash mobilization” wherein many participants engage in online forms of activism.24 While protest used to consist predominately of offline demonstrations like sit-ins or marches, modern protest may be as simple as clicking a button or signing an online petition. There has been some criticism of these activities, but ultimately the Internet has provided more ability for participation and mobilization for social movements than was ever available before.25
According to Richard Khan and Douglas Kellner, the Internet and its communicative technologies form a basis for activism and progressive movements.26
Blogs, social media accounts, and other communicative platforms housed on the Internet allow for the geographic spread of local issues as well as speed in forming coalitions, coordinating action, and circulating discourse.27 Social media sites like Twitter and
Facebook also make it easier to contribute to a conversation, which, although these posts are “sporadic and ephemeral [in] nature, may allow a much larger percentage of ideologically sympathetic individuals to participate,” in a movement.28 Overall, the
Internet provides more affordability to movements than communicative practices of the past.
21 The Internet is not without criticism and cost. Many scholars write as though online access is ubiquitous, but this is not the case. The ability to access the Internet from one’s home varies widely across demographics such as age, race, and income level.29 As of 2013, 98 percent of U.S. citizens had the capability for Internet access.30 Yet, as of
2016, only 73 percent of U.S. adults classified as home broadband users.31 This number decreases further when looking at those who do not hold the most privileged identity categories, and is greatly lowed when examining countries beyond the United States.
Internet access does offer a lot of affordability to social movements and activist participants, but the service is not free. Further, some have criticized online forms of activism as “slacktivism,” or actions that require little on the end of the participant and may not inspire legislative or otherwise documentable change.32 I discuss this further in
Chapter 3, but it is important to note now that the Internet is not perfect and should not be seen as a total replacement for traditional forms of protest.
The Internet should not be viewed as a utopia; rather, scholars ought to pay attention to the spaces it creates. I choose to examine the Internet as a digital ecology as this perspective allows for understanding of a more holistic online environment— inclusive of both good and bad qualities. The next section articulates my understanding of an ecological view of the digital, as well as how social movements are situated within this environment.
The Digitization of Social Movements
22 Social movement scholarship has undergone a reconceptualization in light of new communication technologies and digital spaces. As more movements utilize online resources, scholars have called for “an examination of electronic social movement organizations and their tactics,” as this may “help refine our understanding of contemporary social movements.”33 Scholarship has broadened to include examination of the Internet, new forms of organization and mobilization for social movements, and social media. Scholars have also highlighted some clear ways the digitalization of social movements has changed the way movements operate and the ways in which they are perceived. In this section, I highlight some of the main ideas emergent in scholarship on digital social movements to show how movements have grown and transformed as they have moved online.
Theorization of digital social movements builds upon scholarship on New Social
Movements (NSM). These “new” movements are perceived as raising new issues, using new organizational forms, and are centered on building collective action.34 Importantly, these movements recognize the location of social conflict in civil society as opposed to traditional political institutions as they build collective identities and solidarities while challenging hegemonic views of politics and society.35 Their form is “constituted by a loosely articulated network,” that allows for de-centralized leadership and part-time participation from members.36 These social movements reject boundaries of public and private as they politicize the social “through practices that belong to an intermediate space between private pursuits and institutional state-sanctioned modes of politics.”37
Digital social movements operate in similar ways to NSMs, but in online spaces.
23 Social movements are engaging in new forms due to the widespread use of the
Internet. Manuel Castells posited contemporary social movements are “born on the
Internet, diffused by the Internet, and maintain [their] presence on the Internet.”38 In fact, the technological use of social movements has enabled abundant change “in how activists organize, mobilize, and publicize.”39 Digital networks can circulate information quickly to movement members.40 The cost for participation in a movement is lowered through online forms of activism like signing a petition or engaging in a hashtag campaign.41
Both a movement’s ability to publicize and the feasibility of citizens to engage in a movement has led to an increase in protest activity generally.
There is more activism and protest today than at any other point in history, and online resources may be the reason behind this increase.42 Social networking has influenced the process of protest by capturing the attention of the public, avoiding censorship that occurs with forms of mass media, and aiding in the coordination of protest events.43 Most online social networking is done through social media sites such as
Facebook or Twitter. In fact, these platforms are becoming integral parts of conversations regarding social movements, especially as these conversations encourage citizens to reject structures of power.44 Ultimately, networking platforms like social media sites have
“opened up innovative avenues for people to challenge existing configurations of power.”45 Social media allows audience members to actively participate in movement conversations without necessarily physically joining the movement.46 Citizens can comment on a movement’s post or share a status update from their own homes. The convenience and affordability allows those who may not identify as activists to
24 participate in movements via online mobilization.47 For these reasons, social media has reshaped scholarly understandings of protest and collective action.
Scholarship surrounding social movements has become increasingly interested in the relationship between online structures and protest events. Particularly, some scholars note the ability of Internet content to bypass the censorship and gatekeeping often found in mass media outlets like newspapers or news broadcasts.48 This allows a movement to stay in control of their messages and cuts out an interpretive intermediary that can skew the portrayal of a movement’s goals. Additionally, social media affords a more effective route for movement organization and mobilization. In a shift from of past forms of grassroots organizing like canvasing or letter writing, social media allows activism to be accessible to a larger amount, and wider variety, of people.49 Further, social media breaks spatial and temporal bounds; no longer does a person have to show up in a certain place at a certain time to engage in organized protest.50 While some view online protest as a poor substitute for offline communities and protest actions, most agree social media offers a lot to modern social movements.51
Social movements have transitioned online through the evolution of the Internet and social media. They occupy new spaces, which I view from an ecological perspective, that allow the contemporary movement to develop and mobilize in new ways.52
Examining a social movement’s digital ecology can provide insight to the organization’s goals and ideologies, as there is a relationship between online and offline communication.53 The remainder of this chapter takes up BLM as a case study. I look at one system of the organization’s ecology over time to understand how BLM has
25 developed since its inception.54 I find BLM has shifted the networks that comprise the system of their website in a self-reflexive attempt to remain viable activists.
The Digital Evolution of Black Lives Matter
BLM began online with a single tweet—“Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.”55 This was Alicia Garza’s response to the news of George Zimmerman’s acquittal after he was accused of killing Trayvon Martin and was posted on her personal
Twitter account. A few hours later, Patrisse Cullors commented on the tweet with the now conspicuous “#blacklivesmatter.”56 Cullors then reached out to Garza to ask if she would be interested in creating a hashtag campaign via their personal social media accounts. #BlackLivesMatter began to spread around the social networks of Garza,
Cullors, and Opal Tometti, who joined in the organizing efforts for the social media campaign. The three women established a separate Twitter account, @BlkLivesMatter for their efforts, as well as a Facebook page, Instagram account, and Tumblr page.57 The network also purchased a web domain, https://www.blacklivesmatter.com/.
This section examines the digital ecology of BLM and how it has grown and changed over time. After a brief overview of BLM as an organization, I turn to an examination of the BLM website. This site has two major milestones; the first milestone occurred when the site first appeared in November 2014, the second when it was completely redesigned in October 2017. I discuss each iteration of the site to see how the changes shifted the portrayal BLM created of itself, as well as what types of messages the organization was able to send.
26 The Beginning and Branding of Black Lives Matter
Several people have written histories on BLM.58 Some journalists have compared the movement to the Civil Right Movement of the past, while others wonder about the movement’s future.59 BLM itself has published a Herstory detailing the foundations of the organization; the brief article recounts what is known by those who have followed
BLM or #BlackLivesMatter.60 The movement began with a hashtag in 2013 that has become an organizing tool to help grow the organization to a network of over 40 chapters in the U.S. and abroad. The movement wants to build local power and affirm various marginalized identity categories, and its founders are female and queer. In sum, “Black
Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.”61
BLM gained traction throughout 2013 and 2014 and grew exponentially after the
2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. BLM founder Patrisse Cullors helped organize a freedom ride to Ferguson called the Black Lives Matter Ride. The ride gathered over 600 people in Ferguson to protest, march, and confront the police. In the words of BLM, Ferguson “was a guttural response to be with our people, our family—in support of the brave and courageous community of Ferguson and St. Louis as they were being brutalized by law enforcement, criticized by media, tear gassed, and pepper sprayed night after night.”62 After Ferguson, riders continued work in their own towns
27 and formed the first BLM chapters, thus creating the de-centralized structure for which the movement is known.
In 2017, BLM rebranded themselves as the Black Lives Matter Global Network.
The organization is largely the same, but has extended into other countries that face racial injustices, such as Canada and Nigeria. BLM claims their “goal is to support the development of new Black leaders, as well as create a network where Black people feel empowered to determine our destinies in our communities,” which is consistent with their objectives in 2013 and 2014.63 The rebranding is likely to maintain activist energies, especially in light of members growing tired or frustrated with the movement. After all, a large organization comes with disagreement, and in this case two of the founders have split apart due to different visions for the organization.64 Some chapter leaders are having to set aside full time activism for paying jobs; others are “just tired.”65 BLM runs the risk of losing momentum.
Organizational rebranding may help re-motivate current members or entice new ones to continue the work of fighting racial injustice. As founder Alicia Garza notes about BLM branding, “I think what’s important about this kind of design is that a lot of our work is not just marching and protesting. It’s about different ways we’re able to seep into the public consciousness so that our ideas become common sense as opposed to outlying ideas.”66 If rebranding makes ideas “common sense,” perhaps long-time members will remember what they are working toward while more people are inspired to join the movement.
28 Changing Digital Ecology: The Various Iterations of the Black Lives Matter Website
The BLM rebranding did not stop at the name addition of “Global Network,” but included a newly designed website, as well. The first iteration of www.blacklivesmatter.com was published in November of 2014 and was regularly updated with upcoming events, new chapters, and timely “writings,” which consist of
BLM musings like the State of the Black Union.67 Anonymous individuals have archived the website progressions using the Internet Archive Way Back Machine. This resource allows researchers to see the site in various stages from October 8, 2014 to the present.
The Wayback Machine is not simply screenshots of the www.blacklivesmatter.com landing page, but features captured content from subsequent pages, as well. This means users can see the homepage of the site, as well as linked sub-pages like the “About,”
“Contact,” or “Herstory” pages. I use the Wayback Machine in the next two sections to outline the BLM website as it first appeared as well as after its redesign.
November 2014
The first mention of a BLM website occurred on October 4, 2014, via the organization’s Facebook page. “Do you have photos or videos from our weekend in
Ferguson?” the post asks as the post’s writer, web designer Janisha R. Gabriel, notes “I am building our new website as we speak.”68 The site was first captured by the Wayback
Machine on October 8 and consisted of a note that the site would launch on October 12, a link to the organization’s Tumblr page, and a contact box to directly send a message
29 through www.blacklivesmatter.com. A Wayback capture on October 20 is nearly identical, but lists the launch date as October 17. A Facebook post on October 20 does like to a WordPress site, but both Wayback and Facebook materials seem to suggest the original launch deadline was missed.69
The first archive capture of the full BLM website occurred November 7, 2014.70
The site features a photo banner with 11 images rotating in a loop. All but one of the images feature Black bodies, many of which are engaged in protest. People hold posters and signs condemning George Zimmerman and police forces or proclaiming “No Justice
No Peace.” Others, even children, hold up their hands in a mirroring of Michael Brown’s
“Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.”71 Several hold raised fists, effectively evoking racial movements of the past in a demonstration that people of color are still oppressed.
Overlaying the photos are several lines of static text, reading “#BlackLivesMatter / Get
Active / Get Organized / Fight Back.”
This site is centered on mobilization. The landing page is full of calls to action that give agency to the reader. Website visitors are called to “learn about our National
Demands,” “add an event,” “read writings and perspectives,” or “connect with local organizers and join the movement.” The site also links to BLM social media pages without any text; after all the calls to action a user needs no prompting and it is assumed they will click on the iconographic links. The site’s landing page also provides links to pages including “About Us,” which then gets broken into “Who We Are” and “Our
Demands,” a page on “Media,” with sub-categories of “Blog,” “Photos,” and a second link to Tumblr, a page on “Ferguson,” and a “Contact Us” page. A site search bar is perched above a list of tags that range from antiblackness to women of Ferguson.
30 Clicking on any of these pages or tags takes a user to other areas of the BLM website.
Most links lead to blog posts written “by BlackLivesMatter,” that feature their own links to other blog posts housed on the www.blacklivesmatter.com site.
If www.blacklivesmatter.com is a system within the larger BLM ecology, each website link is a network. The organization features a few major networks of ideas that, when combined, help users gain a broader understanding of BLM. BLM’s “About” page is a good place to find pieces of BLM ideology that influence the larger system. The page first features statistics about racial injustices, such as the fact that a Black individual is murdered every 28 hours by members of law enforcement, 25.1 percent of Black
American women are estimated to live in poverty, or the average life expectancy for a
Black transgender women is 35 years.72 This particular page goes on to note BLM is “not a moment, but a movement,” and offers a four-paragraph overview of the movement’s history and meaning: “#BlackLivesMatter is a call to action and a response to the virulent anti-Black racism that permeates our society.”73 The page also lists variety of Black lives that matter, such as women, girls, gay, bi, boys, queer, men, lesbian, trans, immigrants, incarcerated, and differently abled; each of these identities are also listed on the homepage and are pinned to the bottom of many pages on the BLM site.
The second part of the “About” page features a list of “#BlackLivesMatter
National Demands.”74 These demands, which include ideas such as justice for Michael
Brown through arrest of Darren Wilson or the release of names of officers involved in
Black shootings, are also parts that inform the whole of BLM ecology and ideology of organizational beliefs. BLM embraces its ecological structure further as the movement desires to “develop a network of organizations and advocates to form a national policy
31 specifically aimed at redressing the systemic pattern of anti-black law enforcement violence in the US.”
Despite the “Who We Are” page noting BLM goes beyond the killings of Black people at the hands of the police, the demands and much of the rest of the website focuses on police brutality, Michael Brown, and Ferguson. Ferguson even has a dedicated page on www.blacklivesmatter.com that lists local organizers alongside local BLM demands that are parallel to the national demands already discussed. This demonstrates the larger system of BLM is in communication with itself, as its various page networks mirror one another. The parts are the same, but they create different wholes. As with a mountain bike versus a road bike, BLM puts similar ideological parts together in different ways to argue for justice in Ferguson as well as for all Black individuals. Some of these networked parts are carried throughout the years of www.blacklivesmatter.com, though they eventually get combined with new ideas to form a different whole.
October 2017-Present
The BLM website did grow and change over the years, but no change was a stark as the release of a completely redesigned site on October 17, 2017. The organization again announced this website via a Facebook post, noting the site is a way to protect the work of BLM.75 According to BLM, the new site “will serve as a central place to bring more folks into our work, therefore building the capacity of our organization and movement, provide critical resources and connection, and also function as a platform to uplift our chapters’ local work.” Again, BLM is attempting to re-mobilize current
32 members under the weight of prolonged activist measures that left many exhausted.
While BLM is not a brand or corporation in the traditional sense, following rebranding principles can help revise the organization’s vision, especially in light of shifting leadership, as well as aid in garnering internal support for the organization and its mission.76
Even ecosystems undergo rebranding for increased marketability; it makes sense digital ecologies can benefit from new visions as well.77 The newest landing page of www.blacklivesmatter.com still features a photo banner with rotating images, but now website visitors are met with a pop-up before they are able to see the pictures. The pop- up encourages visitors to support BLM efforts with a large “DONATE NOW!” button.
Once a user exits out of the pop-up, they see six images fairly reminiscent of those featured when the website first launched. Four of the six images are of protestors, one is a screen shot of a video BLM is promoting, and one is promoting Black Futures Month.
Each photo features its own text hyperlinks that lead to various articles on the BLM site.
Below the photos, website visitors are encouraged to “get involved” and “find a chapter” using a contact form and interactive map. The site also features “latest updates,” similar to the “writings” from the original site. Also remaining are links to BLM social media, but they are smaller and further down on the home page.
There is one major addition to the redesigned website—a BLM store. Users are directed to “get your BLM gear” and can click through several photos of t-shirts, hats, hoodies, and tote bags that proclaim “Black Lives Matter” in black text with a triplicate yellow underline. There is a link to the store, but users will have to wait for the “hottest schwag,” as it is “coming soon.” The store, alongside the links to social media account,
33 are featured at the bottom of every page housed in the www.blacklivesmatter.com interface. A user can read articles, look at the organization’s about page, or skim through
BLM programs, but if they scroll down on any of these pages they are tasked with embracing BLM by purchasing apparel or following the movement on social media.
There are a few other changes from the original iteration of the BLM website.
There seems to now be an emphasis on the group as opposed to the individual. For instance, users could once add an event to the BLM calendar; now, they can search for events by city using an interactive map. The original website was credited to individual designers, Janisha Gabriel with contributions from Tanya Lucia Bernard; the new site design is credited simply to union labor. There are no longer lists of identity categories that matter and Ferguson holds less emphasis. Instead, focus is placed on chapters, members, and “ALL Black lives.”78
This shift aids BLM rebranding as it creates a more nebulous mission that can be inclusive of new people. While the original site centered Ferguson, this site features local activism to suggest anyone, regardless of geographic location, can join the movement.
BLM is more accessible in the new website. In fact, those interested in the organization have a multitude of opportunities to get connected, as a side bar to sign up for alerts is featured on every website page. The site is brighter and more inviting, too. It uses more yellow and white coloring than the original site, which relied on black and gray. The changes in this system encourage people to join the movement.
While a lot has changed from 2014 to the present, much has stayed the same.
First, and foremost, BLM is still “unapologetically Black.”79 Race is seen in the site’s terminology and visual rhetoric. The “About” section also features pages of “Our
34 People,” and “Our Co-Founders” that highlight the individuals behind BLM. The website continues to center marginalized voices, with some of the “Our People” adopting pronouns that do not conform to a gender binary. The organization continues to be queer affirming, transgender affirming, and centers women.80 The website also continues to discuss police brutality and mentions Ferguson as an important part of the movement’s history. However, the rebranded site focuses on racial injustices more generally, which creates further entry points for newcomers to find their place in the movement and offers new areas for longtime BLM members to devote their energies.
BLM’s updated website is not necessarily better or worse than the original site, but it does create new ecological features. Several of the networks that comprise the www.blacklivesmatter.com system have changed; even the ones that remain similar to the original site have been updated and rebranded. The new system is invitational rather than resolute. This ecology does not have demands, but instead focuses on chapter work at the local level. BLM as an organization has evolved—its digital ecology has evolved alongside it to continue serving as a digital model for the movement’s activism.
Conclusion: A Model of Digital Activism
Digital technology may be viewed as altering activism practices.81 In fact, a transition from hierarchical institutions to networked systems may lead to new forms of collective action.82 This is reflected in BLM’s organizational structure as well as in their digital ecology. The website, alongside other elements of BLM’s digital presence, showcases their desire for social change while encouraging others to join their fight
35 against injustice. Website visitors are offered tools, such as organizing information and links to fundraisers, to help them engage in activism in multiple forms.
Www.blacklivesmatter.com is a form of digital activism merely because it uses digital technologies in an initiative for social change. However, the website is more than a simple tool for the movement. An ecological perspective necessitates networked thinking and an understanding of the interconnectedness of various parts of a movement.
The BLM website is simply one piece of the larger movement ecology, and this part can influence the whole. The website encourages visitors to get involved with BLM and participate in activist activities both on and off the Internet. It houses relevant information about activist activities, and provides links to event pages or further readings on a specific subject. Those interested in the organization may explore the website, sign up for alerts, or follow BLM on social media, thus engaging in further networks within the larger BLM activism matrix.
Other networks in the BLM system serve as additional forms of digital activism as they too spread BLM messages and mobilize citizens to be involved. These other networks, especially BLM social media accounts like Twitter, are the subject of my next chapter. Studying a wider breadth of BLM’s digital ecology allows for a better perspective of the organization as it allows one to move beyond a single network to see the interconnected relationship between digital spaces. In other words, understanding the movement’s ecology can help advance knowledge of contemporary movements and how digital forms of activism may lead to effective change.
36
Notes
1 Douglas Kellner, “Globalization, Technopolitics, and Revolution,” in The Future of Revolution: Rethinking Radical Change in the Age of Globalization, ed. John Foran (New York, NY: Zed Books, 2004), 180-194.
2 Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain, Democracy’s Fourth Wave? Digital Media and the Arab Spring (Oxford, England, Oxford University Press: 2013).
3 Gustavo Cardoso, Tiago Lapa, and Branco Di Fátima, “People are the Message? Social Mobilization and Social Media in Brazil,” International Journal of Communication 10, (2016): 3909-3930.
4 Gustavo Cardoso, Tiago Lapa, and Branco Di Fátima, “People are the Message?” 3924.
5 Lindsay Ems, “Twitter’s Place in the Tussle: How Old Power Struggles Play Out on a New Stage,” Media, Culture & Society 36, no. 5 (2014): 720-731.
6 For more on ecology from a rhetorical perspective, see Adam S. Lerner and Pat J. Gehrke, Organic Public Engagement: How Ecological Thinking Transforms Public Engagement with Science (New York, NY: Springer Publishing, 2018).
7 Arthur G. Tansley, “The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts and Terms,” Ecology 16, no. 3 (1935): 284-307.
8 Gerald L. Young, “Human Ecology as an Interdisciplinary Concept: A Critical Inquiry,” Advances in Ecological Research 8, no. 1 (1974): 1-105.
9 Andrew P. Vayda, “Introductory Statement,” Human Ecology 1, no. 1 (1972): 1.
10 Aristotle and W. D. Ross, Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1981).
11 Dimitrios Raptis, Jesper Kjeldskov, Mikael Skov, and Jeni Paay, “What is a Digital Ecology?” Australian Journal of Intelligent Information Processing Systems 13, no. 4 (2014): 2.
12 Dimitrios Raptis, Jesper Kjeldskov, Mikael Skov, and Jeni Paay, “What is a Digital Ecology?”
13 Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems (New York, NY: Anchor Books, 1996).
37
14 Bernard C. Patten, “Network Ecology: Indirect Determination of the Life-Environment Relationship in Ecosystems,” in Theoretical Studies of Ecosystems: The Network Perspective, eds. Masahiko Higashi and Thomas P. Burns (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
15 Jenny Edbauer, “Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 35, no. 4 (2005): 5-24.
16 Lindsay Ems, “Twitter’s Place in the Tussle.”
17 Paolo Gerbaudo, “From Cyber-Autonomism to Cyber-Populism: An Ideological History of Digital Activism,” Triple C (Cognition, Communication, Co-Operation) 15, no. 2 (2017): 478-490.
18 Jelani Ince, Fabio Rojas, and Clayton A. Davis, “The Social Media Response to Black Lives Matter: How Twitter Users Interact with Black Lives Matter through Hashtag Use,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 40, no. 11 (2017) 1814-1830.
19 Victor W. Pickard, “United Yet Autonomous: Indymedia and the Struggle to Sustain a Radical Democratic Network,” Media, Culture & Society 28, no. 3 (2006): 315-336.
20 Robert Cox and Christina R. Foust, “Social Movement Rhetoric,” in The Sage Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, eds. Andrea A. Lunsford, Kirt H. Wilson, and Rosa A. Eberly (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2009).
21 Dimitris Koutsogiannis and Bessie Mitsikopoulou, “The Internet as a Glocal Discourse Environment,” Language, Learning, & Technology 8, no. 3 (2008): 83-89.
22 Yannis Theocharis, Will Lowe, Jan W. van Deth, and Gema Garcia-Albacete, “Using Twitter to Mobilize Protest Action: Online Mobilization Patterns and Action Repertoires in the Occupy Wall Street, Indignados, and Aganaktismenoi Movements,” Information, Communication & Society 18, no. 2 (2015): 202-220.
23 Bruce Bimber, Andrew J. Flanagin, and Cynthia Stohl, “Reconceptualizing Collective Action in the Contemporary Media Environment,” Communication Review 15, no. 4 (2005): 365-388.
24 Yannis Theocharis, Will Lowe, Jan W. van Deth, and Gema Garcia-Albacete, “Using Twitter to Mobilize Protest Action,” 204.
25 For more on the criticism of online activism, see Evgeny Morozov, “The Brave New World of Slacktivism,” Foreign Policy, May 19, 2009, http://foreignpolicy.com/2009/05/19/the-brave-new-world-of-slacktivism/.
38
26 Richard Khan and Douglas Kellner, “Oppositional Politics and the Internet: A Critical/Reconstructive Approach,” Cultural Politics 1, no. 1 (2005): 75-100.
27 Robert Cox and Christina R. Foust, “Social Movement Rhetoric.”
28 Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport, Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011).
29 “Internet/Broadband Fact Sheet,” Pew Research Center, Feburary 5, 2018, http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/.
30 Adi Robertson, “Only 2 Percent of Americans Can’t Get Internet Access, But 20 Percent Choose Not To,” The Verge, August 26, 2013, https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/26/4660008/pew-study-finds-30-percent-americans- have-no-home-broadband.
31 “Internet/Broadband Fact Sheet,” Pew Research Center.
32 Evgeny Morozov, “The Brave New World of Slacktivism.”
33 Victoria Carty, “New Information Communication Technologies and Grassroots Mobilization,” Information, Communication & Society 13, no. 2 (2010): 155-173.
34 Jean L. Cohen, “Strategy or Identity: New Theoretical Paradigms and Contemporary Social Movements,” Social Research 52, no. 4 (1985): 663-716.
35 Alberto Melucci, Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
36 Victoria Carty, “New Information Communication Technologies and Grassroots Mobilization,” 157.
37 Victoria Carty, “New Information Communication Technologies and Grassroots Mobilization,” 157.
38 Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2012).
39 Peter N. Funke and Todd Wolfson, “From Global Justice to Occupy and Podemos: Mapping Three Stages of Contemporary Activism,” Triple C (Cognition, Communication, Co-Operation) 15, no. 2 (2017): 393-404.
39
40 Paolo Gerbaudo, Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism, (London, UK: Pluto Press 2012).
41 Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport, Digitally Enabled Social Change.
42 Samantha Madison, “How Social Media Has Changed the Way Political Movements Organize,” Government Technology, January 10, 2017, http://www.govtech.com/social/How-Social-Media-Has-Changed-the-Way-Political- Movements-Organize.html.
43 Zeynep Tufekci, “Social Movements and Governments in the Digital Age: Evaluating a Complex Landscape,” Journal of International Affairs 68, no. 1 (2014): 1-18.
44 Rebecca MacKinnon, “The Netizen,” Development 55. No. 2 (2012): 201-204.
45 Kees Biekart and Alan Fowler, “Transforming Activisms 2010+: Exploring Ways and Waves,” Development and Change 44, no. 3 (2013): 527-546.
46 Daniel Kreiss, Laura Meadows, and John Remensperger, “Political Performance, Boundary Spaces, and Active Spectatorship: Media Production at the 2012 Democratic National Convention,” Journalism 16, no. 5 (2014): 577-595.
47 Noriko Hara and Bi-Yun Huang, “Online Social Movements,” Annual Review of Information and Science Technology 45, no. 1 (2011): 489-522.
48 Summer Harlow, “Social Media and Social Movements: Facebook and an Online Guatemalan Justice Movement that Moved Offline,” New Media & Society 14, no. 2 (2011): 225-243.
49 Therea L. Petray, “Protest 2.0: Online Interactions and Aboriginal Activists,” Media, Culture & Society 33, no. 6 (2011): 923-940.
50 Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope. See also Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport, Digitally Enabled Social Change.
51 Jenny Pickerill, Cyberprotest: Environmental Activism (New York, NY: Manchester University Press, 2003).
52 The next chapter of this thesis offers a more in depth analysis of social media and social movements and offers more information about the affordability of digital spaces to social movements.
40
53 The fourth chapter of this thesis engages in a more nuanced critique of online versus offline protest rhetoric and activities.
54 It is impossible to completely capture the digital ecology of any social movement, as each system in the movement has networks of its own that branch in countless directions. I take up just one system of networks, www.blacklivesmatter.com, as this chapter cannot go infinitum.
55 Jamilah King, “#BlackLivesMatter: The Evolution of an Iconic Hashtag,” Occupy February 17, 2015, https://www.occupy.com/article/blacklivesmatter-evolution-iconic- hashtag#sthash.h1GdSOAj.dpbs.
57 To view the official social media pages of BLM, follow these links: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blklivesmatter/ Tumblr: http://blacklivesmatter.tumblr.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlackLivesMatter/ This is the official Facebook account of BLM. The “Black Lives Matter” page that claimed a connection to the organization but was actually run by an Australian man, has sense been removed. For more information on that page and story, see Tiffany Hsu and Sheera Frenkel, “Facebook Removes Popular Black Lives Matter Page for Being a Fake,” The New York Times, April 10, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/business/facebook-black-lives-matter.html.
58 Christopher J. LeBron, The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea (NY, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017).
59 For BLM and the Civil Rights Movement, see Elizabeth Day, “#BlackLivesMatter: The Birth of a New Civil Rights Movement,” The Guardian, July 19, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/19/blacklivesmatter-birth-civil-rights- movement.
For more on the future of the movement, see Jelani Cobb, “The Matter of Black Lives,” The New Yorker, March 14, 2016, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/14/where-is-black-lives-matter-headed.
60 “Herstory,” Black Lives Matter, accessed October 19, 2017, https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/herstory/.
61 “Herstory,” Black Lives Matter.
62 “Herstory,” Black Lives Matter.
41
63 “Herstory,” Black Lives Matter.
64 Darren Sands, “What Happened to Black Lives Matter?” Buzzfeed News, June 28, 2017, https://www.buzzfeed.com/darrensands/what-happened-to-black-lives- matter?utm_term=.yudEpAWoW#.mmBMR9lOl.
65 Darren Sands, “What Happened to Black Lives Matter?”
66 Diana Budds, “Black Lives Matter, The Brand,” Brand Knew, September 20, 2016, http://www.brandknewmag.com/black-lives-matter-the-brand./
67 BlackLivesMatter, “State of the Black Union,” Black Lives Matter, January 22, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20150126080809/http://blacklivesmatter.com:80/state-of- the-black-union/.
68 Black Lives Matter’s Facebook page, October 4, 2014, https://www.facebook.com/BlackLivesMatter/posts/335453223292596.
69 Black Lives Matter’s Facebook page, October 20, 2014, https://www.facebook.com/BlackLivesMatter/posts/340690909435494. The website link in this post now sends a user directly to the BLM website as it is today.
70 See the landing page and explore links at https://web.archive.org/web/20141107235403/https://blacklivesmatter.com/.
71 “I don’t have a gun, stop shooting,” are the actual alleged words of Michael Brown, yet there is confusion as to whether Brown uttered anything about not shooting before his death at all. The phrases attributed to him were taken up as “don’t shoot” by various activists, and eventually was reappropriated to the well-known “Hands up, don’t shoot” slogan heard in protests and seen on merchandise.
72 “Who We Are,” Black Lives Matter, November 7, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20141023044803/http://blacklivesmatter.com:80/about/.
73 The “not a moment, but a movement” line was later adapted in the Broadway hit “Hamilton: An American Musical.”
74 “Demands,” Black Lives Matter, November 7, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20141023044545/http://blacklivesmatter.com:80/demands/.
75 Black Lives Matter’s Facebook page, October 17, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/BlackLivesMatter/posts/844519705719276.
42
76 Bill Merrilees and Dale Miller, “Principles of Corporate Rebranding,” European Journal of Marketing 42, no. 5/6 (2008): 537-552.
77 “The Importance of Rebranding Ecosystems,” New Scientist 211, no. 2820 (2011): 3.
78 “About,” Black Lives Matter, accessed October 19, 2017, https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/.
79 “What We Believe,” Black Lives Matter, accessed October 19, 2017, https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/what-we-believe/.
80 “What We Believe,” Black Lives Matter.
81 Mary Joyce, “Introduction: How to Think About Digital Activism,” in Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change, ed. Mary Joyce (New York, NY: International Debate Education Association, 2010), 1-14.
82 Sem Devillart and Brian Waniewski, “The Future of Advocacy in a Networked Age,” in Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change, ed. Mary Joyce (New York, NY: International Debate Education Association, 2010), 198-208.
Chapter 2
Injustice, Freedom, Inclusion: The Rhetorical Strategies of the @BlkLivesMatter Twitter Account
It only takes 140 characters to spark a movement. On July 13, 2013 Alicia Garza turned to Twitter to document her reaction upon hearing about the acquittal of George
Zimmerman, the man accused of killing Trayvon Martin over a year earlier. She wrote,
“Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.”1 Later that evening, Garza’s friend and fellow activist Patrisse Cullors commented on the tweet with a simple
“#blacklivesmatter.”2 The next day, Cullors posted on Garza’s account to ask if she would be interested in organizing a social media campaign around that hashtag. Garza agreed, the two got Opal Tometi involved, and the three women began using the tag
#BlackLivesMatter on their personal social media accounts for activist efforts.3 The hashtag quickly went viral and the #BlackLivesMatter movement began to grow. The women created a separate Twitter account, @BlkLivesMatter, a mere seven days after the first appearance of its corresponding hashtag.
Today, the Twitter page @BlkLivesMatter serves as the official account for the
Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLM).4 As of this writing, the account boasts nearly
17,000 total tweets, retweets, and replies shared to 280,000 followers.5 While journalists and the general public sometimes write off instances of online activism as “shallow bid[s] for fleeting attention,” it is clear that @BlkLivesMatter has the ability to “sustain the country’s focus and reach millions of people” through their social media presence.6 BLM
44 came into being on Twitter, found growth and support on Twitter, and continues to operate on Twitter. While the movement functions both on and offline, its online component grounds its existence. Scholars have focused on the offline aspects of BLM for several years, and it is time the online @BlkLivesMatter receives the analysis it deserves as well.
This chapter uses @BlkLivesMatter as a case study to understand the social media operations of BLM. After a brief review of literature that focuses on the intersections of social media, Twitter, and the online components of BLM, I provide an overview of the @BlkLivesMatter account from July 2013 to January 2017. I archived nearly 1,700 tweets sent by the account during these dates and found several recurring themes running throughout the dataset. I discuss three predominant themes—injustice, freedom, and inclusion—in turn. These themes showcase the rhetorical strategies used by
@BlkLivesMatter, such as creating collective identity and employing ideographs. I argue
@BlkLivesMatter uses these strategies to influence Twitter user’s conceptions of the account, the hashtag, and the organization Black Lives Matter. Additionally, these rhetorical strategies may persuade users to participate in collective action on and offline. I end the chapter with a discussion of the relationship between the online work of
@BlkLivesMatter and the offline activism of BLM.
Researching Twitter
This chapter contributes to a long line of research using social media as a unit of analysis for understanding social movements. Social movements have become
45 increasingly digitized, and many scholars are interested in the intricacies of movements as they exist on the web. In fact, researchers in several different fields have tracked how social movements have changed with the evolution of the Internet and technology.7
Lindsay Ems and Catherine H. Palczewski, for instance, have separately argued for a reconception of how we view technology and social media research. They respectively claim technology can function as an artifact and the web is a potential space for political struggle.8 Others, like Andre Beck, have offered new methodologies for researching social media in a digital age.9 The consensus is social media is a viable object of study, especially as social movements traverse online spaces.10
Linking social media to social movements has certainly become a broad interest for many scholars and some have narrowed their focus to critically engage the social media presence of BLM. Many have been interested in the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter or other specific hashtags surrounding Black lives.11 Others look at social media platforms themselves. For instance, Yarimar Bonilla and Johnathan Rosa note that social media can be a commanding platform to document particular instances of violence and brutality against specific, racialized bodies.12 Carson W. Bryd extends this observation by claiming one of the important things about social media is its ability to showcase the reality of Black life by providing contexts that highlight previously invisible injustices while providing space for conversation.13 This is seen clearly on the @BlkLivesMatter account as they often ask users to “start a dialogue.”14 According to Mark Orbe, some believe BLM is effective precisely because it is online.15 Several other scholars argue for the usefulness of Twitter as a platform as Twitter allows for a “material history that shows us what people say and do in real time,” in addition to bringing voice to those who
46 often engage in silent activism, offering a distinction from mass media sources controlled by gatekeepers, and providing insight into how people organize and create lasting narratives that may become a part of a collective societal consciousness.16
Various scholars move beyond looking simply at social media or its components to conceptualize the relationships media can and sometimes do have with users. Social media users are able to actively engage with, and therefore help to construct and shape, online discourse.17 The idea that individuals view media differently is not a new one.18
Viewer perceptions can be influenced by a number of factors, including gender, economic status, sexuality, personal experience, and race. In fact, several studies have found individuals hold different perceptions on subjects like police violence, equality, and race relations based on the color of their skin.19 If viewer perceptions of media are based on various life circumstances and these viewers can create the content others see on social media channels, it follows that social media can expose its users to different perspectives and new understandings as well as reinforcing existing ones.
In other words, social media, with its ability to incorporate viewers into the media-making process, may be able to shift perceptions and challenge the conceptions of its users.20 In the case of @BlkLivesMatter, users may be able to learn more about BLM and the daily experiences of Black lives from Twitter than from the nightly news.21 A
Twitter user could read tweets from a variety of primary sources with multiple perspectives; they no longer have to rely on the framing provided by mass media, but can instead expand their view of any situation.22 Through its vast quantity of content social media can provide new information that broadens outlooks, provides more or different contexts and, potentially, shifts the conception a viewer holds on a given topic. This
47 potentiality of social media to change, or at least widen the understandings held by its viewers serves as an impetus for this chapter.
Analyzing @BlkLivesMatter
This chapter takes up @BlkLivesMatter as an object of study through examination of nearly 1,700 tweets from the account’s formation on July 20, 2013 to
January 20, 2017.23 @BlkLivesMatter tweeted a total of 1,695 times during this time frame. The account also retweeted, shared, and replied to thousands more tweets over the course of the three and a half years I examine; however, I will focus on the content coming directly from @BlkLivesMatter for the purposes of this chapter as those tweets come straight from BLM itself and can be used to make more appropriate claims about the network. I created a dataset of the 1,695 tweets by using advanced search functions on Twitter to refine a search to tweets from @BlkLivesMatter directly between July 20,
2013 to January 20, 2017. I then created a spreadsheet of the tweets which cataloged the date of the tweet, its content inclusive of any imagery or links to external materials, and the number of comments, likes, and retweets each tweet received. Once I had a complete archive of the tweets, I analyzed the dataset while paying attention to similarities and reoccurring ideas.
I found @BlkLivesMatter utilizes a few main ideas over the course the analyzed tweets. I placed these conceptual themes into eight categories—1) injustices faced by
Black people, 2) inclusion, 3) freedom, 4) community building, 5) organizing/activism/protest, 6) art, 7) history of the Black experience, and 8) religion.
48 Overlap within categories is common as many tweets showcase more than one theme. For example, I labeled a tweet from August 2015 which reads “#SayHerName Amber
Monroe, Shade Schuler. Elisha Walker. Kandis Capri. Ashton Ohara. We won’t forget
Black Trans Women. Ever.” as relating to inclusion, since it centers intersectional identities as well as offers remembrance from a “we,” effectively adding these women to the BLM community.24 The tweet also serves as an example of injustices faced as many of these women were murdered because of their identities; therefore, I placed it in both categories. In another example, tweets surrounding the 2014 Ferguson protests often alluded to injustice by recounting “#HandsUp,” “#DontShoot,” or “No Justice. No
Peace.”25 In the midst of a church service during these protests, @BlkLivesMatter notes that there is an “opportunity to perform a racial politics that is all inclusive.”26 This tweet incorporates the themes of injustice, inclusion, and religion, and thus got placed in all three categories.
Thematic merging is seen both in individual tweets and in series of tweets detailing a particular conversation or event. While I discuss all the main ideas of
@BlkLivesMatter as they present themselves, I focus my analysis on the first three themes, injustice, inclusion, and freedom, as they serve as the dominant through lines over the course of the whole dataset. Limiting examination to inclusion, freedom, and injustice does not eliminate analysis of the other five themes, but allows for a more focused understanding of the ideologies underwriting much of @BlkLivesMatter.
These themes, I argue, reveal rhetorical strategies that can enable
@BlkLivesMatter to influence their follower’s conceptions of the BLM organization as a whole. They do so in a few ways. First, @BlkLivesMatter couples #BlackLivesMatter
49 with other instances of injustice to extend viewpoints beyond the simple association of
BLM with police brutality. According to Johnathan Cox, most young people are getting their information about BLM from Twitter, and many do not know BLM works toward social concerns beyond police brutality and state violence.27 Coupling content on intersectional equality or right to work equity on Twitter with the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag weaves these ideas into the larger BLM narrative, extending the conversation about Black lives beyond those taken by the police. @BlkLivesMatter also uses
@BlkLivesMatter follows BLM’s attempt to make all Black bodies visible, including those that have been marginalized within Black communities. By building a community inclusive of all marginalized bodies, @BlkLivesMatter can begin to formulate the kind of group identity that, in Celeste Condit and John Louis Lucaites view, is able to shift “form and meaning of the public vocabulary over the course of the historical and lived experiences of the members of a collectivity.”29 For Condit and Lucaites, that is precisely what a social movement should do.
To better understand how @BlkLivesMatter holds the potential to shift the mental constructs of its users and where the analyzed information is coming from, it is important to understand exactly who @BlkLivesMatter is, and who they represent. Thus, there are a
50 few important parameters to note regarding this Twitter account. @BlkLivesMatter identifies the Black Lives Matter Global Network as a whole. While the account readily retweets content from various BLM area chapters such as Chicago (@BLMChi), Los
Angeles (@blmla), or Toronto (@BLM_TO), and each of these accounts does fall under the larger Black Lives Matter umbrella, the chapters are not the same as the official
@BlkLivesMatter account. BLM has a notoriously decentralized leadership structure; its chapter format exemplifies the dispersion of power.30 Each chapter operates under its own leadership within particularly localized contexts, with many still following similar ideologies to BLM. The Chicago chapter, for example, like many BLM subsidiaries, was founded in 2014 during the BLM Freedom Rides to Ferguson. They still participate in national BLM events and fight against police brutality and racial profiling, but also organize within their own community. For instance, BLM Chicago has engaged in activities such as filing a class-action law suit against the Chicago Police Department and supporting hunger strikes at a south side area high school.31 Each chapter operationalizes
BLM ideology on the ground in their own community while tweeting about that local action. They are manifestly separate entities from the larger structure @BlkLivesMatter represents.
Further, @BlkLivesMatter is financially separate from many of its chapters. For instance, @BlkLivesMatter ran a t-shirt campaign in November of 2014. All proceeds from shirt sales went to a Ferguson Legal Fund that provided financial support to
Ferguson protestors who were arrested and could not afford bail. @BlkLivesMatter also solicited donations to help cover travels expenses for those joining the freedom rides but did so on a chapter by chapter basis. The account called on different regions and provided
51 different links to donate to riders from individual areas. The southwest region was asked to “Stand Up!” to support riders from Phoenix.32 Alternatively, Detroit was asked “Where you at?” and instructed to help “get your folks get to #Ferguson.”33 The calling out of specific areas and use of “your” as opposed to “our” distances @BlkLivesMatter from its chapters.
Financial detachment is not only the case in national events. The Toronto chapter of BLM, for instance, runs a freedom school and solicits its own donations.34 The chapter has a space on the BLM website, but is, operationally, a separate organization. BLM seems to appreciate and encourage its chapters while simultaneously holding them at arm’s length. This is true in both material practice and online dialogues. The Twitter accounts of @BlkLivesMatter and its chapters are cohesive in that they share similar structures and ideologies, but distinctly separate in that they each work toward individualized goals. For @BlkLivesMatter, these goals include working to eliminate injustices caused by widespread systemic racism. They certainly care about the actions taken by local community chapters but focus more attention on changing racist ideologies and practices that lead to Black demise.
In addition to being distinct from BLM chapter accounts, @BlkLivesMatter is separate from the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL). There is significance in
“distinguish[ing] the ‘work’ of BLM as per Garza, Tometi, and Cullors, and the projects that are led by organizations that may have been inspired by BLM,” such as M4BL.35
Like BLM, the M4BL was created as a response to violence against Black communities.
M4BL engages in acts of protests, but is more centered around creation of a policy platform aimed at building Black political power, providing economic justice and
52 financial investment in Black communities, and “end[ing] the war on Black people” while advocating reparations for a history of racially based suffering.36 There are some similarities between the ideology of BLM and policy demands put forth by M4BL, and both serve as “Members of the United Front.”37 @BlkLivesMatter and the M4BL Twitter account, @mvmt4bl, make references to one another as well. However, the accounts are distinct and work toward separate, if overlapping, goals.
@mvmt4bl is much newer than @BlkLivesMatter as it made a Twitter debut in
May 2015. The account is also less active, with 16,700 followers and 2,400 tweets.38
Ultimately, the content generated by @mvmt4bl is aimed at achieving material changes in political practices. The page often retweets the activist activities of @BlkLivesMatter and shares remembrance posts about those killed by the police. @mvmt4bl also shares information about town halls, voting, and call days, making its content more centered on policy and platform. @BlkLivesMatter offers slightly different themes. The remainder of this chapter pays attention to three of these themes—injustice, freedom, and inclusion— as strategies used by @BlkLivesMatter to create a more holistic conception of the larger
BLM organization.
#JusticeFor_____: @BlkLivesMatter’s Engagement with State Violence and Beyond
Black Lives Matter came into being because of an injustice faced by a young
Black man, Trayvon Martin. Martin’s death is one in a series of Black murders by the hands of state actors. The BLM network, therefore, is premised on the need to fight injustice and continues to define itself as an “intervention” into a society in which “Black
53 lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.”39 The women behind
BLM pride themselves on holding a space that facilitates “the conversation around state- sanctioned violence” Black and otherwise marginalized individuals experience.40 This framing of organizational intentions influences the work of @BlkLivesMatter as much as it does BLM. References to injustice, especially in terms of violence committed by the state or its actors, is appropriately the most frequent theme present in the Twitter account.
However, BLM does not only contend with police brutality.
BLM, as an organization, is more than a fight against police violence.41 Rather, they go “beyond the police-citizen interaction to illuminate the ways that colonial practices of white supremacy continue to constrain Black lives.”42 Violence at the hands of the police is an important cause to BLM; that cannot be denied. However, the organization and its social media accounts look past the police to critique other structural inequalities as well. While the Twitter account does discuss injustices faced at the hands of police or other state actors, @BlkLivesMatter goes beyond state violence to communicate the injustices faced in the daily lived experiences of Black individuals. The account often places injustices such as unequal pay or the difficulty in receiving medical care under the umbrella of the #BlackLivesMatter. I argue these associations potentially extend user understanding of what #BlackLivesMatter stands for. Placing all injustice in the same category as police brutality allows @BlkLivesMatter to discuss the intricacies of Black lives and the various forms of violence against them. In this section I first highlight the ways in which @BlkLivesMatter discusses injustice and find
@BlkLivesMatter rhetorically amplifies certain cases to highlight particular disparities. I then theorize the ways in which @BlkLivesMatter rhetorically associates injustices under
54 the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag allows the Twitter account to expand the user understandings of BLM and violence.
The Individual and Collective Injustices of Black Lives: The Process of Amplification
@BlkLivesMatter alludes to racial injustice in just under one third of the 1,695 total tweets. The content of the 597 tweets relating to injustice includes condemnation of police forces, saying the names of Black people that have been killed, highlighting the problems of racial profiling, discussing past and current oppression, talking about inequities of school systems, criticizing lack of access within healthcare systems, or otherwise notating all the ways Black communities continue to be subjugated. By discussing these various types of inequality the Twitter account serves as an extension of the conversation of violence beyond the police brutality for which BLM is known.
The account does still spend some time in discussion of police brutality, as it is a huge part of their ongoing conversations on historical and contemporary injustice. Police prejudice and state violence are not new phenomena. In the civil rights era nearly three of every four law enforcement officers expressed significant bias against people of color.43
Even today, studies show law enforcement is more likely to engage in the use of deadly force if a suspect is Black or Latinx as opposed to if the suspect were White.44 Several scholars have noted that Black lives do not seem to matter to society or the police.45 In the case of BLM, the phrase “Black Lives Matter” itself can be understood as an
“acknowledgement of the racial reality that black lives do not matter.”46 Further, some have noted that Black lives, and Black male lives in particular, are viewed as disposable
55 by the state.47 These seemingly individualized acts of violence do not result in only one life lost, but lead to a larger, systemic issue when viewed as a collective.
@BlkLivesMatter toggles between individuals and society as a whole to simultaneously honor single victims and their families while working to expose the structural inequalities at hand.
When an individual, and especially a highly publicized individual, is killed,
@BlkLivesMatter honors them on a personal level. They tweet things like “Rest in Power
Mike Brown,” or “#WeRememberTrayvon.”48 Families are sometimes discussed, as is the case when the account mentions Michael Brown’s father was unable to cover his body as it lay in the street.49 Often, these individual moments are amplified and used to organize on a larger level.50 Amplification serves as a stylistic tool for the account; the device allows @BlkLivesMatter to alert its followers to injustice then highlight important instances through repetition. Amplifying murdered Black bodies, for instance, serves as a not-so-subtle reminder that the Black lives lost mattered.
Remembering a single person becomes an organizing effort as @BlkLivesMatter asks “What can we do nationally to fight for Mike Brown?”51 The answer was a freedom ride that resulted in the large protests of Ferguson, Missouri. The murder of Trayvon
Martin and events that followed sparked the entire movement, and even years later
@BlkLivesMatter claims “We do this work in your name.”52 The individual is remembered, honored, and called by name. However, the individual serves a larger purpose: not quite that of martyr, but that of catalyst. Instead of being a moment of grief, the individual is amplified to become a reason for change.
56 @BlkLivesMatter uses individuals as examples of larger structural injustices as they focus on “systemic ways that racism and privilege work,” and attempt to “erase state violence against members of marginalized groups, particularly African Americans.”53 For instance, Michelle Shirley is situated as “another Black woman killed by police,” while the news of Sandra Bland’s death is followed immediately by the recognition that “so many of us die in police custody,” and the claim that she “would want us to fight.”54
Examples of individualized violence are gathered and amplified as a rhetorical collective to combat larger issues. Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, alongside many others, are not only widely mourned, but are operationalized as reasons for change. Injustice is not only one Black death but dozens that get tied together and circulated as parts of a whole society of injustice. The amplification of injustice also leads to abundant appeals to pathos as justice becomes dialectically tied to peace. @BlkLivesMatter asks, “How can there be peace without justice? We’d love to see more calls for police to be peaceful, and more officers to agree.”55 Here, justice for the individual is important, but justice for all individuals is necessary to change structures that lead to systemic injustice.
In addition to focusing on both specific individuals and the systems in which they operate, @BlkLivesMatter pays attention to the history of injustice as a path to the present. As far as we know, a couple of hundred years ago a Black person was lynched every four days.56 Today, a Black person is killed every 28 hours.57 This history is important because “the subjugation of black bodies is central to
American…hierarchies.”58 In fact, state violence can render inequalities invisible and promote further implicit bias as society operates the same way is has since the days of
White masters and Black slaves. For @BlkLivesMatter, acknowledging and amplifying
57 acts of violence and connecting them to larger social problems is one way to begin resistance to multiple forms of systemic injustice.59
Linking #BlackLivesMatter to Multiple Forms of Injustice: The Process of Association
While @BlkLivesMatter does focus on the police, they further recognize the violence of intuitions and structural injustice. According to Mendez, “structural inequalities can best be understood as the sets of conditions (persistent poverty, lack of access to health care, school-to-prison pipeline) and institutions (the legal system, heteropatriarchy) that ensure some communities or group members are systematically denied access to their full rights as citizens and relegated to a lesser humanity.”60 It is important for @BlkLivesMatter to extend the discussion of injustice to be inclusive of systemic issues beyond law enforcement in order to share their larger organizational messages, which seem to get lost amid social media content about the police. For instance, in a study on BLM and social media, Johnathan Cox found that many who obtain information about the organization online have limited understandings of the complexity of BLM.61 The majority of participants in Cox’s study got their information about BLM online and believed BLM was created as a response to, and focused on, police brutality toward Black people. In actuality, BLM is interested in giving voice to all who are marginalized, even within Black communities. Only a few of the study participants mentioned BLM relating to other social issues or supporting anything beyond police violence. Cox concludes social media may be disproportionately representative or
“severely limited in terms of information acquisition.”62 This is indeed the case when
58 looking at social media as a whole, but the intricacies and multiplicities of BLM interests become more apparent when acquiring information from the source itself: the
@BlkLivesMatter Twitter account.
Using #BlackLivesMatter in tweets that discuss injustices beyond those perpetrated by the police is not coincidental. @BlkLivesMatter attempts to encompass all lives, which I will discuss in the final section of my analysis, including those that have not fallen victim to racial profiling by law enforcement. Utilizing the hashtag in an overarching manner rhetorically associates @BlkLivesMatter, and the BLM organization by extension, with other instances of material injustice. In other words, association provides a more inclusive understanding of the Black lives that matter. Sending
#BlackLivesMatter into the social media ether alongside various instances of inequality may slowly craft a linkage within the minds of those who interact with this Twitter page and hashtag. Users currently associate BLM with police brutality because of the sheer number of Tweets, articles, and other posts connecting the subjects. Relating BLM to other ideas can forge similar connections and can work to shift, or at least extend, those user’s perceptions of BLM. Through the content shared by @BlkLivesMatter, users can see BLM’s ideologies extend beyond fighting against police brutality.
Twitter is an ideal place for a contemporary social movement to share messages digitally because it operates in distinct ways. Twitter has become a convenient tool to spread information, it has been successfully used by several groups to organize protests, and it has been used to speak out against the government or other actors of the state.63
@BlkLivesMatter utilizes all these strategies as they center injustices beyond state violence; the account also uses several different mechanisms to for association.
59 @BlkLivesMatter frequently links to popular press articles or their own websites to share information. They organize protests online by tweeting when and where events will occur. As I’ve mentioned, they also include content that condemns the state and its actors for perpetrating violence against specific Black bodies.
Hashtags also become an important tool for @BlkLivesMatter, as the hashtags are able to physically link tweets with different topics and perspectives together in a network.64 Clicking one hashtag brings a user to a list of tweets that also use the hashtag.
The user could click another hashtag in a different post to be taken to a list of tweets using the second hashtag. The hashtag network is important because it plays a significant role in establishing the collective memory of a social movement.65 If @BlkLivesMatter only used the hashtag that sparked its origin, user perception of the meaning of BLM would likely be limited. The memory of BLM would be restricted to police violence. By linking various ideas through a combination of hashtags, however, @BlkLivesMatter allows for users to understand numerous ways the organization advocates for Black lives.
The rhetorical strategy of association through linking hashtags is beneficial to the
Twitter account, as it allows BLM to amplify multiple ideas to a wide audience. Linking hashtags may also allow for extended conversation of BLM ideologies, such as violence, as users may comment on any aspect of a tweet. For instance, #BlackLivesMatter was used millions of times following the shooting of Michael Brown and non-indictment of the officer who shot him.66 Following the hashtag at that time would lead to a feed saturated with content on police brutality and state violence. However, @BlkLivesMatter uses the hashtag strategically with other messages, such as the high percentage of trans individuals who are also murdered. These messages then permeate the overabundance of
60 state violence tweets. A Twitter user following the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag after the shooting of Michael Brown would see both the police violence and the trans violence tweets. The user might comment on the violence on trans bodies, thus broadening the discussion of violence past conversations on the police. This conversation gains circulatory momentum as more people join in and continue to use the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag. Slowly, the condemnation of trans violence become associated with the hashtag, and BLM. By linking #BlackLivesMatter to other topics in this way, @BlkLivesMatter demonstrates BLM’s attentiveness to other instances of injustice. Eventually these ideas may get taken up to break the social media news cycle of law enforcement and police brutality.
When @BlkLivesMatter first appeared on Twitter the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter accompanied nearly every tweet the account posted. Users who were following the hashtag could see content on police violence as well as BLM organizing, solidarity, and concerns about abolition and the democratic system. As the account grew, hashtag use became more carefully crafted. For instance, @BlkLivesMatter frequently used
#BlackLivesMatter in tweets during their #SetTheStandard campaign. #SetTheStandard encouraged Twitter users to sign an online petition to be sent to the United States
Department of Labor (USDOL). The petition, as well as the content of #SetTheStandard tweets, encouraged the USDOL to update Executive Order 11246, which created non- discriminatory practices in the workplace. This order, which effectively established affirmative action, had not been updated since President Johnson singed it in 1965.
@BlkLivesMatter thus demanded the USDOL set a new standard to ensure economic security and employment stability for people of color.
61 The use of both #SetTheStandard and #BlackLivesMatter is crucial in that it allowed @BlkivesMatter to reach a larger audience than if they only employed one hashtag or the other. Tying the two together allows users interested in #BlackLivesMatter to become aware of the economic injustice #SetTheStandard works to rectify. A person perusing the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag could potentially see a post that moves out of the realm of police violence. If the user is interested, they could follow the
#SetTheStandard content and sign the online petition. Even if the user has no interest in
#SetTheStandard, the linkage of the hashtags online can forge a mental connection in their mind and may work to broaden their understanding of BLM advocacy. When connections are formed repeatedly, a user may come to realize BLM is not solely about police violence. Over time, the subtle connections of #BlackLivesMatter with other instances of inequality can expand the perception a follower has of @BlkLivesMatter and
BLM.
The linking of hashtags is central for @BlkLivesMatter to move beyond a single issue organization. The rhetorical strategy of association that is employed to portray various forms of injustice is necessary for BLM to express their adherence to dismantling various forms of systemic injustice. Since justice requires a perceptual shift in hegemonic groups, the conceptual expansion that can occur through association may aid BLM’s activism efforts.67 Coupled with other hashtags, #BlackLivesMatter becomes framed as a
“social wrong” that must be corrected.68 In other words, understanding
#BlackLivesMatter in terms of multiple inequalities can inspire greater action.
In discussing structural inequality, Mendez warns against missing the structural forest in favor of individual trees.69 @BlkLivesMatter does focus on the individual but
62 uses the amplification of a single person as a catalyst toward larger action. Further, by coupling hashtags or other content with #BlackLivesMatter, the account is able to draw connections between their organization and structural injustices beyond police violence.
Through the processes of amplification and association @BlkLivesMatter ultimately works against violence and injustice engrained in systemic hierarchies to enable freedom for all in the Black community.
#Free_____: The Dual Nature of the Ideograph
Black individuals in America have been seeking freedom since the 17th century, and little has changed in modernity. The prison industrial complex, for example, has been aligned with modern day slavery.70 Countless scholars have continued to highlight the contemporary disparities faced by people of color. @BlkLivesMatter reflects these ideas as the account references freedom fairly often. The concept is alluded to in 183 tweets, or a little over 10 per cent of the whole dataset. In fact, the word “free” (or its elongated form “freedom”) appears 162 times over the 183 tweets. Freedom is discussed in two distinct ways within @BlkLivesMatter. In this account “free” is both a physical state of being and a potentiality of opportunity. In Casey Ryan Kelly’s view of this second meaning, freedom functions in a simple, yet active sense as the “ability to make choices,” while physical freedom means being outside of material forms of confinement.71 Both definitions are used in conjunction to argue Black individuals ought to be absolutely
“free.”
63 The concept of
McGee originally offered several characteristics for ideographs: the ideograph is bound in culture and it guides behaviors and beliefs of communities. Further, an ideograph is an ordinary term that has taken on power in political discourse as it becomes a “high-order abstraction representing collective commitment to a particular but equivocal and ill- defined normative goal.”72 The ideograph
This section tracks each use of
Physical Freedom
Most of @BlkLivesMatter’s tweets about freedom deal with the physical obstruction of movement. Freedom, in this sense, can be understood in Judith Butler’s approximation of operating “minimally [as] the freedom to move and thrive without being subjected to coercive force.”75 Kelly can be helpful when examining
64 he theorizes a duality in the functions of ideographs. He writes ideographs “can function as a hegemonic method of conditioning behavior or as the discursive centerpiece of re- conditioning against the grain of dominant ideology.”76 In several instances
@BlkLivesMatter utilizes Kelly’s second function.
The account actively attempts to change historical norms and broaden national conception of who should be
When an ideograph is not effective for a whole community, confrontation may occur. McGee notes the state may use ideographs as a form of rhetorical control, but these tweets make it apparent that marginalized groups can push against that control.
McGee further notes words can unite or separate communities. People are indoctrinated into systems of thought and ideographs can be used to represent these ideologies, as an ideograph is “meant to be purely descriptive of an essentially social human condition.”77
But not everyone is born into the same language system; the socialization of different groups to the same terminology will not be identical. For instance,
@BlkLivesMatter’s insistence that Black bodies should be free combats previous ideologies and works to redefine the ideograph
The Twitter account ties back to the history of Black experience and the struggle to end slavery as @BlkLivesMatter adapts a quote from Assata Shakur and notes “we
65 have nothing to lose but our chains” four different times over the course of two years.78
In the contemporary moment, @BlkLivesMatter often acknowledges when protestors for its cause are arrested and when they are subsequently “freed.” The account asks to
#FreeJasmine, #FreeBree, #FreeBrit, #FreeAlexis or others that they believe to be falsely accused or wrongly detained. This is especially present during the Ferguson protests, as
155 BLM supporters were arrested. While some protestors were arrested for burglary or disturbing the peace, 124 of the 155 were taken into custody for “refusal to disperse.”79
@BlkLivesMatter condemned law enforcement for the numerous arrests and set up a fundraiser to help those detained pay their bail fees.
@BlkLivesMatter further engages with governing bodies causing physical confinement as they ask the Obama administration to grant clemency to Dr. Mutulu
Shakur or, more abstractly, free “all political prisoners.”80 The prison system as a whole is condemned for racialized practices as @BlkLivesMatter notes “2.5 million Black people r under state supervision or incarcerated.”81 The current prison industrial complex is seen as both modern day slavery and another injustice in a system that associates innocence with Whiteness and criminality with color.82 Prisons are further used as a pivot point to physically free Black bodies and ideologically give them the opportunity, or
The first use of
66 “Does Black labor only matter when it’s free?”83 Tweets noting when BLM protestors and supporters have been arrested and released serve as a catalog for the organization and often employs pathos appeals aimed at garnering monetary donations. Again, tweets such as these work as connective tissue between BLM and racial injustices beyond violence committed by law enforcement and its actors. Talking about physical freedom in these ways is an important reminder of Black history and current experience that highlights racial injustice. Emphasizing
Aside from tweeting about physical freedom, @BlkLivesMatter repositions
Ideological
In addition to physical freedom, @BlkLivesMatter views
67 Rights Era challenge of #FreedomNow as “a demand for an investment in Black futures, not Black deaths.”85 The account rhetorically opposes these concepts to imply the lack of
For @BlkLivesMatter
The use of
68 @BlkLivesMatter defines ideological
Essentially, this type of
@BlkLivesMatter is not arguing for superiority to other races, but rather requesting changes that would make society more equitable. #BlackLivesMatter does not imply that other lives do not; rather, the reason the slogan is significant “is that it states the obvious but the obvious has not yet been historically realized.”91 The phrase “Black
Lives Matter” is a moral appeal that Black lives ought to be just as indispensable as other lives. Returning to the #SetTheStandard movement shows @BlkLivesMatter does not ask for more pay or reparations for the years that they have made less money while doing the same work as White men. Rather, they demand “Equal opportunity. Equal pay.”92
The account further highlights economic injustice on September 15 by acknowledging Native Women Equal Pay Day, or the day of the year when Native
American women earn the same income as their White male counterparts did the year before.93 The appeal @BlkLivesMatter makes here is to close the pay gap—they do not
69 ask for anything more. In asking for ideological
@BlkLivesMatter but are necessarily intertwined. These ideas do not follow an all-or- nothing mentality but rather function in tandem to restructure
When used together, the dual employment of
70 positions
#AllBlackLivesMatter: How @BlkLivesMatter Operationalizes Inclusivity
The second paragraph of BLM’s “About” page notes the organization “believe[s] in an inclusive and spacious movement” that “brings all of us to the front.”97 In other words, the network blankets people of color while it centers those who have been marginalized within Black communities such as LGBTQIA+ folks, women, and those with disabilities. This desire for inclusivity is mirrored in the content of the
@BlkLivesMatter Twitter account. Of the 1,695 tweets I analyzed, 323, or around 19 percent of the whole dataset, offered clear connections to the idea of inclusivity. These tweets often explicitly referenced the network’s dedication to development of an inclusive space, such as in the tweet: “What is #blacklivesmatter”? It is a women, queer, trans, differently abled, formerly incarcerated, poor, ALL black lives affirming space.”98
Other tweets are more implicitly inclusive, such as one that simply reads: “Rise In
Power,” but links to a qnotes article about Blake Brockington, a young transgender activist from Charlotte, North Carolina who committed suicide.99 Each of these tweets references an intersectionally marginalized individual, so both get coded as relating to inclusion.
71 The theme of inclusion may be readily labeled intersectionality, as
@BlkLivesMatter generally employs this thought by discussing the LGBTQIA+ community (especially trans women), women and girls, and occasionally other races.100
Some even view BLM activities as “part of a revitalized politics of intersectionality.”101 I use “inclusion” as a label, however, because @BlkLivesMatter not only mentions these intersectional identities, they fight to center them. While intersectionality offers a focus on individuals who are marginalized in more than one way, the @BlkLivesMatter account encourages incorporation of all those outside of the hegemonic norm while calling for dialogue and strategic alliances with those who have positions of power. For instance, @BlkLivesMatter claims “Anti-Black racism hurts everyone. It’s time we started talking about it directly and dismantling it. Together.”102 @BlkLivesMatter also uses #StrongerTogether to call for alliances cross-racially and with other movements to build solidarity that is not necessarily limited to the confines of the Black community.
@BlkLivesMatter is unapologetically about the lived experiences of Black folks but leaves room for the inclusion of others. In a recent talk, Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term, noted intersectionality is not exclusively about Black women, but it’s never not about them either.103 There is no doubt @BlkLivesMatter is intersectional as it centers the work done by its Black and female founders. However, the account additionally engages identities beyond race and gender to make arguments about all Black people.
@BlkLivesMatter discusses numerous identity categories, but race is always at the forefront. In 2014, Omi and Winant defined race as a “modern, socially constructed concept” in which oppression and resistance operate dialectically.104 This is not only the case with race, as many identities like gender, sexuality, and class rely on social
72 construction. Further, many identities are oppressed, and many groups choose to resist their subjugation. @BlkLivesMatter attempts to highlight the oppression and resistance of multiple communities to continuously center women, trans folks, those who have been incarcerated and others. In Mendez’s approximation, BLM operates as “a communal project that refuses to leave anyone behind.”105
Through operating inclusively, the account rhetorically constructs communities that share collective identities. These communities are able to converse with one another, form coalitions, and may aspire to engage in collective action. Further, the construction of multiple collective identity categories allows more people to connect with BLM; the organization offers something to more than those that have been affected by police violence. This section begins with a discussion on how @BlkLivesMatter constructs collective identity, then takes up what that means for future activist actions.
Constructing Collective Communities
The strong emphasis on inclusion within @BlkLivesMatter allows the account to create collective identities and communities. These communities then have the potential to engage in collective action toward social change on behalf of the BLM movement.
Condit and Lucaites ground the relationship between rhetoric and social change and offer a view of rhetoric as a measure of the extent of change within public consciousness during the movement’s history.106 To find this extent of change involves tracing the processes through which collective identities are transformed by social meanings. Since the Internet operates as a discursive space through which identities can be constructed,
73 social media can be used to understand the creation of, and changes in, collective identity.107
Langford argues the “#BlackLivesMatter hashtag provides a rhetorical space to rescript Black bodies.”108 Further, collective identities can be created through a group of individuals who respond similarly to various issues they all perceive as imbalanced or otherwise problematic.109 @BlkLivesMatter rescripts individuals to form collective identity by attending to the ways Black bodies are distinctively marginalized. They note
“black lives are not the only ones targeted for destruction. But black lives are targeted in unique ways.”110 The account uses the differential targeting faced by Black people to juxtapose the #AllLivesMatter hashtag by listing several stories about racial profiling and proclaiming “not all lives.”111 In this way, Black people are made separate from others and grouped into their own collective.
@BlkLivesMatter does not merely create a collective of Black individuals, though that serves as an overarching group identity for the movement. In contemporary social movements “the collective search for identity…is a central aspect of movement formation.”112 Since BLM is interested in giving voice to all marginalized Black indivduals, @BlkLivesMatter creates further group identities for those who face intersectional oppression. One of the primary communities BLM seeks to construct is one that centers women. @BlkLivesMatter often recounts that its founders are women, or mentions ways in which women are shaping society. For International Women’s Day in
2016 they ran a series of tweets highlighting female organizers within various BLM chapters. These tweets portray images of the women, bringing them literal visibility as
74 they are grouped into a collective. Further, @BlkLivesMatter seeks to highlight female victims of violence that are often excluded from news broadcasts or journal articles.
Unlike mass media, social media allows for wide circulation of graphic materials, which can in turn change how Black victims of violent crimes are perceived. BLM does so by directing attention directly onto the Black body; @BlkLivesMatter focuses on specific bodies beyond that of the cis, Black male.113 Here, all Black victims including women are made present.114 @BlkLivesMatter centers various marginalized identity categories in the minds of their Twitter followers to make an argument for positioning these disparate identities as deserving of empathy and justice.115 An example of this re- centering on women and reshaping of victims can be found in @BlkLivesMatter’s engagement with the well-known campaign, #SayHerName.
#SayHerName was initiated to raise awareness for Black female victims of police brutality or other violence due to race.116 The campaign recognizes women of color, including trans women, by posting the name of the victim with the #SayHerName hashtag. These tweets often include links to news stories about the victim when such a story is available. The campaign moves away from the mass media’s tendency to report on white males. Instead, #SayHerName “engages in intersectional mobilization” and encourages other movements to do the same.117 @BlkLivesMatter joins this initiative by using #SayHerName in 53 tweets as they call for the recognition of “black women, girls, and femmes erased from the conversation on state violence and police murders.”118 This is merely one example of how the account operationalized the need for inclusion.
Another example of collective identity building can be found in
@BlkLivesMatter’s discussion of transgender individuals. They call to “put the T back in
75 Black,” or exclaim “Trans lives matter.”119 Again the account brings actual visibility to trans bodies by featuring their photos, artwork, and names alongside the hashtags
#SayHerName and #BlackTransLivesMatter. The account strives to cultivate a sense of belonging for all Black lives; they even call on relationship building between various identities through practices of solidarity. For @BlkLivesMatter, this solidarity “looks like cis folks actively reaching out to build community with our black trans fam.”120 The account additionally notes the need to be inclusive of trans people in leadership roles, and promises to “center Black Trans women, always.”121 Within these posts, people who are intersectionally marginalized for their gender, race, and sexuality can see their identities reflected in the @BlkLivesMatter account. Those who see themselves in the account may be able to also see themselves in a BLM community, and could potentially join in collective action.
Toward Collective Action
Creating collective identities is crucial for a social movement like BLM, as it opens up space for collective action. Collective identity, according to William Gamson, involves a connection between the individual and other participants working toward social change. This begins with the expression of symbols and language, such as
#BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, or #BlackTransLivesMatter that challenge the dominant cultural understanding. When a group forms a collective identity they may also form a collective consciousness, or a mutual definition of their social situations that
76 imply collective action.122 In other words, creating and expressing collective identity via social media can cause collective action to emerge.123
@BlkLivesMatter attempts to make subaltern identity categories visible; BLM aims at organizing to change oppressive social norms. Both seem to be effective due to creation of collective identities within the online space of Twitter. @BlkLivesMatter uses
Twitter to mediate social relationships between Black individuals and the larger Black community so trans individuals, women, the differently abled, the formally incarcerated, and others are able to see themselves within the larger movement. Sarah Jackson claims
BLM has moved beyond the work of past movements as they “have finally succeeded in making intersectional issues of racial oppression visible to mainstream America.”124 I think the attention @BlkLivesMatter pays to inclusion has a least a small role in making visibility possible. @BlkLivesMatter’s ability to make all Black voices heard may also contribute, at least in part, to the success BLM has found off the Internet in various protests, marches, and forms of collective action. Discussion of these actions, however, must wait until the next chapter.
Conclusion
The various rhetorical strategies used by @BlkLivesMatter helps the account to broaden, or perhaps shift, the perceptions of its followers. #BlackLivesMatter associates itself with forms of injustice beyond police brutality through linking hashtags to demonstrate BLM’s mission to advocate for all Black Lives, not only those harmed at the hands of the police. Employing
77 moral appeals for both physical freedom and the ideological freedom of choice and opportunity. Utilizing inclusion as a major theme helps the account construct specific communities of collective identities within the larger Black community. Creating collective identities also creates spaces where Twitter users can find themselves within the BLM movement and can lead to collective action. All in all, the tactics employed by
@BlkLivesMatter potentially improves the understanding of, and support for, BLM.
While shifting user perspectives and broadening their understandings and support of both BLM and Black lived experience is important, little material change can be directly attributed to the Twitter account. @BlkLivesMatter is a great catalog of BLM activities and can be a good resource for the organization to engage with large numbers of people. The account also advertises activist activities offline and may help bolster participation in protests and instances of action. However, the account is more promotional of BLM ideologies than transformative of political systems. Therefore the offline component of BLM must be examined as well.
The online postings of @BlkLivesMatter are shaped by the social, political, and cultural contexts in which the account is embedded. My next chapter takes up the relationship between online and offline discourse. I do not intend to posit that these spheres are distinct from one another; rather, I believe they are intrinsically intertwined.
Contemporary social movements often take place, at least in part, on the web, but offline protests are necessary for the movement to gain traction and visibility. Chapter 3 takes up the movement between online and offline discourse and activism to theorize the ways in which social media may aid in the mobilization of social movements like BLM.
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Notes
1 Jamilah King, “#BlackLivesMatter: The Evolution of an Iconic Hashtag,” Occupy February 17, 2015, https://www.occupy.com/article/blacklivesmatter-evolution-iconic- hashtag#sthash.h1GdSOAj.dpbs.
2 On Twitter, a capital and lowercase “b” are used interchangeably in the word “Black,” both as a standalone term and as a part of a hashtag. I will reflect this interchangeability when citing directly from Twitter, but will maintain use of the capital B in my own writing.
3 Catherine L. Langford and Montené Speight, “#BlackLivesMatter: Epistemic Positioning, Challenges, and Possibilities,” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 5, no. 1/2 (2015): 78-89.
4 The official Twitter account of Black Lives Matter can be found by searching @BlkLivesMatter on Twitter, or going to https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctw gr%5Eauthor.
5 Information gathered as of February 2018.
6 Jay C. Kang, “‘Our Demand is Simple: Stop Killing Us,’” MSN News, May 4, 2015, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/%E2%80%98our-demand-is-simple-stop-killing- us%E2%80%99/ar-BBj9Yxb.
7 Peter N. Funke and Todd Wolfson, “From Global Justice to Occupy and Podemos: Mapping Three Stages of Contemporary Activism,” Triple C (Cognition, Communication, Co-Operation) 15, no. 2 (2017): 393-404. See also Paolo Gerbaudo, “From Cyber-Autonomism to Cyber-Populism: An Ideological History of Digital Activism,” Triple C (Cognition, Communication, Co-Operation) 15, no. 2 (2017): 478-490. See also Noriko Hara and Bi-Yun Huang, “Online Social Movements,” Annual Review of Information and Science Technology 45, no. 1 (2011): 489-522.
8 Lindsay Ems, “Twitter’s Place in the Tussle: How Old Power Struggles Play Out on a New Stage,” Media, Culture & Society 36, no. 5 (2014): 720-731. See also Catherine H. Palczewski, “Cyber-movements, New Social Movements, and Counterpublics,” in Counterpublics and the State, eds. Robert Asen and Daniel C. Brouwer (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2001), 161-186.
9 Andre Brock, “Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis,” New Media and Society, (2016): 1-19.
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10 Johnathan M. Cox, “The Source of a Movement: Making the Case for Social Media as an Informational Source Using Black Lives Matter,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 40, no. 11 (2017): 1847-1854.
11 Yarimar Bonilla and Jonathan Rosa. “#Ferguson: Digital Protest, Hashtag Ethnography, and the Racial Politics of Social Media in the United States,” American Ethnologist 42, no. 1 (2015): 4-17. See also Melissa Brown, “#SayHerName: A Case Study of Intersectional Social Media Activism,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 40, no. 11 (2017): 1831-1846. See also Angelique Haugerud, “Public Anthropology in 2015: Charlie Hebdo, Black Lives Matter, Migrants, and More,” American Anthropologist 118, no. 3 (2016) 585-601. See also Jelani Ince, Fabio Rojas, and Clayton A. Davis, “The Social Media Response to Black Lives Matter: How Twitter Users Interact with Black Lives Matter through Hashtag Use,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 40, no. 11 (2017) 1814-1830.
12 Yarimar Bonilla and Jonathan Rosa, “#Ferguson: Digital Protest.”
13 Carson W. Byrd, “The Vitality of Social Media for Establishing a Research Agenda on Black Lives and the Movement,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 40, no. 11 (2017): 1872- 1881.
14 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, September 6, 2014, 5:16PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/508408386472644608.
15 Mark. Orbe, “#AllLivesMatter as a Post-Racial Rhetorical Strategy,” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 5, no. 3/4 (2015) 90-98.
16 Rashawn Ray, Melissa Brown, Neil Fraistat, and Edward Summers, “Ferguson and the Death of Michael Brown on Twitter: #BlackLivesMatter, #TCOT, and the Evolution of Collective Identities,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 40, no. 11 (2017): 1797-1813.
17 Hanna Adoni and Sherrill Mane, “Media and the Social Construction of Reality: Toward an Integration of Theory and Research,” Communication Research 11, no. 3 (1984): 323-340. See also Nikita Carney, “All Lives Matter, but so Does Race: Black Lives Matter and the Evolving Role of Social Media,” Humanity & Society 40, no. 2 (2016): 180-199. See also Robert M. Entman, “Blacks in the News: Television, Modern Racism and Cultural Change,” Journalism Quarterly 69, no. 2 (1992): 341-361. See also Wanda Parham-Payne, “The Role of Media in the Disparate Response to Gun Violence in America,” Journal of Black Studies 45, no. 8 (2014): 752-768.
18 Robert M. Entman and Andrew Rojecki, The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000).
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19 For more on perceptions of police violence, see Marc. A. Smith, Lee Rainie, Itai Himelboim, and Ben Shneiderman, Mapping Twitter Topic Networks: From Polarized Crowds to Community Clusters (Washington DC: Pew Research Center, 2014). For more on race relations, see “On Views of Race and Inequality, Blacks and Whites are Worlds Apart,” Pew Research Center, June 27, 2016. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/06/27/on-views-of-race-and-inequality-blacks-and- whites-are-worlds-apart/.
20 Catherine L. Langford and Montené Speight, “#BlackLivesMatter.”
21 Yarimar Bonilla and Jonathan Rosa, “#Ferguson: Digital Protest.”
22 Carson W. Byrd, “The Vitality of Social Media for Establishing a Research Agenda.”
23 There are differences between a tweet, a retweet, and a reply. A tweet comes directly from the user of an account, a retweet is simply sharing tweets from other users, and a reply operates as an answer to a question or comment one user can leave on the account of another. While @BlkLivesMatter engages in each activity, I focus solely on tweets, as they best represent the articulations of BLM itself.
24 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, August 15, 2015, 10:00AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/632597626605559808.
25 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, August 30, 2014, 11:38AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/505786714359873538.
26 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, August 31, 2014, 8:26AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/506100839383973888.
27 Johnathan M. Cox, “The Source of a Movement.”
28 Catherine L. Langford and Montené Speight, “#BlackLivesMatter.”
29 Celeste M. Condit and John L. Lucaites, “The Rhetoric of Equality and the Expatriation of African-Americans, 1776-1826,” Communication Studies 42, no. 1 (1991): 1-21.
30 Minkah Makalani, “Black Lives Matter and the Limits of Formal Black Politics,” South Atlantic Quarterly 116, no. 3 (2017) 529-552.
31 “BLM Chicago,” Black Lives Matter, accessed February 12, 2018, https://blacklivesmatter.com/chapter/blm-chicago/.
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32 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, August 26, 2014, 2:46PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/504384327019692032. 33 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, August 26, 2014, 11:51AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/504340292028596226.
34 “BLM Toronto,” Black Lives Matter, accessed February 12, 2018, https://blacklivesmatter.com/chapter/blm-toronto/.
35 Adrienne D. Dixson, “‘What’s Going On?’: A Critical Race Theory Perspective on Black Lives Matter and Activism in Education,” Urban Education 53, no. 2 (2017): 231- 247.
36 “Platform,” The Movement for Black Lives, accessed February 23, 2018, https://policy.m4bl.org/platform/.
37 “About Us,” The Movement for Black Lives, accessed February 23, 2018, https://policy.m4bl.org/about/.
38 Information gathered as of February 2018.
39 “Herstory,” Black Lives Matter, accessed October 19, 2017, https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/herstory/.
40 “Herstory,” Black Lives Matter.
41 Christopher J. LeBron, The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea (NY, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017).
42 Rashawn Ray, Melissa Brown, and Wendy Laybourn, “The Evolution of #BlackLivesMatter on Twitter: Social Movements, Big Data, and Race,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 40, no. 11 (2017): 1795-1796.
43 Jerome K. Skolnick, “Racial Profiling—Then and Now,” Criminology & Public Policy 1, no. 6 (2007): 65-70.
44 Justin Nix, Bradley A. Campbell, Edward H. Byers, and Geoffrey P. Alpert, “A Bird’s Eye View of Civilians Killed by Police in 2015,” Criminology and Public Policy 16, no. 1 (2017): 309-340.
45 Eric D. Larson, “Black Lives Matter and Bridge Building: Labor Education for a ‘New Jim Crow’ Era,” Labor Studies Journal 41, no. 1 (2016): 36-66. See also Glen Mackin, “Black Lives Matter and the Concept of the Counterworld,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 49, no. 4 (2016): 459-481.
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46 Minkah Makalani, “Black Lives Matter and the Limits of Formal Black Politics,” 533.
47 Nikita Carney, “All Lives Matter, but so Does Race.” See also Kevin A. Gray, JoAnn Wypijewski, and Jeffery St. Clair, Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence (Petrolia, CA: Counterpunch Press, 2014). See also Robin D. G. Kelley, “Thug Nation: On State Violence and Disposability,” in Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter, eds. Jordan T. Camp and Christina Heatherton (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2016).
48 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, August 20, 2014, 9:35AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/505755692477988864. Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, July 13, 2015, 10:22AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/620644408300576768.
49 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, October 2, 2014, 4:45PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/519634768695013376.
50 Amplification has a rich rhetorical history dating back to the ancients. Amplification was often considered during the inventio and dispositio (invention and arrangement) stages of oration, especially in terms of epidictic speech and poetry. Aristotle contrasts the device with deprecation when discussing minimizing and maximizing effects of speech. I use the term in a broad sense, meaning simply to amplify the importance of a given incident. Here, amplification is a process of magnification of certain events to make @BlkLivesMatter followers repeatedly aware of particular injustices faced by Black bodies.
51 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, October 7, 2014, 5:16PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/519642423828287489.
52 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, February 26, 2016, 1:49PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/703336128577835008.
53 Katheryn Russel-Brown, “Critical Black Protectionism, Black Lives Matter, and Social Media: Building a Bridge to Social Justice,” Howard Law Journal 60, no. 2 (2017): 367- 412.
54 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, November 3, 2016, 5:54AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/794160949859155968. Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, July 16, 2015, 9:11PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/621895075728125956. Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, July 17, 2015, 4:33AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/622006227107774464.
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55 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, December 3, 2014, 1:49PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/540261544525721601.
56 Eric D. Larson, “Black Lives Matter and Bridge Building.”
57 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, October 8, 2014, 8:45AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/519876337386131456.
58 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, October 3, 2014, 10:17AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/518087374472249345.
59 Kevin A. Gray, JoAnn Wypijewski, and Jeffery St. Clair, Killing Trayvons.
60 Xhercis Mendez, “Which Black Lives Matter? Gender, State-Sanctioned Violence, and ‘My Brother’s Keeper,’” Radical History Review 126, (2016): 96-105.
61 Johnathan M. Cox, “The Source of a Movement.”
62 Johnathan M. Cox, “The Source of a Movement,” 1851.
63 Lindsay Ems, “Twitter’s Place in the Tussle.”
64 Yarimar Bonilla and Jonathan Rosa, “#Ferguson: Digital Protest.”
65 Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Suzanna M. Crage, “Movements and Memory: The Making of the Stonewall Myth,” American Sociological Review 71, no. 5 (2006): 724- 751.
66 Katheryn Russel-Brown, “Critical Black Protectionism.”
67 Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
68 Catherine L. Langford and Montené Speight, “#BlackLivesMatter.”
69 Xhercis Mendez, “Which Black Lives Matter?”
70 Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York, NY: The New Press, 2010).
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71 Casey R. Kelly, “‘We Are Not Free’: The Meaning of
72 Michael C. McGee, “The ‘Ideograph’: A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 66, no. 1 (1980)” 1-16.
73 Dana Cloud, “‘To Veil the Threat of Terror’: Afghan Women and the
74 Celeste M. Condit and John L. Lucaites, Crafting Equality: America’s Anglo-African World (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
75 George Yancy and Judith Butler, “What’s Wrong with ‘All Lives Matter’?” The New York Times, January 12, 2015, https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/whats- wrong-with-all-lives-matter/?_r=0.
76 Casey R. Kelly, “‘We Are Not Free,’” 459.
77 Michael C. McGee, “The ‘Ideograph,’” 8.
78Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill, 1987). Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, August 15, 2014, 12:45PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/500367575050510338. Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, December 24, 2014, 10:37AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/547823454116798464. Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, March 13, 2015, 5:48AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/576364112269025280. Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, November 8, 2016, 11:27PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/796252971688456192.
79 Dan, Keating, Cristina Rivero, and Shelly Tan, “A Breakdown of the Arrests in Ferguson,” The Washington Post. August 21, 2014. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/ferguson-arrests/.
80 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, December 27, 2016, 7:15AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/813765296909590528.
81 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, September 6, 2014, 5:22PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/508409877547720705.
82 Eric D. Larson, “Black Lives Matter and Bridge Building.”
85
83 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, September 29, 2016, 12:54PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/781582951150526464.
84 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, August 25, 2015, 12:11PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/636254597741326337.
85 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, July 20, 2016, 10:58AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/755824267053244416.
86 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, March 2, 2015, 10:30AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/572463977080479744.
87 Glen Mackin, “Black Lives Matter and the Concept of the Counterworld.”
88 Casey R. Kelly, “‘We Are Not Free.’”
89 Michael C. McGee, “The ‘Ideograph.’”
90 Scott R. Stroud, “Kant, Rhetoric, and the Challenges of Freedom,” Advances in the History of Rhetoric 18, no. 2 (2015): 181-194.
91 George Yancy and Judith Butler, “What’s Wrong with ‘All Lives Matter’?”
92 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, September 29, 2016, 1:05PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/781585833715380224.
93 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, September 15, 2016, 9:39AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/776460396366401537.
94 Casey R. Kelly, “‘We Are Not Free,’” 470.
95 Scott R. Stroud, “Kant, Rhetoric, and the Challenges of Freedom.”
96 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, July 4, 2015, 6:38AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/617326649990737920.
97 “About,” Black Lives Matter, accessed October 19, 2017, https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/.
98 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, January 15, 2015, 8:24 AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/555762517469712384.
86
99 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, March 25, 2015, 12:13 AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/580628610987503617.
100 For more on intersectionality, see Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241-1299.
101 Leith Mullings, “Interrogating Racism: Toward an Anti-Racist Anthropology,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 34 (2005): 667-693.
102 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, August 14, 2014, 10:27 AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/499970593761280000
103 Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Intersectionality 101: Race & Gender in Work, Life & Politics” (Barbra Jordan Lecture, presented as part of the The Pennsylvania State University Africana Research Center, State College, PA, February 15, 2018).
104 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States (NY, NY: Routledge, 2014).
105 Xhercis Mendez, “Which Black Lives Matter?” 104.
106 Celeste M. Condit and John L. Lucaites, Crafting Equality.
107 Dimitris Koutsogiannis and Bessie Mitsikopoulou, “The Internet as a Glocal Discourse Environment,” Language, Learning, & Technology 8, no. 3 (2008): 83-89.
108 Catherine L. Langford and Montené Speight, “#BlackLivesMatter.”
109 Wendy Brown, “Wounded Attachments: Late Modern Oppositional Political Formations,” in Feminism, the Public and the Private ed. Joan B. Landes (NY:NY, Oxford University Press, 1998): 448-474.
110 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, September 6, 2014, 5:41PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/508414691832778752.
111 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, September 6, 2014, 5:53PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/508417819558817792.
112 Enrique Laraña, Hank Johnston, and Joseph R. Gusfield, New Social Movements: From Ideology to Identity (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1994).
87
113 Donna Hunter and Emily Polk, “Academic Responses to Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter,” Peace Review 28, no. 4 (2016): 444-450.
114 On presence, see Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969).
115 Katheryn Russel-Brown, “Critical Black Protectionism.”
116 “#SayHerName: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women,” The African American Policy Forum, accessed January 15, 2018, http://www.aapf.org/sayhernamereport/.
117 Melissa Brown, “#SayHerName: A Case Study of Intersectional Social Media Activism.”
118 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, August 2, 2016, 10:24AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/760526603419955201.
119 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, November 27, 2014, 6:45PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/538161637031960576. Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, February 4, 2016, 1:13PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/695354503571251200. Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, August 25, 2015, 12:56PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/636265849725149184.
120 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, November 21, 2014, 10:02AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/535855741932826624.
121 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, January 19, 2017, 6:00AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/822081184310042625.
122 William A. Gamson, “The Social Psychology of Collective Action,” in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, eds. Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992): 53-76.
123 Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2012).
124 Sarah J. Jackson, “(Re)Imagining Intersectional Democracy from Black Feminism to Hashtag Activism,” Women’s Studies in Communication 39, no. 4 (2016) 375-379.
Chapter 3
Translating Tweets to the Streets: The Relationship between Black Lives Matter’s Digital Presence and “Offline” Activism
Introduction
For decades, much of our daily lives have ended up digitized. News coverage was once a catch-all for local events or international headlines. People relied on broadcasters to report “facts”; yet this information is often influenced by the media elite. A handful of corporations own the majority of mass media sources.1 The consolidation of media can lead to biased information, censored stories, and erasure of events as it becomes more difficult for people to use traditional forms of media as communicative tools for self- expression.2 Today, however, social media puts information circulation, at least in part, into the hands of the people. Social media is not without its own problems, but networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram allow members of the mass public to communicate with one another directly. Cutting out the media messenger allows individuals more control over the circulation of their own narratives. This form of direct communication and self-expression is a convenient way for contemporary activists to share their stories.
While individual expression is neither unlimited nor without problems, social media offers more individual affordances than mass media. Networking sites allow people to share everything from a new restaurant they like to their experiences
89 participating in protests. Activists can share their own perspectives without being edited by cable news; ideally the more perspectives available allows for a more holistic understanding of an event as users of social media and the Internet can see multiple sides to each story. Further, there are few relationships we do not maintain, at least in part, on the web.3 The Internet has changed the shape of communication practices as people become accustomed to seeing and/or reading about previously private matters. It is now commonplace to learn about the lived experiences of individuals thousands of miles away or to become privy to what is happening in one’s own backyard. The wealth of information online, the affordability of technology to circulate that information, and the directness of representation that comes from individualized reporting have made social media a valuable tool for the modern social movement.4
Contemporary social movements operate online more than ever before. In fact,
Manuel Castells claims modern movements are “born on the Internet, diffused by the
Internet, and maintained…on the Internet.”5 The Internet, in other words, has become a powerful organizational tool for modern movements. Social media is particularly useful as platforms like Twitter and Facebook can digitally bring people together that otherwise would remain separated, circulate information that is not controlled by mass media sources and their gatekeepers, and help craft narratives for the organizations that use these platforms.6 Establishing and maintaining a social media presence has thus become an important component of any social movement.
In my last chapter, I discussed the rhetorical strategies employed by the Twitter account @BlkLivesMatter. I argued these strategies, including linking hashtags, utilizing ideographs, and creating collective identities served to aid @BlkLivesMatter in
90 expanding Twitter user’s understanding of both the account itself, and the larger organization it represents—the Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLM). It was important to analyze this account, as BLM was formed and is maintained online.
However, the organization engages in activist activities offline, as well. This chapter takes up offline forms of activism, namely the 2014 Ferguson Freedom Rides and protests as a case study to examine how online and offline communication influence one another and circulate social movement mobilization.
I want to stress that I am not interested in developing a theory of activism of exclusively the online or the offline, but instead want to understand the rhetorical relationship between the two spaces. The online and offline spheres, at least in the case of
BLM, are fundamentally connected. An offline activity such as a protest gets photographed and put on social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter; an online post may ask for volunteers to join an offline protest, as was the case with the
Ferguson Freedom Rides. The two spaces are intrinsically tied together. While many have called to examine the relationship between online and offline spheres, few have taken up the challenge.7 My examination of how rhetoric is operationalized in both online and offline spaces seeks to answer this call.
This chapter uses two lines of theory to discuss the events in Ferguson. First, I look to contemporary scholarship on social media’s influence on the mobilization of social movements and collective action. I use the social media accounts of BLM, paying particular attention to the organization’s official Twitter account, @BlkLivesMatter, to examine the ways in which the Ferguson protests were discussed on and offline. In this section I argue that modern social movements, in effect, could not exist without some
91 form of online presence. Next, I turn to literature on confrontational rhetoric. I first provide a brief history of the theory to track how it has developed and understand how this form of rhetoric is increasingly applicable to the contemporary moment. Then, I analyze the ability of a social movement to effectively engage in the rhetoric of confrontation within digital spaces. Specifically, I ask if a social movement’s confrontation can be effective in online spaces alone, or if engagement with offline protest is a necessary component of confrontational rhetoric. I ultimately seek to develop a set of practices for the relationship between the on and offline dimensions of contemporary social movements. I end the chapter by imagining future areas of research that may engage the ways digital protests may grow and change as technology progresses. Before discussing the future, however, it is important to understand how social movements began to use social media as a platform for mobilization.
Social Movements, Social Media, and Mobilization
The contemporary revolution will be tweeted.8 Many movements around the globe from the early 2000s on have used social media to spread their messages and gain increased membership. Grassroots organizing has shifted from passing out fliers to passing around hashtags, and the latter certainly moves with more speed and dexterity.
Movements can therefore gain momentum online and connect with more people than ever before. In fact, social media may be one reason there are more demonstrations of social protest around the world than at any other time in history.9 Sociologists have questioned whether or not technology and social networking through social media can help activists
92 reach their goals; the answer is a resounding yes.10 However, social media is not the only tool used by social movements.
In a discussion of social movement 2.0, a “shorthand” term for the merging of social movements and social media platforms, Christina Foust and Kate Drazner Hoyt call for increased complexity in scholarly evaluations of social movements.11
Specifically, they claim scholars should “recognize movements as rhetorical achievements… within their particular cultural, political, and historical contexts,” and should work to understand “the overlapping networks of mediations that circulate movement messages and expressions.”12 This section takes up that challenge by examining the various ways BLM utilized social networking to mobilize participation in offline protests in Ferguson in 2014. After a brief review of social movements and social media, I look at #Ferguson and similar hashtags on Twitter alongside the offline demonstrations in Missouri. I find the hashtag and other forms of online communication to be beneficial to BLM efforts, yet these messages would have lost a lot of their rhetorical energy were they not connected to physical, offline demonstrations. In the case of Ferguson, the online and offline dimensions of protests were both needed to circulate the message that black lives matter.
Social Media Affordances for Social Movements
Social media can be a great tool for movement organizing practices. Online networking offers a platform for “building space of collective dissent,” as these sites challenge mass media for viewer attention.13 Further, social media allows for interaction
93 between organizations and their followers in ways older forms of communication could not. For instance, users may connect with a social movement online and demonstrate their support (or opposition) from miles away. In this way dissent toward oppressors can gain global recognition in a matter of hours as more and more are exposed to a movement’s message. Social media helps the movement grow.
If a social media user is in close proximity to a particular protest event, they can utilize social media as a source for information about the offline demonstration and may be led to mobilize. Eva Anduiza and her colleagues, for example, synthesized several studies that agree social media networks act as complements, rather than contrasts, to traditional forms of mobilization organizers like the mass media.14 Their article also demonstrates the ability of social media to serve as a relatively informal way to circulate information, allowing citizens to engage in collective action planning without the need for formalized organizations taking a leadership role in planning processes.15 For instance, a user can post to a movement’s Facebook or Twitter page to ask when a demonstration is taking place and receive an answer almost instantaneously. Participants no longer have to rely on movement leadership to direct them—all the information they could possibly need is available online. In this vein, studies have shown the more connected an area is with social media, the more that region is likely to engage in offline political demonstrations.16 More social media followers equates to more protestors.
Social media networks are therefore linked with the “rhetoric of the streets.”17
Through this linkage, “we have not only become users of social media but we have built networking cultures that are a fundamental trait of reflexivity and action in our contemporary societies.”18 In other words, protestors are connecting and organizing in an
94 online network supported largely by social media before translating their connections to offline demonstrations. Nikita Carney goes so far as to claim social media is operationalized as a “new public sphere” that offers more accessibility to those who may not be able to participate in traditional public spheres, especially young people of color.
This sphere blurs the lines between public and private to allow users to share their lived experiences, which can be operationalized as reasons for needed action. Again, what is posted online can transition to offline forms of protest.
In examining relationships between on and offline activities, many scholars discuss the need to examine the offline context in which digital communication is embedded in addition to analyzing the online content.19 Michael Calvin MeGee records the importance of placing text in context when he writes “discourse ceases to be what it is whenever parts of it are taken out of context.”20 In the case of mediated movements, the online texts such as hashtags would be meaningless without understanding the context in which they are situated. Dana Cloud and Joshua Gunn further discuss the importance of text and context in terms of society as they note the idea of text is “coupled with the contextualization of the rhetorical artifact as part of the broader construction of social relations.”21 Carson Byrd applies these ideas to social media by noting social media networks can provide needed contexts for understanding social processes, as users do not have to rely on information generated by highly corporate sources of mass media, but can instead craft their own narratives.22 In other words, the texts on social media such as tweets can help users understand the social, cultural, and political contexts of the offline world. The text of social media can reflect social concerns of movements; the circulatory abilities of social media can help led people toward action.
95 Because the rhetorical practices of the online and offline are so interconnected, there is a clear relationship between online and offline mobilization tactics. Marco
Bastos, Dan Mercea, and Arthur Charpentier found a feedback loop between social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and onsite protest activities. They assert, although they note this claim needs to be tested further, that offline protest activity can be forecasted by information seen on social media sites. 23 As I have previously suggested, relevant discussions online can lead to offline demonstrations, and more content online can result in more participation offline. Having an online component is therefore critical for social movements that want to gain more followers—both online and by means of offline participants.
Social media, overall, makes organization for social movements more efficient.
This can be seen in the case of the BLM Ferguson Freedom Rides, a campaign to get people from across the country to Ferguson, Missouri in August of 2014 to protest the shooting of Michael Brown. BLM used their Twitter account as an organizing tool to develop a plan of action and raise support for the Freedom Rides in a matter of days. The online work done by BLM resulted in over 600 people showing up to the protests.24
@BlkLivesMatter was integral in gathering folks from around the country together in a matter of weeks. In the case of Ferguson, mobilization was facilitated because the revolution was tweeted.
96 Online Mobilization: The Case of #Ferguson
Before looking specifically at how social media aided in mobilizing people to the
Ferguson protests in the fall of 2014, it is important to examine and understand what was happening offline. The unrest in Ferguson first occurred in response to the shooting of 18 year old, African American Michael Brown on August 9, 2014. A second wave of unrest occurred after the decision to not indict the shooter, Ferguson Police Officer Darren
Wilson. BLM was involved online in both of these waves, largely through tweeting about offline demonstrations. A third, smaller protest briefly took place on the anniversary of the shooting.
Protesters were met with extreme police force; many faced tear gas, rubber bullets, or other forms of what one auto-ethnography dubbed “post hoc police tactics.”25
The police assumed the worst from protestors and designed strategies to stop them before they became violent, then retroactively justified their own violence through the potentiality of violence from the protestors. Some protestors were arrested for looting, trespassing, or interfering with an officer. A few protestors did throw rocks at the police, and a convenient store was set on fire. However, police matched rocks with tear gas and the overwhelming majority of arrests were due to a nonviolent “refusal to disperse.”26
Mass media sources were quick to critique the police as too militarized, and the United
States Department of Justice (DOJ) even conducted an investigation to examine the policing practices in Ferguson.27 The DOJ found the Ferguson Police Department (FPD) engaged in a “pattern…of unlawful conduct” as they discriminated against African
Americans.28
97 The protests in Ferguson cannot be separated from their racialized context. They were sparked by the murder of a young Black man, and took place in a city with a historically discriminatory police force.29 The DOJ report found “African Americans experience disparate impact in nearly every aspect of Ferguson’s law enforcement system” as people of color were more likely to be searched during a vehicular stop, receive more than one citation for a singular incident, and have force used against them.30
The violence perpetrated against Michael Brown was not a one-off incident, but had roots in a pattern of biased policing. It makes sense that people would want to fight back, and it makes sense that BLM would help lead the resistance.
According to Sam Pizzigati, people begin to mobilize after they experience pain.31
The pain felt by citizens of Ferguson spread as the events there were covered by national news sources and reiterated on social media platforms. Twitter released an animated map showing online reactions to Michael Brown’s death by tracking the use of #Ferguson.
The map works by lighting up geographical regions where Twitter users talked about
Ferguson and Michael Brown. For instance, when someone in Ferguson tweeted using the hashtag, their city would glow against a previously black background. Within a week of Brown’s shooting the entire United States glowed yellow, with other bright spots emerging on every other continent except Antarctica.32 A similar map was released following the non-indictment of George Zimmerman, this time tracking #ICantBreathe,
#BlackLivesMatter, and #HandsUpDontShoot, three hashtags that became rallying cries for protestors. Again, the map lights up around the world, with the US glowing particularly bright.33 All in all, there were over 18 million tweets about the Ferguson
98 protests in August, and 3.5 million following the non-indictment. This effectively made
#Ferguson one of the biggest moments on Twitter in 2014.34
As the pain over Michael Brown traversed the globe, so did organizing practices.
People flocked to Twitter to plan protests in their own communities, with many making plans to travel to Ferguson. @BlkLivesMatter used their platform to solicit donations for those joining their Freedom Rides. They hosted a live streamed conference call with people in Ferguson and St. Louis to gain insight to conditions “on the ground” before warning followers “Don’t miss out--#BlackLivesMatter ride to Ferguson!”35 Soon, the popular press began labeling this work a “Twitter Revolution,” with one author claiming the “Ferguson revolution is happening in the tweets.”36 Gustavo Cardoso, Tiago Lapa, and Branco Di Fatima discuss this mass media labeling of Twitter Revolutions, noting this tendency makes it appear as if the roots of protests were planted within social media.
In the case of Ferguson, this is entirely correct. However, the protests did not stop with the closure of a browser tab; #Ferguson became operationalized offline as well.
#Ferguson Translated Offline
The Twitter storm of #Ferguson garnered a great deal of attention, but not everyone who retweeted the hashtag turned out to protest. This necessitates the question: who did turn up to protest, and how did social media get them to an offline demonstration? This section looks at the specific ways BLM social media accounts inspired offline mobilization and collective action in the case of Ferguson, as well as how social media more generally helped shape the protests. Online accounts were integral in
99 getting protestors in the streets; likely the demonstrations would have been very different without them. Further, social media was a first line of defense against a violent police force as protestors turned to their personal accounts to report instances of police brutality.
Several considered the protests a success—this would not have been possible without the use of social media.37
Social media is important to BLM, but the organization’s end goal is not to gain followers or virality. Rather, BLM wants material changes. Julius Bailey and David J.
Leonard note some of ways BLM moves beyond social media, writing that the network is
“not limited to hashtags, signs, and t-shirts.” Instead, BLM is “at work in the rhetorical challenges to the persistent devaluation of black life and in the systemic efforts to combat the cultural and social murder of Blackness.”38 BLM may be organized online and circulated through rhetorical tidbits of hashtags and slogans, but their efforts are targeted at disruption of socio-cultural contexts that lead to the oppression of people of color. The protestors who engage in online conversation and offline activism are largely those who identified with BLM’s larger mission to work “for a world where Black lives are no longer systemically targeted for demise.”39 These are the people who move offline toward collective action.
Bruce Bimber and colleagues argue that collective action occurs when two or more people make private interests public.40 This sheds light on why online communication technologies such as social media makes engaging in collective action more readily available. If someone posts about something that matters to them, and a friend shares that post or starts a conversation in the comments section, collective action can be said to have occurred. These actions are fairly inconsequential on a small scale,
100 but they develop power as they go viral. In the case of Ferguson, demonstrators acted as
“citizen journalists” as they posted content on their personal account that may have otherwise gone unreported.41 Sharing alerts more people to the issue, and might get more individuals involved in offline action.
This can be seen in the case of Darruis Carr, who joined the #FergusonOctober protest when he was invited by a friend and fellow activist who wanted to respond to an online national call for solidarity and needed people to help carpool. The Ferguson
October protests were aimed at filling jail cells in Ferguson as “a gesture of solidarity and a statement of noncompliance with a police department that they [the protest participants] deemed morally compromised” and were attended by people of various races.42 Carr, whose auto-ethnographic account of the #FergusonOctober protests sheds light on the online and offline dimensions of the events in Ferguson, continued to report injustices faced in the city.
Carr recounts engaging in peaceful marches that were led by police and did nothing to disrupt the status quo. The protestors chanted “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” in an appropriation of the online hashtag and an adaptation of what were presumably Michael
Brown’s last words: “I don’t have a gun. Stop shooting.” The protestors continued the chant after surrounding a local convenient store later that evening, where they stood silent for four minutes to represent the four hours Michael Brown’s body laid uncovered in the street. Eventually the police forces pushed the protestors back, using pepper spray and threatening the use of batons, until the group dispersed. Seventeen people were arrested.43
Like Carr, protestors at this and other events turned to online platforms to document their experiences. Searching #FergusonOctober on Twitter or Instagram yields
101 countless images and videos of the event. Several have published in depth accounts of their experiences online, with even more sharing blubs of their experience on social networking sites.44 Ultimately, #Ferguson can be seen as cyclical. Individuals who first got word of Ferguson online decided to participate in offline events, then published those events back onto mediated platforms, which encouraged others to participate. Some of the offline events were even “planned with an eye towards getting the maximum [amount of] media exposure”—the activists on the ground wanted their efforts to be seen by all via mediated technologies.45
The events in Ferguson happened, at least in part, because of the Twitter frenzy around the hashtag of the same name.46 Likewise, the events were made widely available to the public due to media involvement and social media use of activists in the streets.
Social media posts were essential in sharing Michael Brown’s story, and Twitter served as an outlet for protestors to share their experiences without reliance on traditional news sources.47 Perhaps the protests could have occurred without the use of mediated social networking, but it is doubtful they would have been as well attended or as commanding of national and international attention. It is the spectacle of such protests, Carr argues, that leads to conversation and collective awareness.48
The online and offline are both crucial elements within this movement, as one could not have been as powerful without use of the other. Ferguson does not exist in separate spaces of material and virtual—it takes place in both.49 Images and news from the events would not have circulated so readily had they not been put on social networking sites. Likewise, the viral images that showcased the full extent of the
Ferguson police force may not have been created in the first place had an online call for
102 action not occurred or protestors been fewer. One scholar notes protests happening online still need clear goals and targets to be effective.50 Additionally, for online protest to work it should be “integrated as one component of the overarching social movement, rather than the only component.”51 Without the context provided by offline events, the Ferguson protests could have been viewed as angry individuals taking out their grief on the web.
The offline demonstrates the problems in a community; the online allows those problems to be seen worldwide.
Contemporary social movements cannot thrive without an online presence.
Certainly a movement could confront its opposition offline, but it would be much more difficult to gain attention and support without the use of organizing tools like social media. Additionally, without an online component, a movement’s message may cease when a demonstration disbands. The online is helpful in creating offline confrontation, but little work has been done to examine confrontation created online. My next section continues to examine #Ferguson to better understand the dynamic between on and offline confrontational practices.
Confrontational Rhetoric in the Case of Ferguson
The term “confrontational rhetoric” may be most easily traced back to Robert L.
Scott and Donald K. Smith’s 1969 article, aptly titled “The Rhetoric of Confrontation.”52
In this piece, Scott and Smith posit a theory of confrontation based on radical division that is, when viewed as a theory of rhetoric, inherently symbolic. Confrontational rhetoric deals with the haves and the have nots, or the establishments maintaining the status quo
103 and those who “picture themselves as radically divided from traditional society” who challenge institutional structures.53 The theory of confrontational rhetoric is a good lens through which to see the events in Ferguson and the efforts of BLM.
This section begins with a synopsis of the development of confrontation as a rhetorical theory. I then turn to examining the ways in which the Ferguson protest are exemplary of confrontational rhetoric before looking at the ways in which confrontation can function on and offline. Ultimately, I seek to discover whether or not confrontation can take place in only online spaces, or if offline activities are necessary for confrontation to occur. I find that while confrontation can occur online alone, its effects are greatly strengthened by offline iterations. In other words, confrontation may begin online, but changes to existing systems often transpire because of offline events.
A History of Confrontational Rhetoric
A solid understanding of the development of confrontational rhetoric is necessary to understand the theory’s applicability in contemporary confrontation. While Scott and
Smith may have been the first to coin the phrase “confrontational rhetoric” they developed the theory with influence from other movement scholars, most notably Leland
Griffin and Franklyn Haiman. Griffin’s “The Rhetoric of Social Movements” was a central text in its time, as Griffin tracked a methodology for movement studies to transition from examination of a single orator to instead study atmospheres and patterns of a movement.54 Griffin’s work argues for study of the context of a movement to make claims about its effectiveness. He notes students ought to “judge the discourse in terms of
104 the rhetorical theories and public opinions of the times.”55 In other words, he encouraged students to situate any particular movement within the matrix of history, with history defined in terms of movements rather than individuals. This idea is still beneficial to movement studies today; it makes sense to study a movement like BLM within its own contexts while still paying attention to the history from which it grew. Part of this history is seen in the rhetoric of protest offline—in the streets.
Haiman takes up the study of movement in what he calls the “Rhetoric of the
Streets.”56 In this article, Haiman tracks “new” forms of rhetoric that appeared in the era of the Civil Rights Movement. This new rhetoric is defined as “persuasion by a strategy of power and coercion rather than by reason and democratic decision-making.”57 The rhetoric of the streets is disruptive and outside the confines of rational discussion. This rhetoric is messy, perhaps even illegal, and can lead to punishment for perpetrators. This is clearly seen in the arrests of BLM protestors.58 Haiman defends this “new” rhetoric by highlighting the fact that peaceful protests may become inaccessible to marginalized sections of the population. Given the socio-cultural contexts of the time the article was published, and the continued disparate political climate of today, activists may have to turn toward more disruptive and potentially violent demonstrations out of necessity. After all, “dissent is always an inconvenience for those who like the status quo.”59
Haiman’s view of rhetorical dissent is a form of confrontation, though he does not use that term. In Heather Hayes approximation, “Haiman develops an understanding of rhetorical situations as rich and wrought with relations of power that are inextricably linked with their inclusion and exclusion of particular acts.”60 The rhetoric of the streets empowers those who are excluded from democratic discussions, such as people of color.
105 It allows the subjugated to stand in opposition to the rationality expected by those in positions of power as protestors in the streets necessarily confront their oppressors. The rhetoric of the streets is a rhetoric of confrontation.
Scott and Smith make the explicit transition from dissent to a rhetoric of confrontation through claiming the act of confrontation is a highly symbolic action that carries a rhetorical message. This theory deals with “haves” and “have-nots,” making it necessarily racialized. The authors offer confrontation as both a totalistic and non- totalistic strategy for movements. The totalistic strategy assumes that there is nothing further to lose for those who are oppressed; “after having suffered being down for so long, [t]he[y] deserve to move up.”61 In this strategy, people unite under an assumed social death with the hope of being reborn into a better situation, a future that those currently in power cannot comprehend. Confrontation can also function as a non-totalistic strategy, used by those who experience division but not of a radical nature. This strategy seeks a reordering of oppressive systems from the inside out. Here, confrontation is used as a way to get attention that could not be achieved through traditional civility and decorum.
Scott and Smith end their piece with a conceptualization of confrontation as a rhetorical theory. For the scholars, confrontation “dissolves the lines between marches, sit-ins, demonstrations, acts of physical violence, and aggressive discourse.”62 It allows for understanding of the symbolism behind these human actions, and offers a way to move beyond tradition. In fact, the authors claim “a rhetorical theory suitable to our age must take into account the charge that civility and decorum serve as masks for the preservation of injustice, that they condemn the dispossessed to non-being, and that as
106 transmitted in a technological society they become the instrumentalities of power for those who ‘have.’”63 Confrontation is one way to oppose oppressors, unmask violent systems, and resist them.
Confrontational rhetoric received some uptake in rhetorical studies beyond Scott and Smith’s article. Robert Cathcart assumes confrontation in social movements when he claims “a movement can be identified by its confrontational form.”64 In other words, a movement such as BLM relies on confrontation to define itself. Confrontation is not necessarily violent for Cathcart, but involves an act of exposure of oppression via unbalanced relations of power; “it is the act of confrontation that causes the establishment to reveal itself for what it is.” Confrontation is in opposition to managerial rhetoric, which Cathcart defines as speech “designed to keep the existing system viable.” Thus, confrontation occurs in times of social breakdown when systems become more vulnerable. Like Scott and Smith, Cathcart’s understanding of confrontation is a way to move past outdated forms of decorum to oppose acts of subjugation. Movements are, for
Cathcart, essentially rhetorical as they re-order rather than reform social structures.65 Put another way, confrontation’s rhetorical function is to bring visibility to previously cloaked power relations, then to resist or dismantle them.
BLM engages in confrontation as Cathcart understands it as they bring unbalanced power relations to light. Online, their Twitter account engages in hashtag campaigns such as #SetTheStandard or #SayHerName, which amplify injustices of economics and gender, respectively. Offline, the movement participates in demonstrations such as the four minute moment of silence during the Ferguson protests to represent the four hours Michael Brown’s body laid uncovered on the ground. These
107 symbolic actions do not dismantle the systems that cause injustice, but do make oppression visible.
There is precedent for studying confrontation in BLM, as several scholars have examined confrontational rhetoric in light of various case studies. James Andrews looks at confrontation and coercion in the case of protests at Columbia in the 1960s.66 James
Cheesebro studied confrontations between the New Left and established systems in his examination of strategies of the radical revolutionary.67 More recently, Brant Short has researched environmental protest and the rhetoric of moral confrontation, while Heather
Hayes examines confrontation in light of violence.68 Robert Ivie discusses the ways
“discord, nonconformity, resistance, and confrontation have figured more prominently in the critical and theoretical work of the field,” noting several scholars such as Jeff Bennett who treat dissent as a strategic form of confrontation.69 The rest of this chapter continues this line of work by taking up the rhetoric of confrontation in light of the online and offline events in Ferguson.
Confrontational Rhetoric in the Case of Ferguson
BLM is necessarily confrontational. The movement engages in confrontational rhetoric simply by bringing to light the unbalanced relations of power between races, genders, sexualities, classes, and so forth. The organization as a whole confronts a variety of social problems, but the events in Ferguson focus on a specific issue: the police. BLM has condemned police violence since its founding after the shooting of Trayvon Martin.
However, the events in Ferguson brought the organization increased visibility and
108 membership.70 To BLM, Ferguson was “not an aberration, but in fact, a clear point of reference for what was happening to Black communities everywhere.”71 Ferguson was a turning point for BLM; it was these protests that took the organization from a predominately online hashtag to a national, confrontational movement.72 This section examines how confrontational rhetoric was operationalized in the context of #Ferguson before questioning the effectiveness of confrontation’s online capacities.
Ferguson is a good place to study BLM’s use of confrontation, as it was the first instance of widespread offline protests in the name of #BlackLivesMatter and set up a system of practices for future protests to follow.73 While the deaths of Eric Garner, Tamir
Rice, and others did encourage demonstrations, they were not nearly as widespread or as plentiful as those for Michael Brown.74 BLM takes a few different steps toward a rhetoric of confrontation in Ferguson. First, the organization and protest participants confront the police system through unmasking instances of oppressive force; this work is predominately done online. Then, protestors confront the force itself in offline demonstrations. In each instance, BLM and its actors move beyond old forms of civility and persuasion to reach confrontation in hopes of change.
The first addressees of confrontation from BLM was the police system. U.S. culture associates criminality with Black bodies, and BLM seeks to dismantle this ascribed relationship.75 BLM used both online and offline strategies to bring visibility to the oppressive nature of the FPD, thus revealing the extreme imbalances of power between officers and citizens in Ferguson.
Offline, BLM demonstrations brought national attention to the practices of the
FPD, which helped spark a DOJ investigation into the force.76 Traditionally, the DOJ
109 would investigate potential civil rights infringements after the filing of an official complaint or in response to “major events like those in Ferguson.”77 Since BLM is responsible for the events in Missouri, they can be partially accredited with the investigation that revealed the biased practices of the FPD.
Online, BLM supporters tweeted the DOJ report and condemned both the FPD and racial profiling by the police more generally. As Catherine L. Langford and Montené
Speight note, racialized social media “attempts to challenge White perceptions of Black
Americans” through calling attention to forms of discrimination and material violence, such as police shootings.78 For instance, BLM condemned the system after Darren
Wilson’s non-indictment, noting “Only white supremacy allows for officers to brutalize us and be cleared of it.”79 In both online and offline settings, BLM unmasks the prejudice of the police.
Protestors participated in offline confrontational practices through dramatic reenactments, such as a disruptive die-in in a mall on Black Friday.80 Techniques such as die-ins work by using “disturbance as a means of dramatizing routine attacks on black life.”81 This brings visibility to their cause as they force passersby to bear witness to
“death” like that of Michael Brown. The bodies are unignorable as they barricade the paths of many shoppers on one of the busiest days of the year. This confrontation is not explicitly an act of violence, but alludes to violent potentialities. The bodies, most of which are of color, seem to suggest a continuation of police violence; if the police killed one, they may kill more. The example of the die-in fits Cathcart’s understanding of confrontation as a “symbolic enactment which dramatizes the complete alienation of the confronter.”82 The helpless bodies left uncovered on the floors of the shopping mall
110 present themselves as innocent victims while the police become juxtaposed as the flawed system responsible for so many deaths.
The die-in does not merely represent the death of the body, but also symbolizes the social deaths faced by people of color. Scott and Smith discuss being already dead, even while the body breathes: “In the world as it is, we do not count. We make no difference. We are not persons.”83 BLM refers to this phenomena as a “living death.”84
This is the death that occurs when people are systemically targeted based on one or more of their identity categories. The subjugated are not viable within current systems. The die-in materializes social death; the bodies breathe, but they have no power. For Scott and
Smith, social death can be solved through a process of social rebirth. Rebirth comes through totalistic confrontation, which requires a complete re-ordering of social systems.
The confrontational rhetoric of BLM does not simply bring visibility to the biased police force, but actively works to confront and change the system. They do so offline by means of die-ins, marches, and other forms of protest. However, BLM also calls for systemic re-orderings online, especially on Twitter. #BlackLivesMatter serves as an unmasking of White privilege as police violence is framed as morally wrong.85 The
@BlkLivesMatter Twitter account does further visibility for the events in Ferguson with posts such as “Do not turn your eyes away from what’s happening in Ferguson. People are still fighting for their lives.”86 However, they also call for inclusion of Black bodies in the system by stating “Justice Includes Us.”87 The clearest way BLM makes the case for system re-ordering is in the online circulation of events that first took place offline.
@BlkLivesMatter frequently shared Instagram photos from BLM protest participants during the Ferguson Freedom Rides in August of 2014. The images show the
111 effects demonstrators had on the convenience store or show protestors marching to the steps of the police department building.88 Many of the image links follow reiterations of
“no justice, no peace.” These images showcase the division between protestors and police and demonstrate a totalistic strategy of confrontation. Scott and Smith outline four elements of totalistic confrontation, two of which have already been discussed as death and rebirth. The last two elements, “we have the stomach for the fight,” and “we are united and understand,” are also seen in the Ferguson protests.89 Denying the FPD peace until they are brought to justice necessitates dismantling the systems in place that allowed for Officer Wilson to not face indictment. Further, the act of protesting requires a united front that BLM brings to Ferguson in the form of more than 600 individuals from across the country. The Freedom Riders are “united in a sense of a past dead,” and thus fight for a future without “degrading domination.”90
The Ferguson protests exhibit confrontation by means of their rhetorical style. As
Scott and Smith note, “civility and decorum serve as marks for the preservation of injustice.”91 BLM cannot simply engage in town halls and listening sessions in an attempt to reconstruct police practices; to be socially reborn they must redesign policing as a whole. The Ferguson protests do not lead to a complete re-ordering of the criminal justice system, nor do they dismantle racism or bias. However, Ferguson unveils the problems with policing through strategies such as marches, die-ins, and even voluntary arrests to demonstrate the viability of being put into custody as a person of color. These events get circulated online and BLM does turn to their online networks for ideas and help with offline events. But, the majority of BLM’s confrontational force exists in the streets.
112 As the events in Ferguson demonstrate, confrontational rhetoric can occur online but offline instances of confrontation are crucial in enacting substantial changes. The marches and protests in the streets of Ferguson ignited the DOJ report of the FPD. These demonstrations may have also influenced Darren Wilson’s decision to resign. Wilson notes in his official resignation letter that his “continued employment may put the residents and police officers of the City of Ferguson at risk.”92 The focus on the geographic region of Ferguson implies it was the protests in the same region, not online threats, that caused Wilson concern. While online participation and social media networking may get more participants in protests, it is the offline events that inspire change.
Modern social movements are increasingly operating online, which can be beneficial for increasing communication and mobilization efforts.93 Yet, online activism is not as powerful as protest activities offline. In fact, one study found online lobbying was not effective at all.94 While I do not entirely agree with scholars who dismiss online activism entirely as a form of “slacktivism,” it does seem as though simplistic actions such as liking or retweeting a post do not encourage as much social change as offline acts of confrontation.95 Contemporary social movements need an online component, as I demonstrated earlier in this chapter, but the events in Ferguson show they need offline activities, too. Social movements today must therefore strike a balance between online and offline activism. Social movements may use online networks to promote offline protests, and then turn to those same networks to circulate the activities that occur offline.
Utilizing both online and offline methods can increase participation and visibility for a
113 movement, which can make the movement more effective overall. We exist in a mediated space while still engaging in activities offline; social movements ought to do the same.
Conclusion: Toward A Future of Digital Protest Rhetoric
Contemporary life is more digitized than ever before, and social movements are following suit.96 Social media can be a valuable tool for the modern social movement, as online networks may help a movement circulate messages or encourage participation.
Social media may also be used to mobilize and organize in more effective ways than previous forms of communication.97 In fact, the ways a movement operates online may be predictive of its offline protest demonstrations; more online followers leads to more activists in the streets.98 In these ways, social media offers several affordances to social movements in contemporary society. Online presence helps a social movement become more efficient and more effective.
While social media is a practical tool for organizing practices, offline demonstrations are still crucial for a social movement to remain viable and enact material changes. If online communication is a means, offline communication is an end.
Particularly in the case of the Ferguson protests of 2014, offline protest rhetoric was instrumental in instigating change. These offline protests largely occurred because of an online call to participate. In BLM, the online and offline are cyclically beneficial, and necessarily interconnected. The online circulation of offline events helps bring visibility to a cause, which can encourage more individuals to support a movement offline, as well.
Confrontational rhetoric in this case is most effective when utilized on both online and
114 offline platforms as movements seek to uncover oppression and reorient systems that cause subjugation.
Online confrontation may be supplementary to offline demonstrations now, but this has the capacity to change as technology evolves. Perhaps communicating online will one day become the only form of protest available to social movements. Perhaps online networks will dissipate as people become more involved with activism on a local scale and turn to more traditional forms of organizing practices. Perhaps there will one day no longer be a need for protest. These hypothetical situations are all extreme; likely a relationship will continue to exist between online and offline forms of communication and displays of confrontation. Scholars of rhetoric and movements ought to continue to examine this relationship as technologies advance and human interaction changes. Until there is justice, there will not be peace. Activists will continue to fight, so studies of protest must endure.
115 Notes
1 Ashley Lu, “These 6 Corporations Control 90% of the Media In America,” Business Insider, June 14, 2012, http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90- of-the-media-in-america-2012-6.
2 Patricia Lancia, “The Ethical Implications of Monopoly Media Ownership,” The Institute for Applied and Professional Ethics, July 27, 2009, https://www.ohio.edu/ethics/2001-conferences/the-ethical-implications-of-monopoly- media-ownership/index.html.
3 Eva Anduiza, Camilo Cristancho, and José M. Sabucedo, “Mobilization through Online Social Networks: The Political Protest of the Indignados in Spain,” Information, Communication & Society 17, no. 6 (2014): 750-764.
4 Summer Harlow, “Social Media and Social Movements: Facebook and an Online Guatemalan Justice Movement that Moved Offline,” New Media & Society 14, no. 2 (2011): 225-243.
5 Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2012).
6 Rashawn Ray, Melissa Brown, Neil Fraistat, and Edward Summers, “Ferguson and the Death of Michael Brown on Twitter: #BlackLivesMatter, #TCOT, and the Evolution of Collective Identities,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 40, no. 11 (2017): 1797-1813.
7 Magdalena Wojcieszak, “‘Carrying Online Participation Offline’—Mobilization by Radical Online Groups and Politically Dissimilar Offline Ties,” Journal of Communication 59, no. 3 (2009): 564-586.
8 Blake Hounshell, “The Revolution Will Be Tweeted: Life in the Vanguard of the New Twitter Proletariat,” Foreign Policy, June 20, 2011, http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/06/20/the-revolution-will-be-tweeted/.
9 Samantha Madison, “How Social Media Has Changed the Way Political Movements Organize,” Government Technology, January 10, 2017, http://www.govtech.com/social/How-Social-Media-Has-Changed-the-Way-Political- Movements-Organize.html.
10 Dustin Kidd and Keith McIntosh, “Social Media and Social Movements,” Sociology Compass 10, no. 9 (2016): 785-794.
116
11 Christina R. Foust and Kate D. Hoyt, “Social Movement 2.0: Integrating and Assessing Scholarship on Social Media and Movement,” Review of Communication 18, no. 1 (2018): 37-55.
12 Christina R. Foust and Kate D. Hoyt, “Social Movement 2.0,” 51.
13 Branco Di Fátima, “Revolução de Jasmim: A Comunicação em Rede Nos Levantes Populares da Tunísia,” Temática 9, no. 1 (2013): 1-15.
14 Victor Bekkers, Henri Beunders, Arthur Edwards, and Rebecca Moody, “New Media, Micromobilization, and Political Agenda Setting: Crossover Effects in Political Mobilization and Media Usage,” The Information Society 27, no. 4 (2011): 209-219.
15 Eva Anduiza, Camilo Cristancho, and José M. Sabucedo, “Mobilization through Online Social Networks.”
16 Gustavo Cardoso, Tiago Lapa, and Branco Di Fátima, “People are the Message? Social Mobilization and Social Media in Brazil,” International Journal of Communication 10, (2016): 3909-3930.
17 Franklyn S. Haiman, “The Rhetoric of the Streets: Some Legal and Ethical Considerations,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 53, no. 2 (1967): 99-114.
18 Gustavo Cardoso, Tiago Lapa, and Branco Di Fátima, “People are the Message?”
19 Philip E. Agre, “Real-Time Politics: The Internet and the Political Process,” The Information Society 18, (2002): 311-331.
20 Michael C. McGee, “Text, Context, and the Fragmentation of Contemporary Culture,” Western Journal of Communication 54, (1990): 274-289.
21 Dana L. Cloud and Joshua Gunn, “Introduction: W(h)ither Ideology?” Western Journal of Communication 75, no. 4 (2011): 407-420.
22 Carson W. Byrd, “The Vitality of Social Media for Establishing a Research Agenda on Black Lives and the Movement,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 40, no. 11 (2017): 1872- 1881.
23 Marco T. Bastos, Dan Mercea, and Arthur Charpentier, “Tents, Tweets, and Events: The Interplay Between Ongoing Protests and Social Media,” Journal of Communication 65, (2015): 320-350.
117
24 “Herstory,” Black Lives Matter, accessed October 19, 2017, https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/herstory/.
25 Darius Carr, “Black Lives Matter: An Autoethnographic Account of the Ferguson, Missouri, Civil Unrest of 2014,” Journal for the Study of Peace and Conflict, (2016): 6- 20.
26 Dan, Keating, Cristina Rivero, and Shelly Tan, “A Breakdown of the Arrests in Ferguson,” The Washington Post, August 21, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/ferguson-arrests/.
27 For news on the police force, see Thomas Gibbons-Neff, “Military Veterans See Deeply Flawed Police Response in Ferguson,” The Washington Post, August 14, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2014/08/14/military-veterans-see- deeply-flawed-police-response-in-ferguson/?utm_term=.194f0dd44196. For the DOJ news, see Devlin Barrett, “Justice Department to Investigate Ferguson Police Force,” The Washington Post, September 2, 2014, https://www.wsj.com/articles/ferguson-police-chief-welcomes-justice-department-probe- 1409849928.
28 Find the full report at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/03/04/us/ferguson- police-department-report.html.
29 Wesley Lowery, Carol D. Leonnig, and Mark Berman, “Even Before Michael Brown’s Slaying in Ferguson, Racial Questions Hung Over Police,” The Washington Post, August 13, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/even-before-teen-michael-browns- slaying-in-mo-racial-questions-have-hung-over-police/2014/08/13/78b3c5c6-2307-11e4- 86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html?utm_term=.53cefaa1b0cf.
30 Max Ehrenfreund, “17 Disturbing Statistics from the Federal Report on Ferguson Police,” The Washington Post, March 4, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/04/17-disturbing-statistics- from-the-federal-report-on-ferguson-police/?utm_term=.570f7ebc10f6.
31 Sam Pizzigati, The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph Over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970 (New York, NY: Seven Stories Press, 2012).
32 “How News of #Ferguson Spread Across Twitter: Geotagged Tweets Mentioning Ferguson and Key Terms,” http://srogers.carto.com/viz/4a5eb582-23ed-11e4-bd6b- 0e230854a1cb/embed_map.
118
33 Kerry Flynn, “This Map Shows how Outrage Over the Eric Garner and Michael Brown Decisions Went Global,” December 11, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/11/eric-garner-map-twitter- world_n_6301352.html.
34 Gabriel Stricker, “The 2014 #YearOnTwitter,” Twitter, December 10, 2014, https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/a/2014/the-2014-yearontwitter.html.
35 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, August 11, 2014, 2:12PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/498940139763011584. Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, August 17, 2014, 6:52PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/501184774354915328.
36 Britini Danielle, “The Ferguson Revolution is Happening in the Tweets and via Hacker Group Anonymous,” Take Part, August 14, 2014, http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/08/14/ferguson-revolution-happening-tweets- hacker-group-anonymous.
37 Julia Craven, Mariah Stewart, and Ryan J. Reilly, “The Ferguson Protests Worked,” The Huffington Post, February 18, 2016, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ferguson- protests-municipal-court-reform_us_55a90e4be4b0c5f0322d0cf1.
38 Julius Bailey and David J. Leonard, “Black Lives Matter: Post-Nihilistic Freedom Dreams,” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 5, no. 1/2 (2015) 67-77.
39 “About,” Black Lives Matter, accessed October 19, 2017, https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/.
40 Bruce Bimber, Andrew J. Flanagin, and Cynthia Stohl, “Reconceptualizing Collective Action in the Contemporary Media Environment,” Communication Review 15, no. 4 (2005): 365-388.
41 Kai Wright and Scott Simon, “How Social Media Helped Spread Protest in Michael Brown Shooting,” NPR, August 16, 2014, https://www.npr.org/2014/08/16/340857860/how-social-media-helped-spread-protest-in- michael-brown-shooting.
42 Jelani Cobb, “Ferguson October: A Movement Goes on Offense,” The New Yorker, October 15, 2014, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/ferguson-october.
43 John Reed, “Ferguson October: A Participant’s Report,” Solidarity, October 17, 2014, https://www.solidarity-us.org/site/fergusonoctober.
119
44 John Reed, “Ferguson October.”
45 John Reed, “Ferguson October.”
46 Deen Freelon, Charlton D. McIlwain, and Meredith D. Clark, “Beyond the Hashtags: #Ferguson, #Blkacklivesmatter, and the Online Struggle for Offline Justice, Center for Media & Social Impact, Feburary 2016, http://cmsimpact.org/resource/beyond-hashtags- ferguson-blacklivesmatter-online-struggle-offline-justice/.
47 Deen Freelon, Charlton D. McIlwain, and Meredith D. Clark, “Beyond the Hashtags.”
48 Darius Carr, “Black Lives Matter.”
49 Angela C. Garcia, Alecea I. Standlee, Jennifer Bechkoff, and Yan Cui, “Ethnographic Approaches to the Internet and Computer-Mediated Communication,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 38, no. 1 (2009): 52-84.
50 Theresa L. Petray, “Protest 2.0: Online Interactions and Aboriginal Activists,” Media, Culture & Society 33, no. 6 (2011): 923-940.
51 Theresa L. Petray, “Protest 2.0,” 936.
52 Robert L. Scott and Donald K. Smith, “The Rhetoric of Confrontation,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 55, no. 1 (1969): 1-8.
53 Robert L. Scott and Donald K. Smith, “The Rhetoric of Confrontation,” 2.
54 Leland M. Griffin, “The Rhetoric of Historical Movements,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 38, no. 2 (1952).
55 Leland M. Griffin, “The Rhetoric of Historical Movements,” 187.
56 Franklyn S. Haiman, “The Rhetoric of the Streets.”
57 Franklyn S. Haiman, “The Rhetoric of the Streets,” 102.
58 Dan Keating, Cristina Rivero, and Shelly Tan, “A Breakdown of the Arrests in Ferguson.”
59 Franklyn S. Haiman, “The Rhetoric of the Streets,” 107.
60 Heather Hayes, Violent Subjects and Rhetorical Cartography in the Age of Terror Wars (Basingstroke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
120
61 Robert L. Scott and Donald K. Smith, “The Rhetoric of Confrontation,” 5.
62 Robert L. Scott and Donald K. Smith, “The Rhetoric of Confrontation,” 7.
63 Robert L. Scott and Donald K. Smith, “The Rhetoric of Confrontation,” 8.
64 Robert S. Cathcart, “Movements: Confrontation as Rhetorical Form,” Southern Communication Journal 43, no. 3 (1978): 233-247.
65 Robert S. Cathcart, “New Approaches to the Study of Movements: Defining Movements Rhetorically,” Western Journal of Communication 36, no. 2 (1972): 82-88.
66 James R. Andrews, “Confrontation at Columbia: A Case Study in Coercive Rhetoric,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 55, no. 1 (1969): 9-16.
67 James W. Chesebro, “Rhetorical Strategies of the Radical-Revolutionary,” Today’s Speech 20, no. 1 (1972): 37-48.
68 Brant Short, “Earth First! And the Rhetoric of Moral Confrontation,” Communication Studies 42, no. 2 (1991): 172-188.
Heather Hayes, Violent Subjects and Rhetorical Cartography.
69 Robert L. Ivie, “Enabling Democratic Dissent,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 46-59.
70 Deen Freelon, Charlton D. McIlwain, and Meredith D. Clark, “Beyond the Hashtags.” BLM also adopted its chapter-based structure after the Ferguson Freedom Rides to “go back home and do the work [that was taking place in Ferguson] there.” https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/herstory/
71 “Herstory,” Black Lives Matter, accessed October 19, 2017, https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/herstory/.
72 Deen Freelon, Charlton D. McIlwain, and Meredith D. Clark, “Beyond the Hashtags.”
73 Zachary Roth, “After Ferguson, Some See a Movement Taking Shape,” MSNBC, December 6, 2014, http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/after-ferguson-some-see-movement- taking-shape.
74 “2014 Black Lives Matter Demonstrations,” Elephrame, last updated December 26, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20141226205743/https://www.elephrame.com /textbook/protests.
121
75 Rima Vesely-Flad, Racial Purity and Dangerous Bodies: Moral Pollution, Black Lives, and the Struggle for Justice (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017).
76 Matt Apuzzo, “Department of Justice Sues Ferguson, Which Reversed Course on Agreement,” The New York Times, February 10, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/us/politics/justice-department-sues-ferguson-over- police-deal.html.
77 Jaeah Lee, “Here’s Why the Feds are Investigating Ferguson,” Mother Jones, August 22, 2014, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/department-justice-civil-rights- violations-investigation-ferguson/.
78 Catherine L. Langford and Montené Speight, “#BlackLivesMatter: Epistemic Positioning, Challenges, and Possibilities,” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 5, no. 1/2 (2015) 78-89.
79 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, January 21, 2015, 2:47PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/558033206315057152.
80 Jeff Roberson, “Ferguson Protestors Stage ‘Die-In’ at Missouri Mall,” NBC News, November 29, 2014, https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/michael-brown- shooting/ferguson-protesters-stage-die-in-missouri-mall-n258126.
81 Russell Rickford, “Black Lives Matter: Toward a Modern Practice of Mass Struggle,” New Labor Forum 25, no. 1 (2015) 34-42.
82 Robert S. Cathcart, “Movements: Confrontation as Rhetorical Form,” 245-246.
83 Robert L. Scott and Donald K. Smith, “The Rhetoric of Confrontation,” 6.
84 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, December 4, 2016, 7:55PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/805621480667095041.
85 Catherine L. Langford and Montené Speight, “#BlackLivesMatter.”
86 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, August 29, 2014, 10:56PM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/505594777757556736.
87 Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, August 30, 2014, 9:14AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/505750303866486784.
88 Follow the links within the tweets to see the images.
122
Quik Trip: Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, August 30, 2014, 8:57AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/505746225199452160. Police station gathering: Black Lives Matter, Twitter Post, August 30, 2014, 11:36AM, https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/505786226335817728.
89 Robert L. Scott and Donald K. Smith, “The Rhetoric of Confrontation,” 6.
90 Robert L. Scott and Donald K. Smith, “The Rhetoric of Confrontation,” 6.
91 Robert L. Scott and Donald K. Smith, “The Rhetoric of Confrontation,” 8.
92 Christine Byers, “Darren Wilson Resigns from Ferguson Police Department,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 30, 2014, http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and- courts/article_a8cfa6e7-408c-520c-b9d2-de2a75e8983d.html.
93 Yannis Theocharis, Will Lowe, Jan W. van Deth, and Gema Garcia-Albacete, “Using Twitter to Mobilize Protest Action: Online Mobilization Patterns and Action Repertoires in the Occupy Wall Street, Indignados, and Aganaktismenoi Movements,” Information, Communication & Society 18, no. 2 (2015): 202-220.
94 Barbra Pini, Kerry Brown, and Josephine Previte, “Politics and Identity in Cyberspace,” Information, Communication & Society 7, no. 2 (2004): 167-184.
95 For more on slactivism, see Evgeny Morozov, “The Brave New World of Slacktivism,” Foreign Policy, May 19, 2009, http://foreignpolicy.com/2009/05/19/the-brave-new- world-of-slacktivism/.
96 Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope.
97 Eva Anduiza, Camilo Cristancho, and José M. Sabucedo, “Mobilization through Online Social Networks.”
98 Marco T. Bastos, Dan Mercea, and Arthur Charpentier, “Tents, Tweets, and Events.”
Conclusion
Toward a Future of Social Movement Digital Activism
Digital technologies have changed the ways social movements engage in activism. The creation and evolution of the Internet has allowed movements to circulate information, organize, and recruit new members quickly and with little financial cost.
Twitter and its hashtag network initiate conversations that millions can join, while social media generally offers a platform for building understanding. The interconnected relationship of online posts and offline events can be mutually beneficial in mobilization efforts while allowing movements to craft and frame their own narratives. As this thesis has demonstrated, the rhetorical strategies used by social movements have evolved with the progression of technology.
I have argued digital presence is good for contemporary social movements. My first chapter demonstrated that a website can house important movement information while serving to promote the movement’s brand. Updating such a website might help revitalize a movement if it loses momentum or becomes stagnant. Chapter 2 highlighted the ability of the Twitter network to use rhetorical strategies in order to shift user perceptions and understandings of a movement. Finally, the third chapter showcased the relationship between online and offline activism and found the two spaces were mutually beneficial for one another. This chapter also found offline demonstrations were still a needed component for change.
The bulk of this thesis examines digital activism in the early portion of this decade, yet there is a strong likelihood social movements will continue to make rhetorical advances as technology develops in the future. I would like to devote the remainder of this brief conclusion to theorizing how social movements may continue to evolve alongside technology, as well as what digital activism will look like in the years to come.
While it is impossible to perfectly predict the future, theorizing technological transformation can help us grasp the transformation of “human artifacts and practices, as well as institutional restructuring” that can result from digital advances.1 Having insight into the future can also help a social movement structure its digital practices to ensure its activist activities are effective and enduring.
Building a Movement Network
Activism in the future will likely address the constraints that social movements face today. There is currently conflict between old approaches to activism and new forms of protest that are mediated online.2 For instance, as technologies advance and more and more organizations move online, digital spaces may become fragmented. Movements must work to gain attention from Internet users as they attempt to recruit new members that may experience information overload. Therefore, it becomes increasingly important for a social movement to establish themselves through “communicating vison, mission, values, and results cleverly, coherently, and quickly across old and new media.”3 One way to do so is through creating a networked structure within the movement’s larger ecology. Thinking in terms of networks, as I have done with my analysis of the Black
125 Lives Matter Global Network (BLM), allows relationships to form between interconnected ideas so that the whole may be seen alongside its parts.
A social movement with a networked structure offers many point of entry for potential members. As I described in Chapters 1 and 2, a network allows followers to navigate the movement’s digital pages. Someone interested in a movement could visit the movement’s website and easily click between pages describing the organization and information about upcoming events. A Twitter user can explore the hashtag network and read more deeply about subjects that interest them. A network combines a multitude of ideas, so people interested in the movement are likely to find a relatable topic within the larger movement structure. Chapter 3 suggests a movement’s ecology includes the offline as a network, thus broadening the systems a movement may occupy. Further, the accessibility of information within a network makes the organizing and mobilizing processes for offline demonstrations simpler.
Of course, having multiple points of entry leaves a movement open for attack.
Accessibility of information for movement members is helpful, but it also makes it easier for opponents to learn when and where movement events are taking place. Those against the movement may become violent toward movement members.4 People who disagree with a movement can even attack the organization and its ideals in online spaces. The feasibility of the Internet is not one-sided.5 Further, social media become a platform for false information, as occurred with the fake BLM Facebook page or the targeted ad purchased by Russia.6 Scholars who study social movements on a global scale have long been concerned with the potential for governmental censorship of digital content.7
Recently, governmental monitoring has become an open concern in the U.S. as well.8 The
126 Internet is not only an advantageous tool, but a platform that should be used with caution.
There may be a few ways to reduce the potentially negative impacts of the Internet on a movement. One is to strengthen the movement itself.
Networks do not only exist within individual social movements, but form between them as well. These networks can emerge when two or more social movements share a similar view on a particular topic. The movements may join forces in an act of coalition building to create a larger network with even more potential for mobilization. Groups may combine resources, identify common goals, and work collectively to mitigate large, systemic problems. In one approximation, these vast networks might “become powerful tools to help visualize humankind’s vast social body and give the groups dedicated to its improvement a means of identifying the most pressing…challenges we face as a species, as well as a more intelligent allocation of resources, more effective coordination, and more targeted treatment.”9 This estimation may be overly optimistic, but it is not inaccurate to presume digital spaces will operate as platforms for the formation of alliances. If movements work together, they may also be able to avoid the competition that occurs when users face an overabundance of information. Instead, a network of movements might motivate people to work toward a common good.10
BLM and the Future of Digital Activism
BLM falls into a new category of social movements that are constituted by a networked structure. 11 BLM does not rely on one leader. They do not adhere to strict dichotomies of online and offline, or public and private, as they participate in both virtual
127 and in person forms of protest as they openly share instances of oppression. Instead,
BLM forms an ecology that encompasses both digital activism and the rhetoric of the streets. The organization adapts its structure to fit the technological systems in which it operates while still fighting against socio-cultural injustices. BLM embraces digital activism. The network is not the end result of activism transitioning online, but it does provide an insightful step to digital evolution.
Due to their networked structures, social movements of the future will likely continue focus on more than one issue.12 BLM is already doing so. As Chapter 2 discusses, BLM protests police violence, racial discrimination in the workforce, gender oppression and the negative profiling of transgender women, as well as many other forms of racialized disparities. Focus on multiple issues is good, as it allows a movement to explore various ramifications of social issues while engaging in discussion with others.
Further, a movement engaged in activism on a variety of fronts is more likely to find areas of common interest with others. Multiple issues could pose problems in that they might skew focus from one another or require more energy than a single issue. However, working toward several goals can also aid in building coalitions. This helps create networks of interconnected movements working toward a shared societal improvement.
Again, BLM is already engaged in this process.
BLM does not limit digital activism to their own organization. Instead, they form strategic alliances with similar groups working toward similar social change.13 These partners, who also fight against prejudice based on race, aid in the collective struggle for a less oppressive society. The networking of groups brings new meaning to “collective action.” Instead of two or more people bringing problems to the attention of the public,
128 the future of collective action via networked movements is a strong force with the potential for more members than any movement has seen before.14
The future of digital activism and social movements is full of possibility and opportunity. However, digital practices must become continuously effective to ensure the success of digital activism. In other words, “the success of digital activism lies in creating sustainable means for the continual improvement of [its] practice.”15 Currently, digital activism relies on past strategies implemented for a present movement. While it is easy to replicate certain activist tactics, it is difficult to build generalizable strategic theories as each movement is situated in different contexts with different end goals. Creating generally applicable activism tactics, however, may be more possible if movements do form interconnected networks.
The future of digital activism is interconnected groups working toward a unified cause. According to Mary Joyce, “perhaps the greatest motivator for this kind of collaborative creation would be a shared vision of what is possible if the great potential of digital activism is realized,” namely the “potentially transformative power of ubiquitous and dense linkages between citizens across the world.” After all, the future is not random happenstance. The future is created from current actions. Social movements ought to work collectively to build their idealized world. Together, we have the power to create the world in which we want to live.
129
Notes
1 Douglas Kellner, “New Technologies: Technocities and the Prospects for Democratization,” in Technocites, eds. John Downey and Jim McGuigan (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999).
2 Sem Devillart and Brian Waniewski, “The Future of Advocacy in a Networked Age,” in Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change, ed. Mary Joyce (New York, NY: International Debate Education Association, 2010), 198-208.
3 Sem Devillart and Brian Waniewski, “The Future of Advocacy in a Networked Age.”
4 Tess Owen, “Car Slams into Black Lives Matter Protestors,” Vice, August 12, 2017, https://news.vice.com/en_ca/article/434b9j/armed-white-supremacists-march-in- charlottesville-state-of-emergency-declared/.
5 Ryan J. Gallagher, Andrew J. Reagan, Christopher M. Danforth, and Peter S. Dodds, “Divergent Discourse Between Protests and Counter-Protests: #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter,” PLoS One 13, no. 4 (2018): 1-23.
6 For the Facebok page, see Tiffany Hsu and Sheera Frenkel, “Facebook Removes Popular Black Lives Matter Page for Being a Fake,” The New York Times, April 10, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/business/facebook-black-lives-matter.html. For the Facebook ad, see Dylan Byers, “Russian-Bought Black Lives Matter Ad on Facebook Targeted Baltimore and Ferguson,” CNN, September 28, 2017, http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/27/media/facebook-black-lives-matter- targeting/index.html.
7 Philip N. Howard, Sheetal D. Agarwal, and Muzammil M. Hussain, “When Do States Disconnect Their Digital Networks? Regime Responses to the Political Uses of Social Media,” The Communication Review 14, (2011): 216-232.
8 Sweta Vohra, “Documents Show US Monitoring of Black Lives Matter,” Al Jazeera, November 28, 2017, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/documents-show- monitoring-black-lives-matter-171128110538134.html.
9 Sem Devillart and Brian Waniewski, “The Future of Advocacy in a Networked Age,” 207.
10 It is erroneous to assume movements working together will result in a utopic society. Online coalitions will likely have in-fighting, and it is possible a small movement may be subsumed by a larger one. Working together necessitates compromise. My argument here is not that joint movements will be simple or easy; rather, I think coalition building can
130 aid in creating social change. If movements with shared interests join forces, they have more potential for power. If an alliance goes well, that power can be used for social good.
11 Victoria Carty, “New Information Communication Technologies and Grassroots Mobilization,” Information, Communication & Society 13, no. 2 (2010): 155-173.
12 Sem Devillart and Brian Waniewski, “The Future of Advocacy in a Networked Age,” 207.
13 “Partners,” Black Lives Matter, accessed October 17, 2017, https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/partners/.
14 Bruce Bimber, Andrew J. Flanagin, and Cynthia Stohl, “Reconceptualizing Collective Action in the Contemporary Media Environment,” Communication Review 15, no. 4 (2005): 365-388.
15 Mary Joyce, “Conclusion: Building the Future of Digital Activism,” in Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change, ed. Mary Joyce (New York, NY: International Debate Education Association, 2010), 210-216.
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