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Roles of Social Media in the Black Lives Matter Movement During COVID-19

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Roles of Social Media in the Black Lives Matter Movement During COVID-19 Grand Valley State University ScholarWorks@GVSU Honors Projects Undergraduate Research and Creative Practice 4-2021 Roles of Social Media in the Black Lives Matter Movement During COVID-19 Reilly E. Olson Grand Valley State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/honorsprojects Part of the Politics and Social Change Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Social Justice Commons, and the Social Media Commons ScholarWorks Citation Olson, Reilly E., "Roles of Social Media in the Black Lives Matter Movement During COVID-19" (2021). Honors Projects. 838. https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/honorsprojects/838 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Undergraduate Research and Creative Practice at ScholarWorks@GVSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Projects by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@GVSU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ROLES OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT DURING COVID-19 Reilly E. Olson Frederik Meijer Honors College Honors Thesis Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 2 Review of Literature ................................................................................................................... 5 Critical Race Theory ................................................................................................................ 8 Social media and BLM ............................................................................................................ 8 Social media during COVID-19 ............................................................................................. 11 Methodology ................................................................................................................................ 13 Data Analysis ................................................................................................................................ 14 Voting and Political Statements ........................................................................................... 15 Calls to Action ...................................................................................................................... 17 Victims of Police Brutality and Murder ................................................................................ 19 African Americans in History ................................................................................................ 19 Support of Other Causes ...................................................................................................... 20 Community Outreach ........................................................................................................... 21 BLM Social Media During COVID-19 ..................................................................................... 21 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 24 References ................................................................................................................................... 27 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. People applaud from their apartments in support of medical staff in Spain [Photograph]; (Fernandez M., 2020) .............................................................................................. 7 Figure 2. George Floyd’s image projected on the Robert E. Lee Monument in Richmond, Virginia, on June 18, 2020 [Photograph]; (Katopodis T., 2020) ...................................................... 7 Figure 3. Instagram Post [Anonymous]. (2020, November 1). [Voting Information]. ................. 16 Figure 4Instagram Post [Anonymous]. (2021, January,13). [Call for Trump’s Impeachment]. .... 17 Figure 5. Instagram Post [Anonymous]. (202, April 11). [Daunte Wright Protest Mobilization] 18 Figure 6. Instagram Post [Anonymous]. (2020, September 23). [Breonna Taylor Protest Mobilization]. ............................................................................................................................... 19 Figure 7. Instagram Post [Anonymous]. (2020, July 22). [BLM Intersectionality]. ....................... 20 Figure 8. Instagram Post [Anonymous]. (2021, April 10). [Stop Asian Hate Support] .................. 21 Figure 9. Instagram post [Anonymous]. (2021, November 21). [COVID Safe Car Caravan Event]. ..................................................................................................................................................... 22 Figure 10. Instagram post [Anonymous]. (2021, February 5). [COVID Vaccinations for People with Disabilities]. .......................................................................................................................... 23 Figure 11. Instagram post [Anonymous]. (2021, April 20). [Defund the Police]. ......................... 26 Figure 12. Instagram post [Anonymous]. (2021, April 20). [Official Statement]. ......................... 26 1 Introduction By definition social movements reflect unique times in history. Just as societal issues shape social movements, these movements also shape the history of the times that spur them on. To fully understand a social movement’s mobilization strategies and goals, one must understand the specific point in history during which they take place (Gerbaudo, 2020). The Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter (BLM) movements are no exception. To fully grasp the implications of a movement the social and political climate that induce them must be understood. Predecessors of the BLM movement like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Civil Rights movement resulted in exponential increases in participation of minorities in labor unions and in grassroots mobilization, respectively. Most people assume the Civil Rights era began in the mid 1954 with the Brown v. Board of Education supreme court case. However, the civil rights movement was set into motion over a decade before then with the migration of millions of African Americans from rural Southern farming communities into larger industrial areas in the North and West. Black voters in northern states doubled, membership in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People increased exponentially, and half a million black workers joined unions all in an effort to change race relations and to legitimize the struggles faced by African Americans in America (Korstad & Lichtenstein, 1988). For years scholars have studied this era and tried to categorize its organization, goals, and origins. In the 1960s and 1970s academia viewed the Civil Rights movement as a primarily political one, led by international activists, like Martin Luther King Jr., in national hubs for activism including Washington DC and Atlanta, Georgia. Initially, the movement’s main goal 2 was categorized as reaching political and judicial change. The frame of the era was shifted by scholars in the 1970s and 1980s who noted that protests, marches, and sit-ins were not only used to secure political change, but also for social victories and coalition building in black communities led by grassroots organizations. More recently, academics have been trying to incorporate the local, national, political, and social components of the movement into a newer more fully encompassing model (Lawson, 1991). This more intersectional and encompassing model should also be used when framing and studying the BLM movement, a modern descendent of both the NAACP and Civil Rights movement. From its inception, BLM has utilized social media as an important tool. In 2013, following the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin, #BlackLivesMatter went viral across multiple social media platforms and would become the catalyst for an entire movement. The hashtag came to life offline in 2014 as supporters took it to the streets during the riots and protests in Ferguson, Missouri following the murder of another black man, Michael Brown Jr., by police (Rickford, 2016). The use of #BlackLivesMatter on social media posts allows for personalized and far-reaching public discourse. The accessibility of digital social platforms allows for large and diverse groups to come together to share information, personal experiences, and to mobilize under their cause (Mundt et al., 2018). The advantages of social media for these reasons became even more vital to the movement during the 2019-2020 COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 was first seen in Wuhan, China in late December of 2019, by March of 2020 the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic as the cases and death toll continued to rise worldwide (Kaya, 2020). The global COVID-19 health crisis halted life as we knew it, but social injustice, police brutality, and systemic racism showed no signs of stopping. While the 3 BLM movement predates COVID-19, the movement’s values were brought to the forefront due to clear disparities in the effect COVID-19 had on people of minority groups (Gerbaudo, 2020). Black Americans make up a disproportionately greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths compared to other Americans (Millett et al., 2020). This stems from multiple factors that left African Americans more vulnerable to the pandemic. Black Americans are over-represented in transportation and service industry jobs, meaning many of them were “essential workers” and had more exposure to COVID-19. Further, areas with higher concentrations
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