DOCSLIB.ORG

Related Social Movements Through an Analysis of #Blacklivesmatter

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Related Social Movements Through an Analysis of #Blacklivesmatter ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: AN EXPLORATION OF PUBLIC HEALTH WORKER ENGAGEMENT WITH HEALTH- RELATED SOCIAL MOVEMENTS THROUGH AN ANALYSIS OF #BLACKLIVESMATTER Abigail Runa Bickford, Doctor of Philosophy, 2019 Dissertation directed by: Professor Robert S. Gold, Department of Behavioral and Community Health Social movements fight for social justice by protesting systemic social inequities. The field of public health aims to eliminate these same disparities as they relate to health. Many social movements are not currently viewed as health social movements despite these movements addressing health disparities by challenging existing inequities related to social determinants of health. One example is the Black Lives Matter movement which has gained considerable attention in its efforts to address systemic racism, a known determinant of health. While the Black Lives Matter movement has evoked many academic and popular responses, there has been a lack of focus on this movement by the public health workforce. Therefore this work uses the Black Lives Matter movement as an example of a health-related social movement warranting engagement from the public health workforce. This study utilizes a novel approach to the use of social media data in the public health field. The first part of this work examines tweets containing #BlackLivesMatter and compares the online discourse to the stated mission and principles outlined by the leaders of the Black Lives Matter organization. An analysis of the Twitter data was then presented in a Delphi study conducted with a panel of experts in public health. Delphi participants were tasked with developing ideas on how the public health workforce could best apply the information collected from #BlackLivesMatter Twitter data to aid in addressing the health-related issues highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement. More broadly, participants also generated ideas about what can be done to encourage the public health workforce to systematically engage with health-related social movements. Finally, one-on-one interviews were conducted with self-identified social activists. These activists were asked about their participation in social movements, their use of social media regarding their advocacy work, and for ideas about how the public health workforce could engage with their causes. Findings from each study are discussed along with recommendations for future work aimed at developing relationships between public health workers and social movements. AN EXPLORATION OF PUBLIC HEALTH WORKER ENGAGEMENT WITH HEALTH-RELATED SOCIAL MOVEMENTS THROUGH AN ANALYSIS OF #BLACKLIVESMATTER by Abigail Runa Bickford Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2019 Advisory Committee: Professor Robert S. Gold, Chair Associate Professor Sharon M. Desmond Associate Professor Craig S. Fryer Associate Professor Jennifer Golbeck Associate Professor Donna E. Howard Associate Professor Sacoby Wilson © Copyright by Abigail Runa Bickford 2019 Dedication I dedicate this work to my former middle school students at Baltimore IT Academy. You opened my eyes to the impact of systemic racism on your lives and instilled in me a drive to fight for social justice. I would also like to thank my family for supporting me throughout my time in graduate school. To the strong women in my family: you paved the way for me to get here. Thank you for making this long road easier to travel. ii Acknowledgements Dr. Robert Gold, for introducing me to the field of health informatics and inspiring and encouraging me to take the path less traveled Dr. Jennifer Golbeck, for enlightening me on the potential of social media data analytics Dr. Sharon Desmond, for showing me the value of community engagement while providing unending support and editing expertise Dr. Craig Fryer, for supplying me with skills to develop my researcher reflexivity Dr. Donna Howard, for pushing me to continually improve my work Dr. Sacoby Wilson, for leading as an example by working for social justice Dr. Robert Feldman, for providing mentorship and advice The Maryland Center for Health Equity, for allowing me to attend the “Building Trust in Minority Communities” workshop in summer 2018 Cody Buntain, Sean Mussenden, Pal Doshi, Shiyun Chen, Tracy Zeeger, Sydney Vaile, Rebecca L Annis, Pushkar Deshpande, Jency Francis, Ruchira Kapoor, Gwen Hambright, Himanshu Sawant, Etienne Nadeau, Shivam Saith, Naveen Krishnamurthi, Xinyun Zhang, Kevin Carolina, and Laudan Kalantary for assisting with Twitter data coding iii Table of Contents Dedication ..................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ............................................................................................................. viii List of Figures .............................................................................................................. ix List of Appendices ........................................................................................................ x Chapter 1: Purpose of Study ......................................................................................... 1 Background ............................................................................................................... 1 Statement of the Problem .......................................................................................... 5 Research Questions ................................................................................................... 8 Significance............................................................................................................... 8 Purpose .................................................................................................................... 10 Definition of Terms................................................................................................. 12 Chapter 2: Review of the Literature ............................................................................ 14 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 14 The Black Lives Matter Movement ........................................................................ 15 Black Lives Matter as a Health-Related Social Movement .................................... 17 Other Health-related Social Movements ................................................................. 22 Social Movements and Social Media ...................................................................... 27 Social Media Data and Public Health ..................................................................... 30 Twitter Data Analytics and Available Tools .......................................................... 33 The Delphi Technique............................................................................................. 36 Individual Interviews .............................................................................................. 38 Guiding Theoretical Frameworks ........................................................................... 40 Critical Race Theory and Public Health Critical Race Praxis ............................ 40 Social Ecological Model ..................................................................................... 44 New Social Movement Theory ........................................................................... 46 Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) ........................................... 48 iv Chapter 3: STUDY 1: An Exploratory Study of #BlackLivesMatter Twitter Data: Determining Support for the Movement and Content Alignment with Black Lives Matter Organization Principles ................................................................................... 50 Abstract ................................................................................................................... 50 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 51 Social Media and Social Movements .................................................................. 51 Social Media Data and Public Health ................................................................. 54 Twitter Data Analytics and Available Tools ...................................................... 56 Methods................................................................................................................... 56 Data Collection: #BlackLivesMatter Tweet Sample .......................................... 57 Tweet Measures and Analysis Procedures .......................................................... 58 Inter-rater Reliability .......................................................................................... 61 Additional Analyses ............................................................................................ 62 Results ..................................................................................................................... 64 Descriptive Analysis ........................................................................................... 64 Human-coded Content
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Examination of the Use of Online and Offline Networks by Housing Social Movement Organizations
    University of Kentucky UKnowledge Theses and Dissertations--Sociology Sociology 2013 Examination of the Use of Online and Offline Networksy b Housing Social Movement Organizations Jessica N. Kropczynski University of Kentucky, [email protected] Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Kropczynski, Jessica N., "Examination of the Use of Online and Offline Networksy b Housing Social Movement Organizations" (2013). Theses and Dissertations--Sociology. 11. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/sociology_etds/11 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Sociology at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations--Sociology by an authorized administrator of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STUDENT AGREEMENT: I represent that my thesis or dissertation and abstract are my original work. Proper attribution has been given to all outside sources. I understand that I am solely responsible for obtaining any needed copyright permissions. I have obtained and attached hereto needed written permission statements(s) from the owner(s) of each third-party copyrighted matter to be included in my work, allowing electronic distribution (if such use is not permitted by the fair use doctrine). I hereby grant to The University of Kentucky and its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible my work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I agree that the document mentioned above may be made available immediately for worldwide access unless a preapproved embargo applies.
    [Show full text]
  • Media, Protest and Resistance in Authoritarian Contexts Media, Protest and Resistance in Authoritarian Contexts
    APSA 2020 WORKING CONFERENCE PAPER Hashemi – Media, Protest and Resistance in Authoritarian Contexts Media, Protest and Resistance in Authoritarian Contexts Layla M. Hashemi, Ph.D. Public Policy George Mason University, 2020 [email protected] laymay.com Abstract Information communication technologies (ICTs) facilitate transnational connection, coordination and collaboration, which are essential for new social movements. At the same time, issues of access and censorship hinder social movement use of social media for mobilization. This paper examines how internet technology is used by social movements to discuss issues of identity, dignity and justice and to contest gender-based discriminatory laws. Through subtle everyday acts of protests, women contest state narratives by documenting their presence in both physical and virtual public spaces. Iranian women practice the art of presence, demonstrating social media activism’s ability to circumvent censorship and facilitate public discourse regarding controversial issues under repressive contexts. This study collects and analyzes data from Twitter and other social networking platforms to investigate the evolution of digital campaigns and relates these cases to the long-standing tradition of Iranian women’s voices with a focus on the critical role of the camera and user generated content in art and daily life. Keywords: social movements; social media; internet studies; information communication technology; computational social science; Iran; gender; human rights DRAFT WORKING PAPER Prepared for the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 2020 1 “Where there is power there is resistance” - Michel Foucault Information communication technologies (ICTs) facilitate transnational connection, coordination and collaboration, which are essential for new social movements. At the same time, issues of access and censorship hinder social movement use of social media for mobilization.
    [Show full text]
  • Slacktivists Or Activists?: Identity Work in the Virtual Disability March
    Slacktivists or Activists?: Identity Work in the Virtual Disability March Hanlin Li 1, 2 , Disha Bora 1 , Sagar Salvi 1 , Erin Brady 1 1 IUPUI, Indianapolis, USA, 2 Northwestern University, Evanston, USA [email protected], {dishbora, salvis, brady}@iupui.edu ABSTRACT Protests are important social forms of activism, but can be inaccessible to people with disabilities. Online activism, like the 2017 Disability March, has provided alternative venues for involvement in accessible protesting and social movements. In this study, we use identity theory as a lens to understand why and how disabled activists engaged in an online movement, and its impact on their self-concepts. We interviewed 18 disabled activists about their experiences with online protesting during the Disability March. Respondents’ identities (as both disabled individuals and as activists) led them to organize or join the March, evolved alongside the group’s actions, and were reprioritized or Figure 1: A poster held at an in-person march recognizing strained as a result of their involvement. Our findings people with disabilities who could not attend. Posted on describe the values and limitations of this activism to our Facebook; used with permission. respondents, highlight the tensions they perceived about discrimination against people with disabilities when they their activist identities, and present opportunities to support apply for or use federal services. further accessibility and identity changes by integrating technology into their activist experiences. However, in-person activism remains inaccessible for many people with disabilities. Activities such as marches, rallies, Author Keywords and town hall meetings often introduce environmental, Social media; activism; accessibility; identity theory.
    [Show full text]
  • Event-Driven Analysis of Crowd Dynamics in the Black Lives Matter Online Social Movement Hao Peng Ceren Budak Daniel M
    Event-Driven Analysis of Crowd Dynamics in the Black Lives Matter Online Social Movement Hao Peng Ceren Budak Daniel M. Romero University of Michigan University of Michigan University of Michigan [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT Previous research studied various OSMs such as the 2010 Arab Online social movements (OSMs) play a key role in promoting Spring [28], the 2011 Egyptian Revolution [41, 50], the 2011 Occupy democracy in modern society. Most online activism is largely driven Wall Street [9, 20], through the lens of social media, mainly Twit- by critical offline events. Among many studies investigating collec- ter [2, 3, 22, 32, 40]. Topics they investigated range from participant tive behavior in OSMs, few has explored the interaction between motivation [44], movement framing [24, 43], informal learning [20], crowd dynamics and their offline context. Here, focusing on the to information diffusion [22, 28, 41]. There are also studies focus- Black Lives Matter OSM and utilizing an event-driven approach ing on crowd behavior in OSMs. Subjects they examined include on a dataset of 36 million tweets and thousands of offline events, recruitment process [23], user engagement [6, 9, 40], and online we study how different types of offline events—police violence and interactions [34], as well as the temporal evolution of crowd be- heightened protests—influence crowd behavior over time. We find havior [2, 4, 9, 11, 48]. Although these studies focus on different that police violence events and protests play important roles in the OSMs that were driven by very different political agendas, most of recruitment process.
    [Show full text]
  • Progressive Social Movements and the Internet - Oxford Reference
    2/12/2020 Progressive Social Movements and the Internet - Oxford Reference The Oxford Encyclopedia of Communication and Critical Cultural Studies Edited by Dana L. Cloud Publisher: Oxford University Press Print Publication Date: 2019 Print ISBN-13: 9780190459611 Published online: 2019 Current Online Version: 2019 eISBN: 9780190459635 Progressive Social Movements and the Internet Social Movements in Communication Studies Communication scholars have offered significant insight and provocation to the study of social movements. The praxis that results from the application of critical theory to the study of communication and social change allows scholars to document the role of rhetoric, symbols, media, and other communicative tools in social control, stagnation, protest, and revolution (Bowers, Ochs, Jensen, & Schulz, 2009). Early scholars of critical theory including Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno of the Frankfurt School highlighted the way economic and political elites control and limit the terms of debate in the public sphere through control of language and media (Boikos, Moutsoulas, & Tsekeris, 2014; Durham & Kellner, 2009). These scholars observed that communication plays a central role in the cultural and political hegemony that prevents the masses from collectively overthrowing those in power. Through dominant communication and the resulting naturalization of dominant ideologies, the masses consent to social hierarchies and inequalities. While this work draws heavily from Karl Marx’s 19th-century observations of class exploitation and Antonio Gramsci’s subsequent theorizations of cultural hegemony, they continue to be applied by communication scholars to understand a range of questions related to power and inequality in late-capitalist societies. Critical communication scholars also highlight the potentials of political resistance made possible through communication and developed analytical frameworks for theorizing power and counterpower.
    [Show full text]
  • The Role of Social Media During Social Movements – Observations from the #Metoo Debate on Twitter
    Proceedings of the 53rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences | 2020 The Role of Social Media during Social Movements – Observations from the #metoo Debate on Twitter Felix Brünker Magdalena Wischnewski Milad Mirbabaie Judith Meinert University of Duisburg-Essen University of Duisburg-Essen University of Duisburg-Essen University of Duisburg-Essen [email protected] magdalena.wischnewski@ [email protected] [email protected] uni-due.de Abstract and the role of specific actors within these movements [38]. However, these pieces have so far not been put In recent years, the development of information together. Less is known about the specific content that communication technologies (ICT) such as social is shared by specific user groups. Yet, to broaden the media changed the way people communicate and understanding of social movements on social media, it engage in social movements. While conventional is crucial to understand the dynamics of movements were fought in the streets, social media communication among distinct groups participating in enabled movements to take place online. In this paper, a social movement on social media. we aim to investigate the role of social media during We, therefore, examined one recent example of social movements which evolve online. Specifically, we such a social movement, that is the #metoo movement. examined Twitter communication during the #metoo We investigated which kinds of user roles were debate. To this end, we applied methods from social involved in sharing and publishing tweets related to the network analysis to identify influential users hashtag #metoo during the time from September 30, to participating during the debate.
    [Show full text]
  • The Structure of Online Activism
    The Structure of Online Activism Kevin Lewis,a Kurt Gray,b Jens Meierhenrichc a) University of California, San Diego; b) University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; c) London School of Economics and Political Science Abstract: Despite the tremendous amount of attention that has been paid to the internet as a tool for civic engagement, we still have little idea how “active” is the average online activist or how social networks matter in facilitating electronic protest. In this paper, we use complete records on the donation and recruitment activity of 1.2 million members of the Save Darfur “Cause” on Facebook to provide a detailed first look at a massive online social movement. While both donation and recruitment behavior are socially patterned, the vast majority of Cause members recruited no one else into the Cause and contributed no money to it — suggesting that in the case of the Save Darfur campaign, Facebook conjured an illusion of activism rather than facilitating the real thing. Keywords: social networks; social movements; social media; online activism; Facebook; Save Darfur Editor(s): Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule; Received: September 16, 2013; Accepted: October 16, 2013; Published: February 18, 2014 Citation: Lewis, Kevin, Kurt Gray, and Jens Meierhenrich. 2014. “The Structure of Online Activism.” Sociological Science 1: 1-9. DOI: 10.15195/v1.a1 Copyright: c 2014 Lewis, Gray, and Meierhenrich. This open-access article has been published and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License, which allows unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction, in any form, as long as the original author and source have been credited. ocial media have changed the world.
    [Show full text]
  • Evidence from the Adoption of Equal-Sign Profile Pictures
    Experiencing Social Media CSCW 2015, March 14-18, 2015, Vancouver, BC, Canada The Diffusion of Support in an Online Social Movement: Evidence from the Adoption of Equal-Sign Profile Pictures Bogdan State Lada Adamic [email protected] [email protected] Facebook Inc. 1 Hacker Way Menlo Park, CA, U.S. ABSTRACT It is easy to see why social proof obtained from multiple In March of 2013, 3 million Facebook users changed sources would be necessary for many individuals to show their profile picture to one of an equals sign to express their support for a cause they believe in. Engaging in a support of same-sex marriage. We demonstrate that this behavior that challenges the status quo carries inherent risks, action shows complex diffusion characteristics congru- from the minute – a quarrel with one’s otherwise-thinking ent with threshold models, with most users observing friends – to the life-threatening, as experienced by activists several of their friends changing their profile picture be- in a political movement challenging a repressive regime. fore taking the action themselves. While the number of Additionally, action requires participants to bear the costs of friends played a role in the adoption dynamics, so did de- mobilization [26], ranging from the time spent filling out a mographic characteristics and the general propensity of petition to the money spent on monetary donations to one’s the individual to change their profile picture. We show favorite campaigns to the lost wages due to strike activity. via simulation that the adoption curve is consistent with a heterogeneous-threshold model, in which the proba- We investigate here a case where both the risks and the bility of adoption depends on both the number of friends costs associated with activism were low but nonetheless and the susceptibility of the individual.
    [Show full text]
  • The Structure of Online Activism
    Kevin Lewis, Kurt Gray and Jens Meierhenrich The structure of online activism Article (Published version) (Refereed) Original citation: Lewis, Kevin, Gray, Kurt and Meierhenrich, Jens (2014) The structure of online activism. Sociological Science, 1. pp. 1-9. ISSN 2330-6696 DOI: 10.15195/v1.a1 © 2014 The Authors, Sociological Science This open-access article has been published and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License, which allows unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction, in any form, as long as the original author and source have been credited. This version available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/55821/ Available in LSE Research Online: February 2014 LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website. The Structure of Online Activism Kevin Lewis,a Kurt Gray,b Jens Meierhenrichc a) University of California, San Diego; b) University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; c) London School of Economics and Political Science Abstract: Despite the tremendous amount of attention that has been paid to the internet as a tool for civic engagement, we still have little idea how “active” is the average online activist or how social networks matter in facilitating electronic protest.
    [Show full text]
  • What Democracy Looks Like: How Ideology, Hierarchy and Inequality Shape Digital Activism
    UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title This is (Not) What Democracy Looks Like: How Ideology, Hierarchy and Inequality Shape Digital Activism Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/80z6106p Author Schradie, Jennifer Anne Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California This is (Not) What Democracy Looks Like: How Ideology, Hierarchy and Inequality Shape Digital Activism By Jennifer Anne Schradie A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology and the Designated Emphasis in New Media in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Kim Voss, Chair Professor Claude Fischer Professor Abigail DeKosnik Fall 2014 Abstract This is (Not) What Democracy Looks Like: How Ideology, Hierarchy and Inequality Shape Digital Activism by Jennifer Anne Schradie Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology University of California, Berkeley Professor Kim Voss, Chair This dissertation addresses longstanding sociological questions about organizational democracy in the context of contemporary advances in digital technology. To date, most of the scholarship on digital activism suggests that the Internet enables social movements to be less hierarchical, more participatory, and more egalitarian. However, such claims are weakened by researchers’ tendency to study only high levels of digital activism, rather than investigating digital practices across a range of organizations with differing levels of digital engagement. In contrast, I explore political, labor and social movement organizations across an entire political field. My units of analysis are the 34 groups in North Carolina active on both sides of a political issue: public employee collective bargaining rights.
    [Show full text]
  • From Slacktivism to Activism: Exploring the Increase of Youth Participation in Online Social Movements Through Twitter. Abstract
    From slacktivism to activism: exploring the increase of youth participation in online social movements through Twitter. Abstract The emergence of social media platforms has changed the way that young people advocate for a social cause. Slacktivism is the new phenomenon that has revolutionised the world of online activism by empowering young people to participate in social movements from the comfort of their homes. Often critised as the ‘laziest form of activism’, this paper will challenge the popular discourses surrounding this new form of online activism by exploring its effectiveness in increasing the level of youth participation in social movements through Twitter. By exploring the cases of the Black Lives Matter movement, the plastic straw debates and the Me Too movement, I will look at how slacktivism is creating an unprecedented opportunity for young people to change traditional activism and adapting it to their generation. Keywords: onlineactivism, Twitter, communities, teens, slacktivists Over the past years, the success of any social movement has been measured by the number of retweets and likes that such cause may generate (Lane & Dal Cin, 2018). Social media has emerged as a popular online platform where retweeting tweets is the new form of advocating for a social movement. Often referred to by the pejorative term of ‘slacktivism,’ any users partaking in online activism, particularly on social media are criticised as being too lazy to leave their screens to participate in ‘real’ activities that translate into effective change such as protests and boycotts (Lane & Dal Cin, 2018). It can be linked to the popular discourse of portraying “Millennials and the Generation Z as being self-centered and morally lazy” (Lane & Dal Cin, 2018, p.
    [Show full text]
  • Citizen Journalism and the North Belgian Peace March
    CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by LSE Research Online Nico Carpentier, Ludo De Brabander and Bart Cammaerts Citizen journalism and the North Belgian peace march Book section Original citation: Originally published in Allan, Stuart and Thorsen, Einar, (eds.) Citizen journalism: global perspectives. Global crises and the media (vol. 1). Peter Lang, New York, pp. 163-175. © 2009 The authors This version available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/27897/ Available in LSE Research Online: May 2010 LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website. This document is the author’s submitted version of the book section. There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it. Citizen journalism and the North Belgian peace march Nico Carpentier, Ludo De Brabander and Bart Cammaerts1 Introduction In the long history of participatory (and potentially counter-hegemonic) media practices, citizen journalism is one of the more novel concepts added to the vocabulary used to describe these practices.
    [Show full text]