Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones, and the New Protest #Journalism
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ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: BEARING WITNESS WHILE BLACK: AFRICAN AMERICANS, SMARTPHONES, AND THE NEW PROTEST #JOURNALISM Allissa V. Richardson Doctor of Philosophy, 2017 Dissertation directed by: Professor Linda Steiner Philip Merrill College of Journalism Modern black citizen journalists have embraced the mobile phone as their storytelling tool of choice to produce raw reportage that challenges long-standing narratives of race, power and privilege in America. This dissertation investigates specifically how leading anti-police brutality activists—especially those affiliated with the Black Lives Matter Movement—leverage the affordances of mobile and social media to report original news within the contemporary social justice “beat.” Through semi-structured interviews and a descriptive analysis of the activists’ Twitter timelines, I explore the journalistic roles that these activists perform, the types of stories that they produce most often, and the relationships that they have formed with their audiences. I argue that the reportage from these black witnesses forms the vanguard of modern protest journalism, which functions from a positionality of sousveillance to watch powerful authorities from below. This evolving genre of protest journalism fills the editorial voids that the dying Black press has left behind, and invents ripe areas of inquiry for journalism studies. BEARING WITNESS WHILE BLACK: AFRICAN AMERICANS, SMARTPHONES, AND THE NEW PROTEST #JOURNALISM by Allissa V. Richardson 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 2017 Advisory Committee: Professor Linda Steiner, Chair Professor Kalyani Chadha Professor Patricia Hill Collins Professor Deen Freelon Professor Sarah Oates © Copyright by Allissa V. Richardson 2017 “Freedom, by definition, is people realizing that they are their own leaders.” —Diane Nash !ii Running head: BEARING WITNESS WHILE BLACK ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Heavenly Father, I have felt your favor upon me since I began these studies three years ago, in 2014. I started this program at a peak in my life. You had just blessed me with my second child. I had just completed a prestigious fellowship. And my job had just granted me permission to keep working full-time, while attending school full-time. Then, as you know, the valleys revealed themselves. Lord, it was then that you took my hand and refused to let it go. I am here today, finishing this doctoral degree, because of the people you have sent into my life, who would not let me quit or fail. I thank them here. I would like to thank the activists who participated in this study, who trusted me enough to share their stories. You helped me go beyond the Black Lives Matter hashtags and protest chants, and into your everyday lives. At times, as an African American woman, it was hard to hear you speak of the many ways you have been hurt in pursuit of justice for members of our community. You told me that you have been harassed online, intimidated by federal and state officials on the streets, and even threatened with death. For these reasons, following you for the last year has been heavy, spiritual work. Every time fresh police brutality news headlines emerged, I worried about you. I thank you for letting me check in on your wellbeing. I thank you also for being leaders. You are providing the blueprint for modern struggle. I am grateful also for the benevolence of the Spencer family, who selected me for its eminent fellowship here at the University of Maryland. Your financial support helped me complete my studies. You were the final push I needed to finish this work. !iii Running head: BEARING WITNESS WHILE BLACK I would like to thank my tireless doctoral committee chairperson, Dr. Linda Steiner. You are a phenomenal scholar who has pushed me to communicate my ideas boldly. Thank you to my doctoral committee, Drs. Kalyani Chadha, Patricia Hill Collins, Deen Freelon, and Sarah Oates. Dr. Chadha, your lectures on hegemony served as the basis for much of Chapter 2! Dr. Collins, I appreciate you letting me join your Black Social Movements class in Fall 2015. Learning sociology theory from you has been a joy. I thank you also for sharing your podium with me, allowing me to deliver a lecture on this dissertation. It helped me practice for the defense, indeed. Dr. Freelon, you have been so gracious with your time and expertise. Thank you for introducing me to the idea of “trace interviewing.” It was the perfect method for this study. Last, but not least, I thank you, Dr. Oates, for the kindness you have shown me as a student mother. Whether it was carving out a lactation suite for me in our journalism school (so I would not have to walk across campus), or meeting me in a coffee shop to vent about life as a full-time mom/ doctoral student/instructor, you were always there. Last, but not least, thank you Dr. Meredith Clark, for being an unofficial member of my committee. Your landmark research into the world of Black Twitter grounded this dissertation. I appreciate your encouraging text messages and phone calls during this process. I look forward to our future collaboration on many projects. Thank you to the caring members of my cohort, Karin Assmann, Katy June- Friesen, and April Spray Newton. I appreciate the time we have spent together over Vietnamese pho, Ethiopian injera, or curried Indian dishes. You may not have known it, but our lunches were therapeutic for me. Thank you for keeping me on track always. !iv Running head: BEARING WITNESS WHILE BLACK I extend thanks to my colleagues at Bowie State University. To Provost Weldon Jackson and Dean George Acquaah, I thank you for awarding me the tuition remission benefit to fund this educational milestone. To my past Chairperson, Dr. Pamela O’Brien, I thank you for encouraging me to apply to doctoral programs, and for granting me a teaching schedule that made my studies possible. To Dr. Monifa Love, thank you for mentoring me for the last 10 years. Our talks have given me great strength and clarity. To Profs. Chelsea Mays-Williams and Talisha Dunn-Square, you provided a safe space for me to laugh when researching black pain felt too close to home at times. Prof. Kendrick Kenney, you were more than generous when I needed equipment to record interviews! Lastly, I thank you, Dr. Dwight Ellis, for always suggesting texts to read. I would like to thank Xavier University of Louisiana for providing me the foundation to be successful in academia. To Dr. Norman C. Francis, our illustrious past president, I thank you for encouraging me to be a writer after I penned my first front-page story for our school newspaper. Thanks also to Dr. Charles Whitaker of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. You set me on this path 15 years ago when I was your student, recommending me for my first internship at JET magazine. To my family at First Baptist Church of Glenarden, I thank you for praying me through this degree—and everything that happened in between writing this dissertation. To Lawrence and Jackie McCoy especially, I thank you for opening up your home to me when life left me without words of my own to pray. You have cried with me, hugged me, and loved on me as if I were your own child. I thank you for helping me see that His Word is true: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). !v Running head: BEARING WITNESS WHILE BLACK To the godmothers of my children, Dr. Shauna White and Mrs. Hermetta Wright- McIntyre, you have been blessings throughout this process! Thank you, Shauna, for babysitting Brynn and Bryce when I needed to write. Thanks also for traveling with me to Europe to support my nerd talks, so I did not have to go alone. Thank you, Hermetta, for praying with me in the midnight hours when sadness would wake me. I am forever grateful to you also for allowing me to borrow your beloved Mommy, Mrs. Peggy Wright. She opened up her heart and home to care for Bryce when I needed her most. To Allister P. Hosten, Jr., just when I thought you could not be a better “Brudder,” you go and become a phenomenal godfather to Brynn and Bryce. Thank you for only being a FaceTime call away when the three of us need to laugh or cry. Thanks also for being part-moving company and therapist to me, and part-sword fight trainer and Santa Claus to your niece and nephew. And thanks to my new sister-in-law, Karleisa, for sharing my brother with me still! To my children, Brynn and Bryce, thank you for teaching me how to love again. Brynn, when I started this doctoral program, you were only two years old, singing bits of “Baa Baa, Black Sheep” to me. Now, you are five years old and reading entire Elephant and Piggy books to me! I am so glad to have finished these studies just as yours are beginning, so I can nurture you with undivided attention. Bryce, I thank you for being patient with me. You never complained when I plopped you in the stroller and trekked to McKeldin Library to seek more books for my comps reading list. You did not cry when our babysitter did not show up on the day of Dr. Mark Feldstein’s trip to the Newseum. !vi Running head: BEARING WITNESS WHILE BLACK You just squeezed into that baby Björn like a champ and rode on my back with a smile.