Rashawn Ray - University of Maryland
"The Meaning of #BlackLivesMatter: The Evolution of a Social Media Identity"
Date: 11/19/2015 (Thu)
Time: 3:30pm- 5:00pm
Location: Seminar will be held on-site: Gross Hall - 270
Organizer: Laura Satterfield
Meeting Schedule: Login or email the organizer to schedule a meeting.
All meetings will be held in the same location as the seminar unless otherwise noted.
8:00 - Breakfast with Angel Harris at WaDu
8:30am - Breakfast with Angel Harris at WaDu
9:00am - Breakfast with Angel Harris at WaDu
9:30am - Vladi Slanchev
10:00am - Arun Hendi
10:30am - Charmaine Royal
11:00am - Lindah Mhando
11:30am - Jaemin Lee
12:00pm - Lunch with Giovanna Merli
12:30pm - Lunch with Giovanna Merli
1:00pm - Lunch with Giovanna Merli
2:00pm - Thavolia Glymph Law School 2:00
2:30pm - Jim Moody
3:00pm - Seminar Prep
3:30pm - Seminar Presentation (3:30pm to 5:00pm)
6:00pm - Dinner w/Angie O'Rand
Additional Comments: ABSTRACT: Following the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012, #BlackLivesMatter exploded into the social media sphere. As evidence by protests and unrest in Ferguson, MO and Baltimore, MD, the hashtag social movement to curtail racial profiling and police brutality is still progressing three year later. Social scientists, public health scholars, and activists have documented the severity of police brutality, particularly for Blacks and Latinos. Missing, however, is a social psychological analysis that simultaneously combines the utility of sociological and humanist methodologies grounded in content analysis and quantitative analysis. This article takes up this challenge by analyzing data from a Twitter database on Ferguson. Drawing upon social identity theory, which has links to social movements and collectivist action, we analyze 31.65 million tweets on Ferguson across four meaningful time periods: the death of Michael Brown, the non-indictment of police officer Darren Wilson, the Department of Justice report on Ferguson, and the one year aftermath of Brown’s death. In showcasing the most popular Twitter hashtags, tweeted images, and narratives, results show that social media activism is directly linked to boots on the ground, conflates with mainstream news coverage, and primarily comes from identified leading activists of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. We also show that a concerted counter narrative called #TCOT (Top Conservatives on Twitter) has operated as the anti-thesis to #BlackLivesMatter tweets. In doing so, we show the vitality of social media and establish a methodological agenda for scholars aiming to conduct rigorous, cutting edge, contextual, and timely research with social media data to focus on a host of outcomes including race relations, protests, and politics.