Article Database

Digital Standpoints: Debating Gendered Violence and Racial Exclusions in the Feminist Counterpublic

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The Black Press and Baltimore: The Continuing Importance of African American Journalism During Urban Uprisings

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In this chapter I consider how members of the black press covered, debated, and made sense of the events in Baltimore following the 2015 arrest and death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray. I illustrate how coverage from black-run and-targeted media outlets extends the work of the historical black press while responding to contemporary challenges and evolutions in journalism. The traditional work of the black public sphere, which has long existed to legitimize the experiences of African Americans and to challenge mainstream narratives about race, violence, and national belonging, continues despite concerns from scholars about the decline of black newspapers after the 1970s. In particular, members of the black public sphere play a crucial role in offering Americans of all backgrounds counternormative ways of interpreting news. By highlighting how the black press reported on and contributed to narratives about Baltimore, I suggest that increased (but certainly not representative) mainstream integration, technology, and the decentering of journalism from elite forms and spaces has brought about a resurgence in the reach and diversity of African American narratives and news.

How Black Twitter and Other Social Media Communities Interact With Mainstream News

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The issues and voices of people of color and women have attracted much attention from professional journalists over the past few years. Yet many such individuals have criticized journalists’ portrayals and coverage of issues that are important to them. In response, some participants have assumed the role of news creators and distributors, focusing on their communities’ particular concerns. Understanding these emerging social subcultures will allow more accurate portrayals of diverse communities and yield insights for better journalistic engagement in the digital age.

Progressive Social Movements and the Internet

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The Battle for #Baltimore: Networked Counterpublics and the Contested Framing of Urban Unrest

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A growing body of research suggests that Twitter has become a key resource for networked counterpublics to intervene in popular discourse about racism and policing in the United States. At the same time, claims that online communication necessarily results in polarized echo chambers are common. In response to these seemingly contrary impulses in communication research, we explore how the contested online network comprised of tweets about the April 2015 protests in Baltimore, Maryland, evolved as users constructed meaning and debated questions of protest and race. We find that even within this highly polarized debate, counterpublic frames found widespread support on Twitter. Progressive racial justice messages were advanced, in part, by brokers who worked across polarized subcommunities in the network to build mutual understanding and model effective strategies for reconciling disparate accounts of protest events.

(Re)Imagining Intersectional Democracy from Black Feminism to Hashtag Activism

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To say that Black lives matter has become both a technological and cultural phenomenon in the United States is an understatement. The hashtag and those discursively linked to it have been used more than 100 million times, and the visibility and persistence of Black lives matter activists—from highway shutdowns in America’s largest cities to the takeover of presidential candidates’ political rallies—have led to widespread social and political debate about what has been dubbed “the new civil rights movement” (Freelon et al.; Jackson and Foucault Welles, “#Ferguson”). Yet there seems to be considerable consternation among academics, journalists, and politicians about how to incorporate the standpoints of a new generation of activists into our national politics. In this essay I discuss how these activists have manifested Black feminist impulses through social media and beyond, and suggest it is the responsibility of those invested in (re)imagining a more democratic process to closely consider the radically intersectional lessons of the current movement. The Black lives matter movement can be traced to the legacy of the larger Black freedom movement, but also more recently to the work of millennial Black activist organizations like the Dream Defenders and the Black Youth Project 100 (Cohen and Jackson). Members of these organizations and the young people who align themselves with their work have come of age in a country overwhelmingly celebratory of its racial progress but silent on the lasting impact of its racial sins. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, among others, has detailed how neoliberal color-blind politics have dangerously entrenched the American impulse to reject explicit political critiques of white supremacy as unnecessary or outmoded. Similarly, millennials have borne witness to an America claiming postfeminism alongside seemingly constant attacks on women’s bodies and bodily autonomy, and a country simultaneously moving toward greater lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) inclusion while silencing queer critiques and bodies that do not mold to the mainstream (McRobbie; Walters). Today’s racial justice activists have responded to these political contradictions with discourse and tactics both familiar and unfamiliar to members of the old guard. In particular, millennial activists have rejected the respectability politics that guided much of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and have turned to new technologies as tools for the promulgation and solidification of messages, nurturing a counterpublic community that centers the voices of those most often at the margins. Black Lives Matter’s organizational founders, and other members of the larger Movement for Black Lives collective, have insisted on discourses of intersectionality that value and center all Black lives, including, among others, Black women, femmes, and queer individuals.

Scott Elementary School: Home-grown School Improvement in the Flesh

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Connecting Home and School Values through Multicultural Literature and Family Stories.

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Women Tweet on Violence: From #YesAllWomen to #MeToo

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From the earliest feminist press to Twitter, women have used technology to create and sustain narratives that demand attention and redress for gendered violence. Herein we argue that the #MeToo boom was made possible by the digital labor, consciousness-raising, and alternative storytelling created through the #YesAllWomen, #SurvivorPrivilege, #WhyIStayed, and #TheEmptyChair hashtag networks. Each of these hashtags highlight women’s experiences with interpersonal and institutionally-enabled violence and each was precipitated by high-profile news events. Alongside an examination of Twitter networks, we consider the social and cultural conditions that made each hashtag significant at particular moments, examining the ideological and political work members of these hashtag networks perform. We find that feminist hashtags have been successful in creating an easy-to-digest shorthand that challenges and changes mainstream narratives about violence and victimhood.

Taking Ownership of Literacy: Who Has the Power?

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