Sarah J. Jackson on Twitter Movements, Collaboration, and the Power of Media

Your new book, #HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice, is about how marginalized groups use Twitter to advance counter-narratives, preempt political spin, and build diverse networks of dissent. Can you share a little bit about the origins of the project?

I remember being unable to pull myself away in 2011 when people across the Middle East and North Africa used Twitter to live-tweet what we’ve come to call the “Arab Spring.” It was clear then, through hashtags like #Jan25, that something important was happening in regard to ordinary people being able to connect, solidify, and promulgate social movement demands without the mediation of establishment media, but little was written about the U.S. context. In 2014 I watched ordinary Twitter users hijack a hashtag created by the New York City Police Department, #myNYPD, that was intended as a public relations effort and instead was taken over by stories of police brutality—that was when I knew I had to study this. The old logics about elites having the power to control the narrative really seemed to go out the window.

You are one of three co-authors for #HashtagActivism. What were the benefits and challenges of working collaboratively?

This was a dream team. In academia co-authorship is perhaps more common than in other kinds of publishing and the three of us worked together on projects prior to the book. I led the charge on theoretically grounding and organizing the project, but could not have written this particular book alone. My co-authors brought knowledge and skills that contributed to us painting a holistic picture. Moya Bailey is a digital humanist with deep ties to many of the Black feminist Twitter networks we studied and Brooke Foucault Welles is a network scientist who was able to teach us how to wrangle millions and millions of tweets and digital metadata into managable data that we could then contextualize within larger cultural and political frameworks. The biggest challenge to collaborative work was really only that it takes longer because you’re juggling three people’s schedules and visions!

Your first book, Black Celebrity, Racial Politics, and the Press, considers the role of black press and mainstream journalists in making sense of Black celebrity activism to the public. Do you see a throughline from that project to your current work?

Definitely. At the root of my first book, #HashtagActivism, and my New America project is a set of questions that have been central to my career: How do those who’ve been at the margins of American society because of racial hierarchies navigate the media environment to make themselves heard? How do media-makers respond to demands from these groups, and what does media made by or for marginalized publics do differently? And finally, what can we learn from the answers to these questions about the power of media, protest, and narrative in how we think about inclusion and justice in our democracy? Read my books to find out! 🙂

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