Abstract
For two whole days after the shooting of Michael Brown, major protests and rallies were taking place in Ferguson, Missouri, with hardly a mention in the mainstream news media, or even on Facebook. Yet a major portion of the country knew about the protests, the major influencers, and the emerging movement known as Black Lives Matter. Through Twitter, protestors were able to coordinate their activities, avoid tear gas and LRADs (long-range acoustic devices), even get phone charging battery packs to movement leaders. That activity on Twitter (and Vine) brought the events directly to the public eye and eventually to American mainstream news media. This watershed movement made many aware of the limitations of mass news media and the power of participatory media to shape conversations and effect social change. But those haven’t been the only effects.
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Notes
- 1.
Dylan Byers, “Ferguson Prosecutor Blames the Media,” Politico, published November 25, 2014, www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/11/ferguson-prosecutor-blames-the-media-199249.html .
- 2.
DeRay McKesson, Twitter Post, November 24, 2014, 9:20 p.m., https://twitter.com/deray/status/537068182909882368 .
- 3.
Jon Swaine, “Michael Brown protests in Ferguson met with rubber bullets and teargas,” The Guardian, published August 14, 2014, www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/14/ferguson-police-teargas-rubber-bullets-michael-brown .
- 4.
Sarah Muller, “Protesters slam Oprah for suggesting movement lacks leadership,” MSNBC, updated January 5, 2015, www.msnbc.com/msnbc/protesters-slam-oprah-suggesting-movement-lacks-leadership .
- 5.
Shaun King, Twitter Post, https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/551109555040829440 , deleted but cited in ibid.
- 6.
Noam Cohen, “U.S. Inquiry Sought in Police Treatment of Press at Ferguson Protests,” The New York Times, published October 26, 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/business/media/-us-inquiry-sought-in-police-treatment-of-press-at-ferguson-protests-.html .
- 7.
“Michael Brown protests in Ferguson met with rubber bullets and teargas.”
- 8.
Tierney Sneed, “Amnesty International Blasts Handling of Mike Brown Shooting, Ferguson Protests,” U.S. News & World Report, published October 24, 2014, www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/10/24/amnesty-international-blasts-handling-of-mike-brown-shooting-ferguson-protests .
- 9.
Dorothy Kim, “The Rules of Twitter,” Hybrid Pedagogy, published December 4, 2014, http://hybridpedagogy.org/rules-twitter/ .
- 10.
Noam Berlatsky, “Hashtag Activism Isn’t a Cop-Out,” The Atlantic, January 7, 2015, www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/not-just-hashtag-activism-why-social-media-matters-to-protestors/384215/ .
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
“Michael Brown protests in Ferguson met with rubber bullets and teargas.”
- 13.
Elle Hunt, “Alicia Garza on the Beauty and the Burden of Black Lives Matter,”The Guardian, published September 2, 2016, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/02/alicia-garza-on-the-beauty-and-the-burden-of-black-lives-matter .
- 14.
“Hashtag Activism Isn’t a Cop-Out.”
- 15.
“Social Media Fact Sheet,” Pew Research Center, published February 5, 2018, www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/social-media/ .
- 16.
Robert P. Jones, “Self-Segregation: Why It’s So Hard for Whites to Understand Ferguson,” The Atlantic, published August 21, 2014, www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/08/self-segregation-why-its-hard-for-whites-to-understand-ferguson/378928/ .
- 17.
Conrad Hackett, Twitter Post, August 20, 2014, 5:59 p.m., twitter.com/conradhackett/status/502213347643625472.
- 18.
“Michael Brown protests in Ferguson met with rubber bullets and teargas.”
- 19.
Ibid.
- 20.
Zeynep Tufekci, “Algorithmic Harms Beyond Facebook and Google: Emergent Challenges of Computational Agency,” in Social Media Studies, ed. Duan Peng and Zhang Lei, p. 213, accessed from https://ctlj.colorado.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Tufekci-final.pdf .
- 21.
Alex Kantrowitz, “An Algorithmic Feed May Be Twitter’s Last Remaining Card To Play,” BuzzFeed News, published June 29, 2015, www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/an-algorithmic-feed-may-be-twitters-last-remaining-card-to-p .
- 22.
Ibid.
- 23.
Simon Parkin, “Zoë Quinn’s Depression Quest,” The New Yorker, published September 9, 2014, www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/zoe-quinns-depression-quest .
- 24.
Noreen Malone, “Zoë and the Trolls,” New York Magazine, published July 24, 2017, http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/zoe-quinn-surviving-gamergate.html .
- 25.
Ibid.
- 26.
Kyle Wagner, “The Future of the Culture Wars Is Here, And It’s Gamergate,” Deadspin, published October 14, 2014, https://deadspin.com/the-future-of-the-culture-wars-is-here-and-its-gamerga-1646145844 .
- 27.
Ibid.; “Zoë and the Trolls”; “Zoë Quinn’s Depression Quest”; Zoë Quinn, Crash Override (New York: PublicAffairs, 2017).
- 28.
Reddit’s name for a specific Reddit community, usually organized around a discussion topic or group identifier.
- 29.
Ben Schreckinger, “World War Meme,” Politico Magazine, March/April 2017, www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/memes-4chan-trump-supporters-trolls-internet-214856 .
- 30.
Crash Override, p. 10.
- 31.
Kathy Sierra, “Why the Trolls Will Always Win,” WIRED, published October 8, 2014, www.wired.com/2014/10/trolls-will-always-win/ .
- 32.
Zoë Quinn, “August Never Ends,” Zoë Quinn (blog), January 11, 2015, http://ohdeargodbees.tumblr.com/post/107838639074/august-never-ends .
- 33.
Crash Override, p. 1
- 34.
Nick Wingfield, “Feminist Critics of Video Games Facing Threats in ‘GamerGate’ Campaign,” The New York Times, published October 15, 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/10/16/technology/gamergate-women-video-game-threats-anita-sarkeesian.html .
- 35.
“Zoë and the Trolls.”
- 36.
“August Never Ends.”
- 37.
Briana Wu, “I’m Brianna Wu, And I’m Risking My Life Standing Up To Gamergate,” Bustle, published February 11, 2015, www.bustle.com/articles/63466-im-brianna-wu-and-im-risking-my-life-standing-up-to-gamergate .
- 38.
“Zoë and the Trolls.”
- 39.
Crash Override, p. 115.
- 40.
- 41.
- 42.
“World War Meme.”
- 43.
“Zoë and the Trolls.”
- 44.
Joseph Bernstein, “Alt-White: How the Breitbart Machine Laundered Racist Hate,” BuzzFeed News, Published October 5, 2017, www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart-and-milo-smuggled-white-nationalism .
- 45.
“Mike Cernovich,” Southern Poverty Law Center, www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/mike-cernovich .
- 46.
“Why the Trolls Will Always Win.”
- 47.
Dale Beran, “4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump,” Dale Beran (blog), published February 14, 2017, https://medium.com/@DaleBeran/4chan-the-skeleton-key-to-the-rise-of-trump-624e7cb798cb .
- 48.
Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, “Why Steve Bannon Wants You to Believe in the Deep State,” Politico Magazine, published March 21, 2017, www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/steve-bannon-deep-state-214935 .
- 49.
“Alt-White: How the Breitbart Machine Laundered Racist Hate.”
- 50.
“World War Meme.”
- 51.
Ibid.
- 52.
Quinn Norton, “Everything Is Broken,” The Message, published May 20, 2014, https://medium.com/message/everything-is-broken-81e5f33a24e1 .
- 53.
Crash Override, p. 7
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Shaffer, K. (2019). Domestic Disturbance. In: Data versus Democracy. Apress, Berkeley, CA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-4540-8_4
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