Violence in the Feed: Accelerated Productions and Circulations of Police Brutality Videos

Location

King Building 323

Document Type

Presentation

Start Date

4-28-2017 1:30 PM

End Date

4-28-2017 2:50 PM

Abstract

The purpose of this project is to examine the relationship between social media platforms’ content regulation and norms of anti-Black imagery in the newsfeed by analyzing Twitter metadata from police brutality videos as a case study. The research is intended to evaluate how social media platforms mediate user-generated visual content, and how functionalities of the platforms can alter the meaning of the violent images posted and circulated with the intent to raise consciousness. Primary sources included tracking hashtag volume of the names of people killed by police, including Sandra Bland, Sam Dubose, Alton Sterling, and Philando Castile. Though Facebook and Twitter brand themselves as concerned with “an open and connected world,” their paradigm of displaying instant, perpetually new information enables the trending of violent videos and image content, but obfuscates roots of systemic violence against Black people in the United States. Hopefully this research will support growing scholarship of social media platforms as governing entities in visual culture as the rapid exchange of digital images becomes more and more ubiquitous.

Keywords:

visual, anti-Black violence, social media

Notes

Session I, Panel 1 - Anti-Black | Racism
Moderator: RaShelle Peck, Faculty in Residence, Afrikan Heritage House

Major

Creative Writing

Award

Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship

Advisor(s)

Sylvia Watanabe, Creative Writing

Project Mentor(s)

Harrod Suarez, English

April 2017

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Apr 28th, 1:30 PM Apr 28th, 2:50 PM

Violence in the Feed: Accelerated Productions and Circulations of Police Brutality Videos

King Building 323

The purpose of this project is to examine the relationship between social media platforms’ content regulation and norms of anti-Black imagery in the newsfeed by analyzing Twitter metadata from police brutality videos as a case study. The research is intended to evaluate how social media platforms mediate user-generated visual content, and how functionalities of the platforms can alter the meaning of the violent images posted and circulated with the intent to raise consciousness. Primary sources included tracking hashtag volume of the names of people killed by police, including Sandra Bland, Sam Dubose, Alton Sterling, and Philando Castile. Though Facebook and Twitter brand themselves as concerned with “an open and connected world,” their paradigm of displaying instant, perpetually new information enables the trending of violent videos and image content, but obfuscates roots of systemic violence against Black people in the United States. Hopefully this research will support growing scholarship of social media platforms as governing entities in visual culture as the rapid exchange of digital images becomes more and more ubiquitous.