[Air-L] A good way to respond to a query from a student about activism?

[Marianne Gunderson]

Dear Prof. Sarah Oates and others

This may not be one of the deeper contributions, but since your student was
asking for resources on "the potential to leverage social media for
positive social change beyond likes and retweets", maybe some of the
various discord servers dedicated to Black Lives Matter could be relevant?
I have the impression that these platforms are increasingly being used for
mobilizing, organizing, and coordinating activism and other direct action
often kept off public platforms like Twitter. I haven't personally explored
the ecosystem of activist discords, but here is an overview over servers
tagged with #blacklivesmatter, maybe some of them could be relevant for
your student?

(NB. A few of the servers seem to be using the tag in bad faith, but it's
fairly obvious which ones are not.)

https://disboard.org/servers/tag/blacklivesmatter
https://disboard.org/servers/tag/black-lives-matter

Hope this is useful!

Best regards,
Marianne Gunderson
--
Ph.D candidate in Digital Culture with The Machine Vision Project
<https://www.uib.no/en/machinevision>
University of Bergen, Norway
UiB homepage <https://www.uib.no/en/persons/Marianne.Gunderson> /
Academia.edu <https://uib.academia.edu/MarianneGunderson> / Twitter
<https://twitter.com/mareinna>

On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 at 00:05, Sarah Ann Oates <soates at umd.edu> wrote:

> Dear AOIRers,
>
> I wanted to ask this great list a question for our times. See the message
> below from a student I taught in an online social media and society course,
> in which we had a module on #BlackLivesMatter. Can you think of a better
> way to respond than just with a list of campus groups and a note that I was
> impressed that she wanted to commit to activism for her beliefs? That's
> what I did, but I'd like to help a bit more because it's heartening both to
> see students wanting to put their scholarship into action. Thanks in
> advance. BTW, I asked her if I could ask the list and she said that was
> great.
>
> Here is her message:
>
> As a young black woman, I am struggling to cope with all that is happening
> in our country right now. Looking at social media I am further saddened to
> see images of Black men being murdered and their deaths reposted and
> reposted for all to see. I fear people will become desensitized to these
> images and names like George Floyd will just become another hashtag and
> forgotten victim of a corrupt system.
>
> *... I was wondering if you had any advice or resources for action beyond
> social media. I know the Black Lives Matter module discussed the sort of
> "wind tunnels" we create where like-minded people swirl ideas among mutual
> followers, but little action is taken beyond likes and retweets. I want to
> do something that goes beyond liking a post or ranting about it on Twitter.
> If you have any ideas or resources regarding the potential to leverage
> social media for positive social change I'd love to learn more about them!*
>
> Sarah Oates
> Professor and Senior Scholar
> Philip Merrill College of Journalism
> University of Maryland
> College Park, MD 20457
> Email: soates at umd.edu
> Phone: 301 455 2332
> www.media-politics.com
> Twitter: @media_politics
>
> *Support the UMD Student Crisis Fund
> <https://giving.umd.edu/giving/showPage.php?name=crisis-funding> today. *
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