Digital Content

DIGITAL MEDIA: expression, VISIBILITY + the fight for control

Topic 1: Police Violence Against People of Color

• Less exchange+ Less Participation

• Higher Resolution - the experience of the individual as evidence against a system

• High Action - Low Dialogue

Suppression Tactics - Minimize, Rationalize, Refute, Control the Conversation

From October 2016 Washington Post article reporting plan for a DOJ database on police shootings + use of fatal force

As a result, private groups, including prominent national media organizations like The Washington Post and The Guardian, have taken it upon themselves to identify policy killings in the past two years based on local reporting and social media. The efforts by the Post and the Guardian almost certainly forced the FBI and DOJ to take the issue of creating a credible database more seriously.

"It is unacceptable that the Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper from the U.K. are becoming the lead source of information about violent encounters between (U.S.) police and civilians," FBI Director James Comey said in 2015. "You can get online and figure out how many tickets were sold to The Martian. It's ridiculous – embarrassing and ridiculous – that we can't talk about crime in the same way, especially in the high-stakes incidents when your officers have to use force."

critical visibility - important CONSIDERATIONS

1. Effect on those filming / posting / involved

Diamond Reynolds, 1 day after streaming Philando Castile's final moments after being shot by police during a traffic stop:
"I didn't do it for pity, I didn't do it for fame...I did it so the world knows that these police are not here to protect and serve us. They are here to assassinate us, they are here to kill us, because we are black."

2. Potential impacts on the viewer / audience

From CBC analysis on possible outcomes of mainstream exposure to videos of police violence

But there also exists a danger that the propagation of these videos could further desensitize the public to continuing injustices perpetrated against the black community, not only in the U.S. but also in Canada, says Desmond Cole, a writer, journalist and activist based in Toronto.

"That's why every time a black person loses their life at the hands of police, there is this immediate response of, 'Well what did they do, though? What did they say? Why were they out there? Why did they act like this?' There is immediate scrutiny of their innocence," he says.

He adds that black people don't need to see images of violence to understand it when they live it every day.

Video after video, rather than shocking people into any meaningful action, could reinforce the normality of violence against blacks. An empathetic response only comes from many outside of the black community when there's "a perfect victim," Cole argues.

"Do you know what people are doing with these videos? They're hoping that someone else is moved enough to act on their behalf," he continues. "They're seeing these horrific images and saying, 'Oh my God, something must be done.' But they're not doing anything.

Study in-progress researching impacts of viewing videos of police killings and violence

Topic 2: Black Twitter

• High Exchange + High Participation

• Lower Resolution

• Usually Low Action - High Dialogue

• Mobilization opportunities

Suppression Tactics: Trivialization, Appropriation, Trolling

Tarana Burke - Founder of #meToo

From October 2018 interview with TheCut.Com

Burke says the movement is actually working when the public understands that there is no expected narrative, standard perpetrator and victim, or archetypical story of abuse.

“We are working diligently so that the popular narrative about #MeToo shifts from what it is,” Burke said. “We have to shift the narrative that it’s a gender war, that it’s anti-male, that it’s men against women, that it’s only for a certain type of person — that it’s for white, cisgender, heterosexual, famous women. That has to shift. And I think that it is shifting, I really do. But that’s a part of our work, too.”

Topic 3: Trump Tweets + His shifting Media Languages

• Less exchange

• High Participation

• Low Resolution - makes room for multiple meanings, ambiguous meanings, contradictions

Suppression Tactics: ?

"I think that it's a very scary time for young men in America when you can be guilty of something that you may not be guilty of…This is a very difficult time."