#blacklivesmatter Comprensive Analysis

Today I am just posting a link to the most comprehensive analysis I found of the #blacklivesmatter movement in the first year, both in terms of a chronological description and analysis of at least some of the implications. BEYOND THE HASHTAGS:#FERGUSON, #BLACKLIVESMATTER,AND THE ONLINE STRUGGLEFOR OFFLINE JUSTICE was published by American University's Center for Media and Social Impact, a source I plan to explore more in this project. The authors are Deen Freelon Charlton D. Mcilwain  and Meredith D. Clark. I will be using some of the insights from the analysis section in future posts. But I will leave you all with this insight from pg. 84, and let you contemplate the implications:

"We also found that attempts to coordinate movement action were rare among the top tweets. By this we mean information about where protests would be held, invitations to participate, instructions on how to participate, and discussions about what kinds of actions should be held. We saw a few such tweets in passing and some of our interview participants mentioned finding out about protests from Twitter. However, movement action tweets were not among the most shared. This implies that most people paying attention to BLM online were more interested in consuming information and participating digitally than in offline participation."


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