A series of discussions on the impact and consequences of race in social media and on corresponding attempts to deploy social media in anti-racist activism and politics.

Friday, December 8, 2017

12:30pm – 5:00pm

George Sherman Union
Conference Auditorium 2nd floor
775 Commonwealth Avenue

Given its complete saturation of our cultural and political landscape, social media has quickly migrated from a utopian mode of communication and community building to a sign of the perverse marriage of capitalism, celebrity culture and narcissism; in other words, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, etc. are now more likely to be described as problem than the solution they once purported to be. However, it also remains true that such platforms and technologies operate as a historically unparalleled sphere of communication for marginalized peoples and communities both globally and locally. This symposium takes African-American social media use as a lens to explore the linkages between race, activism and social media.

Speakers

 Feminista Jones

FEMINISTA JONES is a social worker, sex-positive feminist writer, public speaker, and community activist currently residing in Philadelphia. She is an award-winning blogger and author of the popular novel, Push The Button. Her work centers Black American culture, critical race theory, intersectionality, women’s health and well-being (specifically in areas of mental and sexual health). Feminista has been featured in several publications, notably as a contributor to the New York Times, The Washington Post, EBONY, TIME, Essence, and SheKnows. Jones has been regularly featured on HuffPost Live and has appeared on C-SPAN and MSNBC. In 2013, Feminista was selected as a United Nations Foundation Fellow for her dynamic social media influence. In 2014, she launched a global anti-street harassment campaign (#YouOKSis) and a National Moment of Silence protesting police brutality (#NMOS14), both of which received international media attention. For this work, she was awarded the 2014 Black Weblog Award for Outstanding Online Activism and she was honored as one of the Top 100 Black Social Influencers by The Root. Feminista has presented and lectured at various conferences and universities including Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, Columbia, UC Berkeley, and The University of Pennsylvania. In 2015, she co-founded and served as General Director of the Women’s Freedom Conference, the first all-digital conference completely organized by and featuring only Women of Color. For her work, she was named one of SheKnows/BlogHer’s 2015 “Voices of the Year”.

Feminista’s latest work is Witnesses to Hunger, an anti-poverty/ anti-hunger national advocacy program that amplifies the voices and experiences of people living in poverty and facing hunger.

Feminista is also a mom, a mentor to young girls and women, and an outspoken advocate for the homeless, people living in poverty, and those living with psychiatric disabilities.

Dr. Aleia M. Brown

Aliea M. Brown is the Program Manager at the Humanities Action Lab at Rutgers-Newark, and a recipient of the 2017 Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies Public Fellowship. She is the co-founder of two digital humanities projects- #BlkTwitterstorians and #museumsrespondtoferguson. As the former curator of African and African American History and Culture at the Michigan State University Museum, she primarily worked with the Mazloomi-Women of Color Quilters Network collection and made the work accessible through the Quilt Index and traveling exhibitions. Her current manuscript project looks at how Black women textile artists have interpreted ideologies from the Black Arts Movement to the Feminist Art Movement.

Robert Eschmann

ROBERT D. ESCHMANN is an assistant professor at the Boston University School of Social Work, teaching racial justice and qualitative methods. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 2017, where he was a Committee on Education and Urban Network Fellow. He studies race, social media, education, and organizing. His dissertation explored how the Internet shapes racial discourse, including the presentation of racist ideologies, and the unique strategies young people of color use to engage in technology-based critical resistance. Dr. Eschmann has worked on several projects that explore relationships between community violence, social media, and resilience among Black and Latino youth.

Dr. Jacob Groshek

JACOB GROSHEK is an Associate Professor of Emerging Media Studies at Boston University. Professionally, he publishes original research on communication technology, politics, and society. His areas of expertise concern online and mobile media technologies as their use may relate to social, political, and cultural change at the macro (i.e., national) and micro (as in individual) levels, and also include analyses of media content and user influence in social media.

Dr. Desmond U. Patton

DESMOND U. PATTON is an Assistant Professor at the Columbia School of Social Work and a Fellow at Harvard University’s Berkam Klein Center. His research utilizes qualitative and computational data collection methods to examine how and why gang violence, trauma, grief, and identity are expressed on social media and the real world impact they have on well-being for low-income youth of color.

Co-sponsors: The George and Joyce Wein Fund, the African American Studies Program, the Department of English, the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, and supported by the BU Center for the Humanities