Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States

As thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, to protest the fatal police shooting of unarmed African American teenager Michael Brown in the summer of 2014, news and commentary on the shooting, the protests, and the militarized response that followed circulated widely thro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American ethnologist Vol. 42; no. 1; pp. 4 - 17
Main Authors: BONILLA, YARIMAR, ROSA, JONATHAN
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Arlington Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.02.2015
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Subjects:
21st century
Activism
Adolescents
African Americans
Anthropological linguistics
Anthropology
Anthropology and Ferguson, Missouri: AE Forum
Brown, Michael
Demonstrations & protests
digital activism
digital anthropology
Ethnographic research
Ethnography
Excessive force
Ferguson
Internet
Language usage
Linguistic anthropology
Linguistics
Mass media
Michael Brown
Misrepresentation
Missouri
Platform
Police
Police Brutality
Police Community Relations
Political protest
Politics
Programming (Broadcast)
race
Race relations
Racialization
Semiotics
Shooting
Shootings
Social activism
Social Anthropology
Social media
Social Movements
Social networks
Social research
Time
Twitter
U.S.A
United States
Ferguson Missouri
United States > US
ISSN:0094-0496, 1548-1425
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:As thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, to protest the fatal police shooting of unarmed African American teenager Michael Brown in the summer of 2014, news and commentary on the shooting, the protests, and the militarized response that followed circulated widely through social media networks. Through a theorization of hashtag usage, we discuss how and why social media platforms have become powerful sites for documenting and challenging episodes of police brutality and the misrepresentation of racialized bodies in mainstream media. We show how engaging in "hashtag activism" can forge a shared political temporality, and, additionally, we examine how social media platforms can provide strategic outlets for contesting and reimagining the materiality of racialized bodies. Our analysis combines approaches from linguistic anthropology and social movements research to investigate the semiotics of digital protest and to interrogate both the possibilities and the pitfalls of engaging in "hashtag ethnography."
Bibliography:istex:598B6694322F74A0AE1CA6DD6BAF426D97783BBC
ark:/67375/WNG-KS3CSCRP-C
ArticleID:AMET12112
ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
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ISSN:0094-0496
1548-1425
DOI:10.1111/amet.12112