We now take a deeper look at how social media platforms affect public discourse about social justice by looking at what happened with another locally based BLM movement, @BlackLivesMatterCincy. Almost a year after the Mike Brown shooting in Ferguson, another shooting of an unarmed Black man at the hands of a white police officer (this time in Cincinnati) engaged a local community on social media platforms. Social media had emerged as a critical venue for social justice discourse and activity, especially for Black people in the U.S. as control over legacy media outlets have become increasingly concentrated, with few minority owners.1

This chapter provides an in-depth interview with two social justice leaders in Cincinnati about their social media strategies following the shooting of a Black motorist by a University of Cincinnati police officer. Additionally, we explore how legacy news outlets in Cincinnati covered the @BlackLivesMatterCincy group that mobilized after the shooting, and provide a critical examination of access to Internet, mobile media, and legacy news among low-income groups that shapes social justice efforts in significant ways. Accordingly, we examine the need for social justice activists to adopt media reform strategies.

As Rachel Mourao and colleagues showed in their content analysis of five newspapers during the first wave of protests in Ferguson after the Mike Brown shooting, “initial stories were predominantly episodic and focused on violence to the detriment of demands and grievances” expressed by social justice advocates.2 While the newspaper coverage was also critical of the militaristic police response, and eventually addressed issues related to race and police brutality, Mourao and colleagues concluded that newspapers should provide more “contextual narratives behind social movements’ actions,” rather than focusing on protester activities and police response.3

Similarly, Daniele Kilgo and colleagues argued that “mainstream media’s narrative choices marginalize and delegitimize protesters and their causes,” and their longitudinal content analysis of national newspaper reporting showed that coverage before the judicial rulings in the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown cases “focused on protesters’ tactics (violence versus peaceful)” and only moved to the realm of understanding ideas about grievances after the assailants were cleared of legal wrongdoing.4

A similar motif seemed to play out in local news coverage in Cincinnati following the 2015 shooting of Sam DuBose, an unarmed Black motorist, who was killed during a traffic stop by Ray Tensing, a white University of Cincinnati police officer. Shortly afterwards, local community groups led by @BlackLivesCincy and @theIRATE8 quickly mobilized on social media to decry the incident and confront competing narratives that it was justified. They continued to utilize multiple social media platforms in a sustained effort that involved a broader array of social justice issues beyond the DuBose shooting.

To explore local news coverage of the Sam Dubose shooting in Cincinnati we conducted a Boolean search of keywords on the websites for legacy outlets from the period of July 2015 (when the shooting occurred) through November 2016 (when Tensing was acquitted of charges of murder). Our search terms were “Sam Dubose,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Black Lives Matter Cincinnati” and “Irate8.” The news organizations covered were The Cincinnati Enquirer (the city’s daily newspaper), CityBeat (the alt-weekly paper), as well as television stations WXIX-TV (the city’s FOX affiliate) and WCPO-TV (the city’s ABC affiliate). We excluded from analysis the city’s African-American newspaper, The Cincinnati Herald, as well as the city’s other network-affiliated television stations (WKRC-TV, CBS, and WLWT-TV, NBC) due to the limited functionality of conducting keyword searches on their websites. Our content analysis showed the following mentions in each outlet:

A couple of interesting points may be noted here: First, newspapers were more likely to distinguish “Black Lives Matter Cincinnati” (the local group in their reporting) from the more general reference “Black Lives Matter.” The Enquirer and CityBeat mentioned the local organization in 15.7 percent of their stories, compared to 9 percent for WXIX and WCPO combined. Furthermore, The Enquirer and CityBeat mentioned Black Lives Matter Cincinnati (20 references) almost as often as Black Lives Matter (27 references), while WXIX and WCPO more often referred to Black Lives Matter (32 references) than Black Lives Matter Cincinnati (13 references). Meanwhile, the Irate 8 student group was only mentioned a total of five times across all four outlets, three of which were in CityBeat.

However, in reading through each of the 269 stories across the 4 media outlets, CityBeat tended to use “Black Lives Matter Cincinnati” and “Black Lives Matter” interchangeably, or simply used the term “activists” to umbrella the organizations under one entity. CityBeat did mention past cases of police brutality in Cincinnati and other U.S. cities such as Ferguson and Baltimore, thereby providing some national context, similar to the tweets in the Ferguson case (as described in Chapter 2). In 12 of CityBeat’s 37 articles about the Sam DuBose shooting, there was at least some reference to a history of police brutality in Cincinnati, or other U.S. cities.

Only 4 of WXIX’s 43 media stories about the Dubose shooting contain some mention of past police brutality in Cincinnati or the U.S. Furthermore, WXIX rarely mentioned “Black Lives Matter Cincinnati” (two mentions), and never mentioned the Irate 8 in its coverage. Rather, the station tended to use blanket terms, such as “protestors” and “demonstrators.” The effect of these kinds of generic expressions is that they tend to (even unintentionally) minimize the significance of a specific movement taking shape. The lack of recognition for newly (or less) established groups promoting nascent causes is also an impediment for group identity and messaging in legacy news outlets.

A noted feature in WCPO and The Enquirer’s coverage was that both outlets often noted that “Black Lives Matter” or “Black Lives Matter Cincinnati” organized a rally (or march) in an article’s headline or photo cutlines, but would not specifically call the activity an event organized by Black Lives Matter or Black Lives Matter Cincinnati in the actual article. In one case, an article included a tweet that depicted a poster for an event honoring Sam DuBose, which read “Organized by the family of Sam DuBose, Black Lives Matter Cincinnati, and the Irate 8.” However, the article only stated that the DuBose family would hold the event. Other articles would mention that Black Lives Matter Cincinnati scheduled a rally, but the follow-up article would not mention who organized the event.

Both WCPO and The Enquirer often referred to Black Lives Matter supporters as “protestors,” and photos showing Black Lives Matter Cincinnati members did not mention the group in the cutlines. Similar to CityBeat and FOX19, WCPO and The Enquirer used “Black Lives Matter” and “Black Lives Matter Cincinnati” interchangeably. For example, WCPO referred to Brian Taylor as a “Black Lives Matter” organizer instead of a “Black Lives Matter Cincinnati” organizer. The Enquirer referred to Ashley Harrington and Brian Taylor as “Black Lives Matter” steering committee co-chairs in some articles and “Black Lives Matter Cincinnati” steering committee co-chairs in others. However, similar to CityBeat and FOX19, WCPO and The Enquirer often mentioned past cases of police brutality in Cincinnati and other U.S. cities in their coverage of Sam DuBose. Overall, the legacy news media in Cincinnati did not provide the kind of dynamic expression found in social media in the Ferguson case discussed earlier in this book.

Of course, this is not to say that media in Cincinnati intentionally sought to delegitimize or undercut locally based social justice efforts. Rather, the omissions are more likely due to the news routines of legacy media, especially local television; breaking news evolves into more complexity than can often be managed in short packages and sound bites. It is also faster and easier to get a broad overview of events as they are happening on the ground from official government sources rather than the individual narratives of those involved. However, the varying perspectives between official sources and the individual involved in breaking news are significant, to say the least, as Andy Carvin demonstrated in his recounting of the media coverage of the Arab Spring.5

A notable exception to the breaking news–style coverage of protests in Cincinnati was the FOX19 documentary, “Bigger than a moment: Documenting the outcry of our city” that aired in the aftermath of summer protests over the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd that shook cities across the U.S.6 The FOX19 documentary originally aired in two parts one evening and is available on the station’s website. What is, perhaps, most noteworthy in FOX19’s effort, besides its running time of over 39 minutes (an eternity in television news) is the range and depth of interviews with people across the community, including those on the front lines of social justice activity. While this was an exceptional effort from a legacy news outlet, it came well after the “moment” it examines and is naturally produced from a more traditional sense of news reporting and storytelling. To be clear, this is not an example of bias in any form, but rather, the technical realities of meaningfully creating a substantive documentary. Television news routines are a natural impediment to the production of this kind of reflective and deep coverage because of their otherwise constant emphasis on immediacy in reporting.

The social media activities utilized by @BlackLivesMatterCincy and @theIRATE8 represented the kind of affective expression from networked publics described by Papacharissi, which “want to tell their story collaboratively and on their own terms.”7 Moreover, these “affective publics” tend to “produce disruptions . . . of dominant political narratives by presencing [sic] underrepresented viewpoints.” 8 Based on an interview with two social justice organizers in Cincinnati, we explored how social media presented significant opportunities (and some challenges) for affective publics to engage in effective social justice efforts.

“The Irate 8” group name refers to the percent of University of Cincinnati’s student body who are Black. The organization launched a website and social media accounts on Twitter (@theIRATE8) and Facebook. Although the shooting death of an unarmed Black motorist during a traffic stop by a white university police officer was the initial focusing event for the group, their scope of concern quickly broadened to include reforming policies on University of Cincinnati’s campus, including retention of Black students and increasing faculty diversity. The Irate 8 keeps a log of media coverage of the organization by legacy news outlets, which also provides a record of their impact on civil discourse about social justice issues.

The DuBose shooting was also a focusing event for @BlackLivesCincy, but the group has also addressed a much broader range of social justice issues on its Twitter account and Facebook page, including transgender rights, support for rape survivors, refugee and immigration policy, poverty, healthcare, environmental justice, and many others. Certainly, the organizational acumen of these groups was a primary reason for their successes, but their engagement with social media and utilization of digital media resources to tell their own stories was also an instrumental factor.

One of the primary concerns expressed by two of the leaders of Black Lives Matter Cincinnati (BLMC), Mona Jenkins and Christina Brown (who was also a member of The Irate 8), was the tendency of legacy news media to inaccurately associate people, activities, and statements to their group. In following local news coverage, Brown said that it seemed like “anybody Black and not happy” was associated as “a member of our organization, particularly if they’re behaving in a way that’s perceived as unlawful.”9 Jenkins added: “Semantically, they’re members of Black Lives Matter, when we don’t even know who they are.”10 Both Jenkins and Brown expressed frustration over news media coverage that misrepresented BLMC despite the group’s efforts to be a disciplined entity of organizers. However, social media played an important role in allowing BLMC to exercise greater control over its own message. Brown said, “when there is something to be said in our name we will say it in our name,” and explained that social media allowed the group an immediate form of communication to make its statements more clearly.11 Rather than getting caught off guard by interview requests from news media, group members can now direct reporters to statements posted on BLMC’s social media accounts.

In addition to better message control, social media provided another “avenue of connection” for BLMC, as part of the group’s comprehensive approach, which included email, public posters and door-to-door canvasing. However, Jenkins expressed concern about the “digital divide” and noted that many people in the communities they are trying to reach do not have internet access in their homes, and in some cases do not have television.12 Brown added,

we have at least a few folks who are like, “how can I find out about what is happening because I don’t have a phone, and I don’t have a computer.” It’s sobering to me as a Black person, who still has more access than the majority of Black folks who have lived in the city for generations. Even if we are able to create access to the media that exists, what is it telling us about ourselves? . . . All we see are mug shots and gunshot victims.13

Although Brown sees social media as an important part of BLMC’s community-building strategy, she said that it is important to “learn more and more about the limitations of digital access of any kind, whether it’s the TV or the Internet.”14

One of the drawbacks for social justice groups using social media as an organizing tool is that it affords an easy and often anonymous way for detractors to post threats and hateful messages.

This is definitely an issue of Facebook, the level of harassment that we receive and the threats of violence. And they’re not always direct, but when people post pictures of dead Black folks and say this is what you all deserve . . . I’ve seen some very vitriolic stuff posted on our accounts . . . it’s worth noting that white supremacists from all over the world attack things on our pages, send us messages. We get a lot of hate commentary.15

Jenkins added, “We also get a lot of love too.”16 While Brown acknowledged the affirmation BLMC receives from supporters, she stated:

I think there’s an assumption that we do things without putting ourselves at risk and we put ourselves at risk for something greater than ourselves. It’s important to note that this not all reward. The reward is in what will come and building people in the process. We are people and threats to harm us are very real.17

While there are serious concerns about threats and harassment for social justice group members who are active on social media, and despite the lack of mobile and internet access for low-income community members – social media is a promising venue to advance social justice efforts. The greatest asset that social media provides is a platform for social justice movements to tell their own stories and circumvent some of the framing and filtering functions of traditional news outlets.

However, it is not always possible for local activists to avoid the broader framing from news media and other groups. In 2018 BLMC distanced itself from the wider BLM movement by changing its name to Mass Action for Black Liberation (MABL) and declaring its own agenda.18 Besides local news media often conflating BLMC with BLM more generally, MABL wanted to distinguish itself from some of BLM’s political program.

Nonetheless, social justice groups and the public use social media to provide a more diverse array of commentary about the meaning and implications of civic activity, allowing historically marginalized groups to exercise their First Amendment rights in ways that have disrupted the gatekeeping power once held by national news outlets and international networks. Social media channels have also boosted the livelihood of social justice movements.

The use of mobile streaming video technology (MSVT), such as Facebook Live and Periscope, which can be used with Twitter, has also emerged as important in broadcasting and documenting events of interest to social justice movements.

MSVTs are best understood as something akin to live broadcast television with two major differences. First, their use of mobile phones to capture and stream good, quality video means that anyone, anywhere, has the ability to become a live video broadcaster so long as they have a capable smartphone, and this represents a significant change in the barriers for entry to live streaming. Second, dissemination of this video is highly decentralized along social network lines, meaning the power to capture audience attention for events such as news has shifted away from the singular format of the television channel such that it now includes distribution along social networks.19

While social media have proven to be valuable platforms for social justice movements, it is important to keep in mind that these outlets and MSVTs depend upon broadband telecommunication networks that are subject to the same forces of neoliberal economic philosophy and cultural politics that affected legacy media outlets. Economic and generational disparities may limit access.

The growth and popularity of social media raises an important question about the usefulness of these platforms, and access to broadband technologies that deliver them, to help advance the cause of recent social justice movements. For instance, the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) and provided over $4 billion in federal grants to be administered by the U.S. Department of Commerce and National Telecommunications and Information Administration to help facilitate broadband internet access and adoption in unserved and underserved areas of the U.S., including rural and urban regions. The BTOP grants also presented an opportunity for media reformers to connect their digital justice efforts to the broader social justice movement. For instance, the Detroit-based Allied Media Projects and Philadelphia’s Media Mobilizing Project used the occasion to build coalitions among media reformers and social justice groups focused on an array of concerns, including urban housing, worker’s rights, and environmental issues, among other causes.20 However, long-term efforts to sustain broadband access and media diversity in the FCC was cut short by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2011 when they passed an amendment to their spending bill defunding Chief Diversity Officer Lloyd’s salary at a time when he was working to spread broadband internet access to low-income people.21 The BTOP funding was a one-time occasion, but as Joshua Breitbart observed:

it provided an opportunity for an enduring impact on broadband in the United States. In Philadelphia and Detroit, we were able to use the grant-seeking process as a vehicle for visioning and organizing, and for bringing new voices and audiences into the conversation about our shared digital future.22

Long-term social justice movements playing out on social media should take note that their efforts should not be divorced from the media reform movement. As Des Freedman and Jonathan Obar recognized:

We cannot rely on mainstream media to adequately represent our lives as they are lived, to hold power to account and to reflect honestly on the media’s own interconnections with established power; we are forced to make our own media.23

In today’s media-saturated world, social justice endeavors would benefit from communication platforms that allow for access by all, and to all.

However, those committed to media reform for social justice will also need to bear in mind that they will face “formidable challenges,” including the following:

Entrenched commercial interests and media conglomerates; . . . neoliberal governments; a general public often disenfranchised, digitally illiterate and not focused on issues of media reform; and always, the uphill battle of organization, mobilization, and influence.24

Furthermore, because Black people and other racial minorities are more likely than whites to rely on mobile broadband services for access to social media applications, they are also more prone to discriminatory marketing practices based upon predictive analytics of their personal data through pay-for-privacy plans, or service tiers required by their broadband providers.25 Consequently, social justice efforts toward media reform must encompass the principle of network neutrality to provide better access to information and call for greater privacy protection online to help ensure that social justice advocates are not sanctioned for their choice of online activities based on the economic incentives of telecommunication providers.

Still, the “struggles for communication rights are part of a wider challenge to social and economic inequalities and an essential component of a vision for a just and democratic society.”26 Free expression, and the means of free expression, are worth struggling for and they are an essential component of social justice in the digital age. As Bill Moyers said in his keynote address to the 2007 Media Reform Conference in Memphis: “freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story, and it’s time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.” Furthermore, the principle of free expression is dynamic and includes not only the individual liberty of self-expression, but also the freedom to receive a diverse array of expression from a variety of sources to better inform ourselves about social, economic, political, and cultural matters. When everyone speaks, they do more than just empower themselves – they empower everyone else by making the informational and expressive climate richer, more meaningful, and better informed.