10. #BlackLivesMatter and Twitter: Mediation as a Dramaturgical Analysis

Abstract

Scholars agree that the Untied States is experiencing a new Black civil and human rights movement called #BlackLivesMatter and that the internet is pivotal to that movement. Protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and in Baltimore, Maryland, dominated national attention for months through 2014 and 2015. Protesters have successfully gained the attention of elite power brokers, which collective action scholars have identified as a necessary step in the social movement process. #BlackLivesMatter still has many insights to provide about mobilization, if researchers are willing to take Black American discursive power and intellectual production more seriously as subjects of analysis. This chapter argues that a dramaturgy framework helps reveal the structure and meaning making that occurs on the periphery of a social movement. In this periphery, or “margin,” the analysis in the chapter shows that Black social media publics are harbingers of racial progress. Additionally, introducing the concept of a Greek chorus to the dramaturgy framework better clarifies how outside observers negotiate their own meaning-making surrounding the movement’s claims and strategies. This analysis provides a clearer understanding of the importance of digital media in the contemporary Black civil rights movement.