Constructing Public Spaces| Participants on the Margins: Examining the Role that Shared Artifacts of Engagement in the Ferguson Protests Played Among Minoritized Political Newcomers on Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter

Authors

  • Lynn Schofield Clark University of Denver

Keywords:

critical youth studies, political newcomers, social media

Abstract

Utilizing ethnographic methods, this article explores how diverse young people at the margins of politics used social media in relation to the Ferguson protests. The article argues for the significance of what is termed artifacts of engagement, referring to the photos, messages, and other materials that signal political involvement and that young students of color shared with their peers through the social media of Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter. Shared artifacts of engagement and the affordances of the platforms through which they are shared are both found to be key to what Bennett and Segerberg (2013) term connective action, or the ways that individuals use social media as they personalize expressions of a movement’s goals and may therefore participate in larger efforts aimed at bringing about social change. 

Author Biography

Lynn Schofield Clark, University of Denver

Lynn Schofield Clark is Professor and Chair of the Department of Media, Film and Journalism Studies and Director of the Estlow International Center for Journalism and New Media at the University of Denver. She is the author of The Parent App: Understanding Families in a Digital Age (Oxford UP 2013), From Angels to Aliens: Teenaers, the Media and the Supernatural (Oxford UP 2005), and coauthor of Media, Home and Family (Routledge 2004), as well as more than 30 published articles and essays on media and culture.

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Published

2016-01-06

Issue

Vol. 10 (2016)

Section

Special Sections

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