This Multimodal Experiment is connected to Project 3, and works to help make you aware of the existing media and activism surrounding your chosen issue. Often when approaching advocacy for a political issue, especially in academic contexts, we think that we need to start from scratch. It can be helpful to instead pause and spend some time looking into the work that's already been done, and to consider how we can fill existing gaps or build off of the effective activism of others. On the other hand, we can also learn from examples of online activism that didn't reach as wide of an audience as they might have, or could have drawn on the affordances and constraints of their chosen media in a more effective way. To better understand the existing activism around your own issue, you will explore how a particular online community has addressed your political issue through your own digital research.
Pick a particular movement, group, organization, or hashtag that connects to your chosen topic. I recommend choosing a group whose approach you find useful and effective to make this response more helpful to you. Spend some time examining how the activist group is represented across different platforms. For example, if you focused on gun control you could examine the student activism that arose after the Parkland shooting, looking at the organization that formed as a result: Stand with Parkland. In this instance, you would analyze the group's website, social media accounts, and could also look into public appearances from the group's members and the actions of prominent activists linked to the group, like Emma González.
Whatever group and media you focus on, there should be clear markers that unite the group you’re analyzing. (Rather than just choosing people talking about this issue on the internet more broadly.) Group boundaries on the internet can be fuzzy, but this could include a hashtag, a Facebook group, a Reddit thread, or another clear community that people have chosen to join or participate in.
In your Multimodal Experiment, discuss how your chosen group uses online media to advocate for your chosen issue. Someone reading your response should have a good sense of what this group is, how they’re organized, how they’ve cultivated a collective culture, and what choices they make when advocating for your issue. Here are some questions to keep in mind as you write (these are just starting points--you’re not required to answer all of these questions or reference them directly):
What materials, tools, and practices does this group use when advocating for this issue?
What do you notice about the shared language of this group in relation to this issue? What terms, acronyms, and references do they use, and why?
In what ways do members communicate with one another in the spaces you examined, and how might they communicate differently in other spaces?
What kinds of media does this group use, and how do they create connections between the different platforms and content?
What is effective about the group's approach to online advocacy, and what gaps or places to expand do you notice?
End your response by discussing how you might build on what you've noticed in your own advocacy. What gaps might you fill that the group isn't taking advantage of? What misinformation might you work to correct? How might you build off of effective strategies that you noticed? What could you do to reach new audiences that the group might not have considered? As a whole, think about how you will build on existing approaches rather than repeating the work that already has focus.
The format of your experiment is up to you: you could create a podcast-style recording talking through your chosen group and their work, you could screen record as you look over the different media examples and narrate your analysis over the screen recording, or you could take a blog post style with embedded screencaps and videos as examples.
Submit your experiment to Moodle by Sunday, November 15 at 10pm.
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