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By Dedrick Asante-Muhammad & Chuck Collins
This January marks what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 95th birthday. Nearly a century after the late civil rights leader’s birth, it’s a good time to reflect on the work still to be done.
Just over 60 years ago, in his famous “I Have A Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington, King declared: “We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”
Sixty years on, as our report “Still A Dream” highlighted late last year, there’s been some progress. The African American community is experiencing record low unemployment, record highs in income and educational attainment, and has seen a massive decline in income poverty since the 1960s.
Despite all that, the check for racial economic equality is still bouncing. Without intervention, we found it will take centuries for Black wealth to catch up with white wealth in this country.
The 1960s were years of crucial economic progress for African Americans, even as the Black Freedom struggle faced assassinations and government suppression. In 1959, when King was 30, 55 percent of African Americans lived in income poverty. By what would have been his 40th birthday in 1969 (a year after his assassination), that poverty rate had dropped to 32 percent.
Yet this substantial progress still wasn’t enough to bridge the radical and ongoing racial economic divide between Blacks and whites. And since then, progress has slowed.
Commentary | Jan. 6 was an example of networked incitement
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Joan Donovan, Boston University
The shocking events of Jan. 6, 2021, signaled a major break from the nonviolent rallies that categorized most major protests over the past few decades.
My co-authors and I, a media and disinformation scholar, call this networked incitement: influential figures inciting large-scale political violence via social media. Networked incitement involves insurgents communicating across multiple platforms to command and coordinate mobilized social movements in the moment of action.
The reason there was not more bloodshed on Jan. 6 emerged through investigation into the Oath Keepers, a vigilante organization composed mostly of former military and police. During their trials for seditious conspiracy, members of the Oath Keepers testified about weapons caches in hotels and vans, stashed near Washington, D.C. As one member described it, “I had not seen that many weapons in one location since I was in the military.”
The Oath Keepers were following Washington law by not carrying the weapons in the district, while waiting for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which gives the president the authority to deploy the military domestically for law enforcement.
The militia was waiting for orders from Trump. That was all that kept U.S. democracy safe from armed warfare that day.
Even with the availability of social media, networked social movements still need mainstream media coverage to legitimize their cause. Typically, community organizers push a particular issue – for example Black Lives Matter and #MeToo – into the media spotlight to get the public to care about their issue. Social movements tend to struggle for exposure and to frame favorable narratives.
The insurrectionists had the advantage of betting on mainstream media coverage for Jan. 6, so they focused on gathering resources and coordinating attendance. As a result, Trump’s supporters did not need to expend much effort to bring attention to the event and, instead, concentrated on organizing ride-shares and splitting hotel costs. As in prior social movements, the networking capacity of social media proved to be an important conduit to bring strangers together for the occasion. What the insurrectionists failed to do was convince key stakeholders, such as mainstream media, Vice President Mike Pence and the U.S. Capitol Police, to join their fight.
Networked incitement is different from the legalistic understanding of incitement, where an inflammatory statement immediately precedes unlawful acts or creates a dangerous situation. The call to action for Jan. 6 came from the president himself in a series of social media posts enticing supporters to come to D.C. for a “wild” time.
Tweets like these from a prominent figure became social media’s equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theater.
My colleagues and I sought data to better understand what motivated everyday folks to storm the Capitol that day under great personal risk. Using the method of qualitative content analysis, we assembled 469 charging and sentencing documents for 417 defendants and coded them for the stated reasons for attending the event. We chose these court documents because they represented the fullest narrative accounts available. The purpose of these documents was to explain the rationales and mental states of the accused, while also offering a defense or explanation for their actions.
We analyzed the documents, looking at the multiple motivations for the insurrectionist mobilization. Overwhelmingly, insurrectionists said they were motivated by a desire to support Trump, which was equally split with a rationale to stop a rigged election. In sum, we concluded that disinformation mobilizes and incites political violence under specific conditions, such as a popular public figure calling for help.
For example, the court documents also directly reference social media posts of the accused. On Dec. 22, 2020, Kelly Meggs, an Oath Keeper who was later convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 12 years in prison, wrote on Facebook:
“Trump said It’s gonna be wild!!!!!!! It’s gonna be wild!!!!!!! He wants us to make it WILD that’s what he’s saying. He called us all to the Capitol and wants us to make it wild!!! Sir Yes Sir!!! Gentlemen we are heading to DC pack your sh*t!!”
The reference to “it’s gonna be wild” was a rejoinder to the now infamous tweet Trump sent after a reportedly difficult six-hour meeting the president had with staff about how to proceed with the fraud inquiry and undo the election results. Oath Keeper Meggs’ tweet illustrates that even before Jan. 6, militia groups were looking for signs from Trump about how to proceed. An investigation by NPR also illustrated how Trump’s messages emboldened participants and ignited the events of that day.
No sitting president before Trump had exploited the capacity of social media to directly reach citizens to command specific actions.
The use of social media for networked incitement foreshadows a dark future for democracies. Rulers could well come to power by manipulating mass social movements via social media, directing a movement’s members to serve as the leaders’ shock troops, online and off.
Clear regulations preventing the malicious weaponization of social media by politicians who use disinformation to incite violence is one way to keep that future at bay.
Joan Donovan, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media Studies at Boston University, is on the board of Free Press and the founder of the Critical Internet Studies Institute.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
ST. JOSEPH - Last week, St. Joseph-Ogden High School announced the second-quarter Honor Roll and High Honor Roll recipients. Just over 270 members of this year's enrollment earned second-quarter Honor Roll recognition.
To receive honor roll recognition at SJO, students must earn a grade point average of 3.25 or higher on a 4.0 scale. Students whose GPA soared above 3.74 are recognized as High Honor Roll students.
Tonight’s home game VS Rantoul has been canceled due to weather and traveling conditions. The make up for this game will be Friday February 16th. We will be in action next Tuesday night vs St. Joe at home hope to see you all there.
— Prairie Central Hawks Boys Basketball (@central_prairie) January 12, 2024
Urbana boys basketball vs PND is cancelled for tonight. @Urbana116Super @Urbana116 @ngpreps @WCIA3Bret @JoeyWright2000
— Urbana Athletics (@athleticsurbana) January 12, 2024
The @SJOBoysHoops game vs. Pontiac tonight (Fri, 1/12) has been cancelled and rescheduled for Fri, 2/2. The JV game will start at 5:30 PM on 2/2. @Maroon_Platoon @IlliniPrairie @ngpreps @WCIA3Bret @Stjosephrecord @sjodaily @SJOSportsPage @SJO_FAN_CLUB
— SJO AD (@SJOsports) January 12, 2024
IPC Conference Wrestling at Unity today and tomorrow has been cancelled both days. The rescheduled date is Wednesday Jan. 17 at Unity and a one day only @SaberSTMWrestle @STMSabernation
— Sabers Athletics (@STMoreAD) January 12, 2024
UPDATED SCHEDULE CHANGE pic.twitter.com/jRFnLRp51j
— Unity Rockets Basketball (@UHSRocketsBBall) January 12, 2024
The @SJOBoysHoops game (Varsity Only) on Sat, 1/13 will now start at 4:00 PM (NOT 7:00 PM) vs. Maroa-Forsyth. @Maroon_Platoon @SJO_FAN_CLUB @Stjosephrecord @SJOSportsPage @sjodaily @IlliniPrairie @ngpreps @WCIA3Bret
— SJO AD (@SJOsports) January 12, 2024
Sunday's (1/14/24) S'mores Social and Stroll in canceled due to predicted cold weather. #StaySafe
— Urbana Park District (@urbanaparks) January 12, 2024