Decisions, Responses, Outcomes: Social Media and Grassroots Education Organizing During Chaotic Political Times

• In Event: Activism in Education and Community: Youth + Adults = Partners for Change

Abstract

Objectives
In 2017, the 85th Texas Legislative Session introduced and passed into law the anti-immigrant policing bill known as “SB4”. Along with SB4 came targeted ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids across the state. While the occurrence of ICE raids were not unique to the new administration, the swift and public demonstration of police force against immigrant and Latinx communities created unusually chaotic local conditions for education grassroots organizers. Out of this chaos came questions around activist action and the power of social media in activist mobilization. The purpose of this presentation is to examine how the social media presence of an antiracist educational activist organization affected the impact of its grassroots activism during the 2017 ICE raids. The objective of this presentation is to analyze the production of activist texts to answer the question: How does social media impact the decisions, responses, and outcomes of grassroots education organizing under the current administration?

Theoretical Framework
Goffman’s (1959) concept of “impression management” refers to regulation of information of one’s self-presentation in order to influence the perception of one’s audience. Goffman’s “information preserves” (1959) refers to the decision-making processes that determine what information we reveal to others. These performative sociolinguistic concepts were used to examine the production of digital sociolinguistic texts within activist organizing. Impression management and information preserves were used to contextualize the decisions, responses, and effects of grassroots education activists’ communication on and off of social media. The comparative examination of the production, circulation, and reception of “front stage” and “back stage” (Goffman, 1959) texts highlight broad thematic conflicts that arise in the contested speech between local communities and governing powers.

Methodology, Data Collection, and Analysis
Three pieces of textual data were examined: 1) an official school district memorandum on SB4 concerns; 2) a ‘viral’ Facebook post authored by an antiracist education activist group; and 3) intergroup activist personal communication. Data was collected and analyzed through autoethnographic procedures (Clanindin and Connelly 1999; Ellis, 2004; De Vries, 2012) by the author, who was involved in these responses. Texts were analyzed using critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995) to consider larger political economic questions regarding the reinforcement of hegemonic control, resistance, and processes of power-building.

Findings
Findings demonstrated how decisions activists made were impacted by neo-Fascist presences and nascent forms of militarism and surveillance. Community mobilization was tightly connected to the technologies of information within the security state, and in light of this, activists were highly concerned with how social media impacted abilities to build power. As such, activist responses heavily considered the relationship between framing, audience, and power. Activists were sensitive to their public reach, but unsure about how the digital sphere might distill and/or hyperbolize the message to their audience(s). Thus, outcomes of activist action were shaped by psycho-social, emotional, and material concerns.

Scholarly Significance
This presentation grapples with the techno-political messiness of doing activist work under the Trump administration. It speaks to the need to reflect on how local sociolinguistic communication practices are impacted by social media and new techno-political landscapes.

Author

• Stacia Cedillo, The University of Texas - Austin