The Movement and its Mobile Journalism: A Phenomenology of Black Lives Matter Journalist-Activists

• In Event: The Politics of Knowledge Production: Scholar and Journalist Activism

Abstract

This phenomenology features 10 prominent black mobile journalists who leverage Twitter and mobile phones to report on the anti-police brutality movement. Phenomenology is a mode of inquiry that focuses on the lived experiences of the study’s subjects by evaluating one’s: (1) intentionality, (2) intuition, (3) empathy and (4) intersubjectivity. In terms of this study, it meant focusing on: (1) the mobile journalists’ stated purpose for practicing sustained acts of witnessing; (2) whether or not they intuit their bearing witness as a form of protest journalism; (3) how they view their bodies in relation to the world, (for example, whether they see themselves in the body of a dead black man or woman who has been gunned down by police); and (4) how they believe their individual work as black witnesses impacts the broader works of anti-police brutality organizations, such as Black Lives Matter.

Author

• Allissa V Richardson, University of Southern California - Annenberg School for Communication