re: #21 Charles Johnson

Interesting. Twitter seems to be one of the last platforms where the whole Echo Chamber effect hasn’t yet completely taken hold. Check out this excellent piece on the self-segregation taking place on social media in the wake of the Ferguson shooting.

http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2014/08/27/self-segregation-on-social-networks-and-the-implications-for-the-ferguson-mo-story/

Nut grafs:

Twitter’s reach has grown since 2012, and the power of “black twitter”, which Soraya Nadia McDonald describes as both “cultural force” and social network, to challenge racist narratives has grown. Outrage on Twitter over a book deal for a juror who acquitted George Zimmerman led to the deal being withdrawn. Noting the power of outraged channeled through a hashtag, some African American Twitter users began posting contrasting photos of themselves under the tag #iftheygunnedmedown, suggesting that media were emphasizing the narrative of Michael Brown as “thug”, by using a photo in which Brown is displaying a peace sign (which many have read as a gang sign), rather than other photos in which Brown looks young and entirely unthreatening. The hashtag allowed Twitter users to participate in the dialog about Ferguson in cases where they had nothing to share about the situation on the ground by participating in a conversation about larger issues of structural racism in American media.

While events in Ferguson received widespread attention on Twitter, some observers saw very different behavior on their Facebook feeds.