She tries to archive Black Twitter. It’s a delicate and imperfect task: NPR

Meredith Clark hopes the preservation of Black Twitter will allow for a more accurate account of internet history.

Dare Kumolu, Kumolu Studios

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Dare Kumolu, Kumolu Studios

Meredith Clark hopes the preservation of Black Twitter will allow for a more accurate account of internet history.

Dare Kumolu, Kumolu Studios

Black Twitter has been a force since the platform’s launch, creating a space for everything from everyday life discussion to helping launch and spotlight movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #OscarsSoWhite.

Now a woman is looking to archive it, as Twitter’s future looks uncertain.

Who is she? Meredith Clark is an associate professor of communications and journalism at Northeastern University. She is launching the Archiving Black Twitter project as part of the Archiving the Black Web initiative.

• Clark’s research focuses on “the intersections of race, media, and power in digital, social, and news media,” according to her academic biography, and she has also spent years working as an editor, columnist, and columnist.

• She says the term Black Twitter has many definitions, and hers is: “A network of culturally connected communicators who use the platform to talk about issues concerning black lives and in black lives.”

What is the problem ? Clark says preserving Black Twitter will allow for a more accurate and complex account of Internet history. But this is not a simple task.

• Clark says it’s impossible to collect – or even distill – all of Black Twitter. So, instead, there will be a collection of so-called “little stories”.
• They’re “parts and pieces of what happened in this place and time, but they’re not the end of everything about Black Twitter,” Clark told NPR, adding that it’s a balancing act. delicate.
• NPR’s Dara Kerr and Bobby Allyn report that since Elon Musk acquired Twitter in October, the company’s staff has been reduced to about 10% of what it was before, following massive layoffs and other resigners. “Breakdowns have become much more frequent [and] the general system bug has also become the norm for many users,” they report.

Want more tech journalism? Listen to the consider this episode on how social media use affects teen mental health.

The community around Black Twitter has helped bring attention to issues including the murder of George Floyd.

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Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

What does Clark say? Speaking to NPR’s Juana Summers, Clark explained why the project matters — and feels increasingly urgent.

On the power to preserve stories:

The power of this preservation is to ensure that accurate stories are told. There are so many instances where people might have forgotten the truth of how something happened. One thing that comes to mind is that recently there was a cover that referenced Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, signing legislation to bring down the Confederate flag on the Capitol in that state after the Emanuel Nine massacre. And I challenged that report because it erased the work of Bree Newsome and her comrades by climbing the flagpole at the State Capitol and removing that flag. And without the testimony that people have been able to give on Twitter, this story could be lost. And I think that’s just a reflection of many stories that require us to have a lot of evidence to make sure they’re told correctly.

On whether the changing dynamics of Twitter itself add more urgency to the work it does:

It does. It almost adds a sense of hopelessness. At this point, Twitter is now reaching out to researchers who have large-scale Twitter datasets and, in some cases, asking them to delete that data. And if that data is deleted, that leaves those of us who study this information capture and record capture.

So what now?

• The project launched this year and Clark says she is working with collaborators and inviting others to the project.
• You can learn more and get involved on Clark’s website.
• “There is a version of Black Twitter that I can talk about, that I have written about, that I study. But everyone who is part of Black Twitter has a point of view on it. have something to offer,” she said.

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