Remember that year . I know you know but for those who dont that was the introduction of the iphone. Literally it changed the way we use devices with those multimedia functions and it enabled and opened up several doors of opportunity for us to have this conversation today. But on a regulatory front which is more in line with your question in that 1980s the fcc launched its first cell phone spectrum ban and through a series of those decisions, based on that we are now seen and that marked the global, mobile revolution. Of course, revolution often happen in different phases at different stages. So now in terms of mobile revolution or evolution we are talking about the sixth phase in some ways but not in all communities and thats another topic for another time but the fifth wave or evolution when it comes to mobile phones. What we saw around the third wave or so is these devices becoming smaller, more nimble, less expensive and more ubiquitous so you have the pop up of a lot of these very assessable to buy these phones and they became more attached literally to us. The devices through those evolutions particularly when it comes to recording and i like to still say but videotaping content. It has become the narrative, literally the narrative for our lives today. I am stuck on what you said for variety of reasons because i think a lot of people dont understand that the federal medications commission had a lot to do with sort of introducing us to this mobile ecosystem and i try to remind myself also that this iphone really was only 12, 13 years old and the old as my daughter but then too, even with the other platforms that we use what you said is key, its actually become able to be put in our purse or pocket which is something for people of color historically groups never had that before. We never had the ability to carry that type of arsenal to share distinctively what is happening with us. If we were lucky we had a landline phone if we could afford the rates and if you remember it Long Distance was incredibly expensive. We had to stand around and it was a sunday afternoon event to make a longdistance call. Now you have the right plan, anytime, anyplace you can make anyone. Thats right. Im not going to date myself and i got my new hairdo to look younger and i will not tell people how far back i go when it came to pagers and payphones but i wonder if we could switch to doctor ray, when we think about the sociology what is happening in the Digital Transformation when we look at black lives matter for example, they started online and there wasnt, i love the story of how black lives matter got created but really it became a movement that enabled technology with mobile devices. Speak to us for a moment about social cause and social activism in the Role Technology has played to advance this method before we get to the nuts and bolts around what we are using it for and why it is so important at this moment. Well, thank you and doctor turner lee to say that back to you. I think when we talk about social media and of course, as you know, for the past several years i have been part of a group of researchers that have been curating data on social media and the black lives Matter Movement. The big thing we have is a large digital archive of tweets starting in 2014 with Michael Brown was killed and we have continued securing those data and millions of tweets. Obviously as you mentioned black lives matter started by three black women primarily interacting on facebook, committee getting with each other and now its turned into an international movement. The way that the movement for black lives and the way they use social media is something that is unprecedented. What i mean by that, lets go back five, six years ago after Michael Brown was killed and freddie gray, sandra bland in so many others who were fortunate to have a , is that the level of public support at that time was an infinitely low, people are trying to figure out black lives matter. It reminds me of what is happening right now around this defined the police. In curious to see that movement over the next decade. But the movement for black lives is supported for the black lives Matter Movement has significant increased in such a short time and that is because people affiliated with the movement, people working organizations have figured out how to use social media and particularly figured out how to use the algorithms so part of what happened recently with george floyd and ahmad aubry and Breonna Taylor and others is that when people were using hashtags on twitter, instagram, snapchat, tiktok, whatever people use is that the algorithm now has brought up additional videos for people to see and it shows what happened to george floyd is not isolated and instead it was part of a broader pattern of systemic racism and Police Brutality. Not only that but the videos also show white people behaving in similar ways and getting treated significantly differently than black people. I think that is one of the biggest things that has led to this racial awakening. Of course, covid has contributed to that because people for a period of time and the most part a lot of places around the country have been at home or working from home and giving them the capacity and ability to look at things during the day and watch and Pay Attention in ways that their former lives would not have allowed. Social media has played a big role in what is going on in one of the biggest findings i can share for my work is we looked at a year in ferguson. Every single tweet that had to do with ferguson from the time Michael Brown was killed until one year later and what we found is that when the department of justice report came down that Consent Decree sewing ferguson placed permit had engaged in an egregious form of racial discoloration against black motorists and people and black lives matter started getting so organized that it started going on the ground a bit and the tweets about black lives matter was not necessarily prominent as it was before. One year after Michael Browns death, i mean despite people using the black lives matter showed it was a delivery organizational strategy to highlight what was going on because Michael Brown was a catalyst in this sense that black lives matter wasnt extremely popular nationally, internationally before but the spy cap and particularly with november when the mayor was found or did not actually go to trial but the grand jury decided not to pursue charges but one year after they showed with the movement for black lives was about and how quickly they were able to organize and how quickly they learn strategies to use their mobile phones and all the apps that came up now like if youre stop by the police, hit this button and Start Recording and hear the things to do and it is layered up and it has become part of an ecosystem for people and how to interact with the police. While, i plan in my third series having a conversation around social theories and what that looks like going forward. I love the way you talk about it because you combine the tool which back in the day was a telephone tree but it came to organizing and now you combine collective that has mobilized activities and puts the brakes on the fact that these are no longer hidden phenomenon when it comes to police. I want to move to you, christian. Part of it is we are seeing it. I think we all with Trayvon Martin we saw the representation of the powerful imagery of hoodies and we see it but it came with Michael Brown and watching a video which i believe rashawn was on body camera . But we began to see citizens actually collect the information and the question i have for you is no one talks about the First Amendment and the fact that the legal rights associated with that and before we go deeper i want you to relay for us, christen, what should we be looking at in terms of the admissibility of these type of content . Yeah, first thing. Thank you so much doctor lee for bringing us together for this timely discussion. We really appreciate it and you know, you have the right to record. This is a right to that is protected under the First Amendment and courts have looked at the act of, of recording and taking photography as forms of expression that are clearly protected under the First Amendment. There is a circuit split on this question and it is possible that this question make make its way eventually to the Supreme Court but for the time being the courts have taken up this question of whether or not this is First Amendment protected activity and have found that it is and that there is no qualified immunity for officers. I wanted to take a step back and just talk about the power of visual images of violence and brutality perpetrated against black people throughout time because as it turns out this is not just the new thing but something that dates back to, you know, the darkest days of jim crow and the images of lynched black people and the images of people assaulted on the Edmund Pettis bridge. The images of john lewis being brutalized by state troopers and those images went viral two. They went viral on grainy, black and white tv screens and ended up being images seen all over the globe that really brought a degree of shame on america, shame on the nation and in some respect those images and that shame that came along with those images are what lays the groundwork for congress to pass the Voting Rights act of 1965. A propelled lyndon b. Johnson back against the wall to sign that remarkable act into law. Fastforward to moments like ronnie king and seen that brutality and what were those devices called . Right, i think that wasnt even a digital camera but a camcorder. Camcorder. Yeah, with that big tape. Seen the brutality perpetrated against rodney king is what laid the groundwork for there to actually be a prosecution of those cops who perpetrated that horrendous assault. Fastforward to, you know, walter scott who, you know, he is a 50 yearold man, stopped because of a broken tail light, former military and a human being and he stopped by a cop who claimed right, who claimed as we find out falsely that mr. Scott tried to take his taser and that he was forced to shoot but then the courageous person who happened to record that incident comes forward and we find out that there is a different truth that mr. Scott was running away and shot about a dozen times in the back and the officer planted that teaser next to his body. Then we fastforward to eric garner, right. Stir or to who, you know, recorded what happened there and you think about all these incidences and the through line is that throughout history images of the brutality have proven a powerful in promoting reform and sometimes promoting accountability but most often in shaming the public to see up close the vicious violence perpetrated against black people and against black lives. You are so right. Emmett till, if you ever go to the National Museum of Natural History culture and you walk watch the maney tilt made the decision to keep emmetts casket open so in terms of the shameful history that was a spark of the modernday Civil Rights Movement and when i was at [inaudible] they santana was one of the people we honored for taking that video and having the graciousness to actually record what happened to walter scott but since that time there have been so many and i think we said the name of every person who has been a victim of Police Brutality unarmed, sandra blair, all those people that have done that, ahmad aubrey, even the fact that we saw it is dramatic but that trauma that we are experiencing as we talk about the use of modernday technology to help us do exactly what kristin has said that has a history. And they talked about the Civil Rights Movement that they wanted to turn off what was happening and speak to us about the history in terms of media policy and eliminating our ability to be authentic and if you have questions, event at brookings. Edu and continue the conversation on the pursue justice. Thank you, nicol. Some people suspected but may not know that especially across the south in the 50s, 40s, 50s and early 60s there was Something Real and a thing called a news blackout. Governors got together with broadcasters, Police Officials got together with a Newspaper Publishers and when things were happening across this nation that would under any other circumstance, you know was newsworthy and deserve to be covered they were not and if particularly we were sensitive about it in South Carolina where there were a number of incidences and hominy people know about the massacre i can share this picture later but have you ever heard of Sarah Mae Fleming . Sarah mae fleming was a 20 yearold africanamerican female from South Carolina and its as rural as it sounds who got on a bus 17 months before rosa parks but because of the blackout, lack of covering which became two trials you dont hear about her but that is the case in Columbia South carina that sparked informed and enabled this success of the montgomery bus movements. What happens is not only we dont have dominion which we do now with these devices but we dont have possession for the ability to get the information out but because of that there were gatekeepers that purposefully ensured that those movements, those acts of rebellion, those injustices were not broadcast or printed and it gave a false impression to the world that we were okay and everything was all right that there was no problem here. You know that is not the case and what we have seen now are ubiquitous tools to, more level that Playing Field for visual, audible and other forms of justice. Yeah, i have to be honest this is a tough webinar for me to do folks because they are so close to home in the videos are so telling about what that looks like. I would assume rashawn in the work you do in working with Police Officers that that brings a different angle to their work as well and of course, i want to be sensitive to what you are seeing by what we are talking about so far which is the availability of content that brings the lived experiences of black people closer to home. Ones that were blackout for time and what is the strain on the police . Without taking any sides because we are nonpartisan and try to be open but where do the police find themselves with this plethora of content that is so telling about their behavior . I appreciate that question. Even to your point about having to get a caveat about which side we are on, unfortunate that we live in an era where it is perceived that people and police are on different sides were supposedly they are protect and serve you. I come from a lawenforcement family in a military family and now i study and work which is not even the reason why i study lawenforcement but it directly spanned out of the research i did on health but it speaks to your question about what impacts it has on police. I will try to break this down quickly. I think the first big thing is that it has a huge toll on their Mental Health and their emotional wellbeing. Now, lawenforcement is an extreme a difficult profession. I would argue probably most difficult that we have in our country. That being said they are ready dont get the proper resources they need when it comes to psychological services. There is a recent study highlighting 80 of law police have chronic stress and that is depression, anxiety and they get angered easily and they have familial problems, 80 . One out of six report substance abuse, one out of six report suicidal thoughts but 90 of them never seek help. Then you couple that with the destruction of a hero complex because part of what happens when kids grow up in the United States we are socialized to the police are there to protect us and they are the good people and we say good guys which depending on where you are in the country directly signals gender on top of that even for people who use guys to mean everyone but the point of that is as people get older that image starts to erode and for people trying to psychologically process that it has a huge impact on what they are doing and this is a kicker, even so their emotional and Mental Health is already problematic to begin with it doesnt necessarily impact their outcomes. There is a theory that has been put out there about the ferguson effect that came about when ferguson, missouri more or less sane because of the continuous strain or stress of Law Enforcement and the attention on them will impact how they do their job there is no research to support that whatsoever but if anything its the exact opposite and lets take this moment. Has Police Killings decreased during 2020 . No, its increased. Is the ferguson effect was correct what happened to george floyd and what happened to jacob blake right now would not have happened and of course there are other incidences we could highlight but so far as what happen is people get pushed back into a corner and they react to that. One of the biggest things i could tell is i [inaudible] my team at the lab that weve done right along in so many different right along and weve interviewed hundreds of Police Officers in this one main finding about black lives matter, we asked him what he think about the black lives Matter Movement and this was i think three years ago when we asked them this night dont necessarily thin