Is everybody still with us . You guys awake . Its my pleasure to introduce our final panel before our keynote, justice inclusion, imagine and building alternative platforms. And so to introduce our guests, i would turn it right over to dr. Lori lopez and well start the panel with that. Thank you. All right. So, for our panel today, we have four wonderful speakers and im going to start by introducing them. So here we have margene christian, professor of Communication Studies at northwestern university, he recently earned tenure there so will very soon have the title of associate professor. Tanya sutherland is assistant professor of archival studies and Computer Sciences at the university of hawaii. New title. Well clap. Applause anyway. Sarah j. Jackson at Northeastern University and in july shell be starting a new position as president of communication at the university of pennsylvanias ananberg school of communication and matthew bui is the fellow at the university of southern californias ananberg school of communication. And im lori kilo lopez, at the university of wisconsin madison. Okay. In this panel, we want to explore the question of how we can use new Media Technologies for the specific purposes of Racial Justice and inclusion. It connects really well to the the themes of the Previous Panel but i think all of our research is going to take it in a different direction. These scholars look at antiracist interventions, including alternative media productions, archives, hash tag campaigns. Building on their wide array of experiences, they will discuss potential lessons, themes and strategies for a more radically and future distribution and consumption. Together we seek to engage with and produce scholarship activism aimed at the flattening discourses of diversity and multiculturalism. So im just going to open with kind of a broad question that i think will help you all to just tell us a little bit about the general work that youve been doing in this area. So what does Racial Justice look like in relation to your work, and how do you see your research as an intervention in the larger political social context around Racial Justice . And we can just go in order here. Hello. So i view Racial Justice as critical to my work and also as inextricably linked from gender justice, sexuality, Economic Justice and all the other forms of difference we contend with. In my specific work right now, ive been interested in what independent creators do online and how they make their own cultural products intervene in hollywood and industries more generally. So i after writing a book about independent web series creators called open tv in which i interview people like issa rae, who is probably the most famous person in the book at this point, i started a platform called open television to specifically assist chicago artists who are intersexually identified in making and releasing their own shows. When i was doing my work, trying to figure out why does the internet matter, i learned and sort of got deeper into how much money there is in hollywood, and how systematically excluded people of color have been in that system for so long. Netflix spends now i think 13 billion a year on original programming. Thats one channel. All the tech platforms spend over 1 billion a year. Hbo spends several billion dollars a year. A lot of money, but the number of people who actually are executive producers and creators of shows for all those networks, streaming or otherwise, i think is less than 5 to 7 . Thats all people of all colors. For television. And thats a lot of money that doesnt go to our communities and doesnt allow people to support younger creators and tell more stories and really help us all understand what its like to be racialized in america. So for me, Racial Justice is about getting people access to these systems but also Building Systems outside that could sustainably develop our communities when those systems inevitably lose interest, right, and the waves go. Right now were in a diversity wave. So i sort of knew that starting open television. That there would be an opportunity to maybe get some people in. And build an audience that might sustain these communities going forward. So my training is in arcable studies. And so im primarily interested in records and evidence and the specific context, also very much interested in digital memory and also as karen said on the Previous Panel, in the digital traces that we leave behind. So from that perspective, i look a lot at gaps in the arcable record. I look at how people are represented in records. I look pretty specifically at how records are contributing to our state. So the gathering of data and social media records. You know, the sort of push toward using those kinds of things. And i also have sort of deep investments in critical critically understanding decisions to move analog records into digital environments, which ill talk about more later. So, you know, in terms of a larger intervention in records and archives in digital memory, there are so many ways that records are used in our everyday are lives that were just not aware of. And someone on a Previous Panel said something about how we dont know how long we dont know how long Homeland Security records are going to be kept, for example. Well, for an archivist, thats actually not true. For archivist managers, there are laws that govern and mandate how long those records are kept. And those so looking at those kinds of concerns and being able to address the racialized aspects of them, the race overlay, you know, very typically when youre looking at gaps and vagaries in our historical record, its black people and other people of color and queer people that are falling into these gaps. And whether whether its just a lack of representation or if its work in our descriptive practices and how we name things, what we call people, you know, there is sort of a lack of empowerment right now in terms of people being able to name and call themselves, to record themselves, to create their own evidence and historical record. And the gap and the vaguery and the violences tend to happen to communities of color and also, again, to queer communities. So, you know, those are sort of my primary engagements and investments, how that plays out in the research, all kinds of ways. But it really always comes back to the record and the evidence in front of us. So my work, as some of you know, focuses on media activism and also the ways in which journalists and other media makers cover black activism, feminist activism, and et cetera. So the question of sort of like what does Racial Justice look like in relation to my work. Its basically what my work is about from a media studies framework and perspective. And i would say that that means that theres a lot of nuance and complication in that, because historically, there have been some sort of we can take technology as an example and folks on Previous Panels have noted this. There have been some myopic and very hopeful ideas spread that so, for example, technology will save us. That it will erase inequalities. That it will do et cetera, et cetera. That have lacked the interventions to sort of acknowledge that, for example, the internet is a tool of military technology, primarily, surveillance tool, primarily. And actually reinforces the hierarchical structures in our society. That many activists are using to try to upend. And so my work really considers and centers the question of the agency of activists and ordinary people. And thinking through the importance of the storytelling of those people. So we know hopefully we all know that there is sort of no media outlet or tool that is perfect or was created for the purpose of social justice. And yet we know that activists and ordinary folks use the tools available to them to tell really important and compelling stories that can change public narratives, that can change public politics, that can create Community Within groups that really helps to in some cases save lives, frankly. And so thinking through some of those issues in this terms of the question of Racial Justice means thinking through how are these media makers often at the margins really working on and helping to support projects of Racial Justice. But also how are those projects linked, and this is an important part, to the many projects and Many Organizations working on Racial Justice that we dont often see covered in the media or that we you know the things that are happening offline or the things that dont get covered because theyre not compelling enough or whatever. Which means thinking through the relationship of media activism and the framing of activism in media to the on the ground organizing, where folks are trying to make change. As one of the earlier scholars on this panel, i think i have multiple projects to answer this question. Im working out how my longterm Research Agenda thinking about how race racial inequality is shaped but also propagated through technology. So for one, my colleague and i just got this forthcoming article about how technology how communication policy structures are very white and center whiteness. And we actually didnt think it was an original idea to really say and argue that there is a need for centering and grounding, Diverse Communities of color. And actually, the interexchange within, communities of color are not monolithic. That was actually an original contribution we did not think to get through, but it is. And secondly, im working on a chapter thats talking about a. I. Ethics, and how as a dominant paradigm, why is it problematic that some boards dont even have representatives from marginalized communities that are the most vulnerable. Thinking about the lack of representation of black folks in the room, or even other endangered communities. And lastly, the dissertation that im currently working on in a year, hopefully it will be finished, thinking about urban data initiatives and urban data science as tools for datafied racism and how do we bring to light the racial politics of data, and well talk about that more later. Great. Thank you so much. So lets dig in a little bit more to get the specificities of your work and your research. Well start with amar. So lets talk more about open tv. You guys are creating tons of content. But i thought we could have a conversation about the idea of ownership and what you do with all of the content that youre producing. And what negotiations you make in thinking about where you post your media and then who owns it as a result of that. So can you talk a little bit about the decisions that youve made or the conversations that youve had with your media create first about posting on youtube or facebook versus tart are starting your own platform. Yeah, theres a lot there. So ownership is so critical, request and we dont normally think about it when we think about creative media. But hollywood is ravenous for intellectual property. Most of the shows you watch there used to be restrictions on how much an entity could own that they distributed. That got killed with regulation. And the results of that in the 90s was actually the black television, because corporations figured out a way to make money without having to cater to community and building new answers. And i think this is a real problem for inequality and sustainability. If you are a real creator, youre almost given this proposition, if you want this story made, you have to sell it to us and then you lose control over it, right . They can bring in other writers who may not sure your little perspective or culture to make it. So when i started open television, i very specifically started started theed with of that artists who own, we have a letter of agreement where it states that quite clearly. Part of this was like i didnt want people to get into conversation. And i didnt have money to defendedly glee its also an ethical thing. I wanted them to walk into the room, saying, this is my story, i own it, and should be able to profit from it. What ive tehraned since many of our artists have gone on in television, because theyre new and havent been in the system as decades as other people have, dont look like the producer, theyre still in the position where theyre made to sell their story. And sometimes they walk away. And i really cant blame them for that. When you put something on the internet, you have some platform intern terms of and it was have the rights to say you can put anything on youtube in an ad. They generally accept the proposition you are creator and i. P. Holder of that property. And yet at the same time, if you actually want to profit from that, most people, unless youve been on uindicated, are not might go bank off their loose, right . They need another system in order to property. Of their vid, right . They need to enter another system in order to profit. So we need infrastructures, right . We need infrastructures to figure out how to correct these systems, and for me thats really the research question, right . Can you actually create a structure that is equitable that brings people in from the ground up and allows them to soar, make their own money and build their own system so that they can support other people. Thats the work of sort of social transformation, and i dont have the answers yet. Theres possibilities of spinning off corporations and nonprofits and doing deals with investors and stuff, but its very complicated and very heady and thinking about liberation in any of these instances is very difficult. Youtube and vimio and their algorithms make it very difficult for any independent creator to build an audience, to get seen. Maybe ten years ago it was a little bit possible, more possible to spread, but now theres so much content and all of those companies are also spending their own money on their own intellectual property. Youtube has youtube premium. Facebook is now entering television. They want independent creators because they want that free ip, but they also dont because they dont want stuff to compete with their own things. Algorithms as wendy chun has been arguing are inherently discriminatory and might be disadvantaging creators of color. There really are tremendous barriers. As researchers its important for us to be in that space. Thats where you get that rich thick data where you understand this is whats going on on the ground and these are the really specific barriers to justice. Yeah, so in this conversation about alternative platforms and how we can get around that, where are you seeing some of the hopeful areas . That was kind of a bleak answer, but the limits and barriers . Hopeful things. I would say, you know, people are really hungry for stories that reflect them, right . So we released this show in 2017 called brown girls, and it ended up being our hit show. Premiered basically right around the time of trumps election. It was the story about a friendship between a black woman and queer muslim woman written by a queer muslim woman about her friendship with a black woman, ja mila woods. Ja mila is a beautiful singer, you should look up her music if you havent heard it. I do think sincere narratives artfully told can energize communities to support independent creators, and it it really was multiple intersectional community that propelled that show to an hbo sale and emmy nomination. Fatina wrote a book and has been touring. They have then supported creators that come after them, right . So i can see how youre actually building solidarity sort of project by project, but of the 40 something programs that otv has released its really that one and maybe a couple others that have had that big success story. Most of the ones are little seen. Even the ones that are little seen have been able to get writers gigs in hollywood. Its getting them some credits and some level of professionalization, so i do think theres a way in which im learning that even as we in academia f academia sometimes small data actually can have a much larger impact than we think, especially for the lives of those artists. Ive also seen a lot of artists, everything is chicago based right, a lot of artists supporting each other. Theyre starting to post about each others shows. Theyre collaborating with each other and this idea that younger people are hyper individualistic i think is maybe true in some contexts but not all contexts. Film and Television Production is highly collaborative and you have to support each other if you want to get anywhere. Its really only through cle collective effort that were going to remake these systems. Thank you. Tonia lets talk a little bit more about your work on digital memory. What kind of practices have you been seeing and how has race played a role in those practices . And how is it that people of color are fighting for both the right to be remembered and the right to be forgotten, and what roles do technology play in both of those . Ooh, okay. So in terms of digital memory practices, one of the things that ive been looking really closely at is digital after life practices, looking at what im calling digital remains. Im sure im not the first person to use that term, but its the one thats sort of singing to my heart right now. So i have several example for you. The first as i sort of gestured towards earlier, is this practice of moving records that were analog records into digitized or into digital environments, digitizing them and moving them into digital environments and so some of what that looks like is taking slavery records, for example, or colonial era records and mass digitizing them and putting them up online, which in theory is fantastic, right, because it means that people who didnt who priorly previously may not have had access to say ge geneoloical materials can help build an zest rial history. The Danish National archives just digitized Something Like a kilometer of colonial era records from the virgin islands, and they sort of did it without any real context or without putting it into any kind of context. They just, you know, dingtizgit all of this stuff and threw it up online. And now you have people looking at these records and being like whoa, wait a minute, thats my an zeses ter and the image of tm is whipped and bleeding or the image im seeing online is a violent image, and i did