This Monday we will welcome MTS students Jabari Evans and Anne-Marie Singh to share their work with the Communication Studies community ahead of their presentations. Each student will briefly present their papers, after which we will have a Q&A session.
ANNE-MARIE SINGH
“Defining Network Effectiveness in Advocacy Networks”
Abstract: The 21st century is witnessing some of the world’s most catastrophic weather events, pandemics, and loss of human life and natural ecosystems, the causes of which can be traced back to unsustainable anthropogenic activities. To advocate and influence policy against these activities, nonprofits and funders are forming interorganizational networks that combine resources and mobilize action. However, policy wins are rare to come by and collaborations are hard to manage. How then do advocacy networks define effectiveness for themselves? And how do regional variations influence their definitions? Using an embedded case study design, I propose a study that will examine a climate advocacy network spread across seven states in the American Midwest to see how it defines and evaluates effectiveness for itself.
ANNE-MARIE SINGH (BOYER) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Media, Technology, and Society Program at Northwestern University and is working at the Network for Nonprofit and Social Impact Lab under Dr. Michelle Shumate’s advisorship. She has several years of experience working in environmental nonprofits as a communicator and as a science journalist in public media. Her research interests include nonprofit cross-sector collaborations that focus on environmental issues.
JABARI EVANS
“The Anatomy of Digital Clout: Examining the Social Media Self-Branding, Visibility and Relational Labor Strategies of Black Youth in Chicago’s DIY Hip-Hop Scene”
Abstract: Prior literature has suggested that it is through popular music that the social, professional and technological aspirations of Black youth often come together. Nowhere is this more evident than in the context of Hip-Hop culture, where Black youth inventiveness with digital tools is celebrated and valued far more than any other genre of media entertainment. Even so, academic work has paid little to no attention to artist perspectives on how they successfully cultivate sustainable careers as influencers on social media despite experiencing digital disadvantage. Using interviews with 25 artists in Chicago’s local Hip-Hop scene and digital urban ethnographic methods (e.g. Lane, 2019). I examine the relational labor for Hip-Hop artists embedded in the DIY ecosystem. I explore the content and character of their visibility work on social media toward acquiring “clout”- a form of cultural capital rooted in Hip-Hop communities of practice that resists digital inequity to accumulate the status and attention needed to cultivate loyal connections with fans, friends and other cultural producers. I identify three relational labor strategies that respondents described utilizing to acquire clout: a) Corralling b) Capping and, c) Co-Signing. Preliminary findings of this study suggest Hip-Hop artists significantly aid to the understanding of the cultural and communicative diversity arising from global access to social media. To conclude, I argue this scene provides an example of why formal institutions need to rethink how race, class, gender and geography influence the digital practices of influencers and how their practices could likely be harnessed to help build more positive social communities, peer relations and career pathways for Black youth.
JABARI EVANS is a PhD candidate in the School of Communication Studies at Northwestern University and a research fellow at the Northwestern Center of Media and Human Development. His research focuses on the subcultures that urban youth and young adults of color develop and inhabit to understand their social environments, emotional development and professional aspirations. He explores strategies these youth use for self-expression especially regarding digital media. His most recent work is examining the cultural production and social media habits of youth musicians in the DIY Hip-Hop micro-scene of Chicago. His forthcoming dissertation project, which centers on a Hip-Hop Education program in Chicago Public Schools, has been recognized for awards by the International Communication Association and has been covered by the Chicago Reader, Chicago Tribune, Rolling Out Magazine, Ebony Magazine and Chicago Crain’s Business. He was a 2019 selection for Microsoft Research New England’s Social Media Collective (SMC) PhD Internship.