Digital Marketers Can Play A Role In Archiving For Black Lives Matter
Preserving the Culture as a form of resistance and resilience in the Black Lives Matter Movement
In 2015, after Black people spoke out against the mysterious-death-ruled-suicide of Sandra Bland while in Houston police custody, her hashtag algorithm was deleted from Tumblr, Instagram and Twitter. While the hashtag was restored, many in academia began archiving tweets as a way to preserve how people responded to social issues.
There is a deep and ugly history of erasure of Black voices in the media.
In writing about community-based approaches to preserving Black Lives Matter, Senior Archivist Yvonne Ng says it best:
“This growth reflects a recognition that people and communities should be empowered to document and preserve their own histories, and to make decisions about how their stories are collected and used. These participatory archive movements are especially valuable in communities that institutional archives have traditionally overlooked or misrepresented, and in communities where archives belonging to the state or other institutions have historically enabled discrimination and abuse.”
She’s right! The practice and work of archiving should not be solely left to academics. Digital marketers can play a role in archiving for Black Lives Matter. Given that we are often social listening and collecting data on how consumers feel during a particular time, we can use that data to help archivists protect Black history from those who seek to delete it.
How We Collect Info for Our Digital Archive
Any type of digital content can be collected such as photos, videos, tweets.
Here at Adebukola.com we’re committed to archiving how major brands are aligning themselves to the Black Lives Matter movement. We’re collecting information on how much money companies pledge, how consumers are responding to it, and structural changes they’re making as a result of that.
For example, if we find a video that aligns with our archive, we will screenshot the content and add it to a digital folder. Then we save metadata of that digital asset including the url, date of publication, author, and timestamp of publication.
To learn more about digital archiving video and other content, visit the Activists' Guide to Archiving Video by Witness.org
To submit your personal archive to academic/institutional Black archivists, visit this amazing thread by Save Your Story.
