a case study in social media storytelling, self-distribution, and community activation
As we have seen over the course of this semester, “Third Cinema” is a broad and inclusive term for any form of storytelling done outside of/in opposition to contemporary imperialist and capitalist hegemonic structures. While broad objectives such as cultural identification or political sovereignty can be seen as common motives across the movement, the specifics of what that means and the aesthetic implementation of those objectives vary widely. Film theorist Teshome Gabriel identified three different stages in the development of a particular culture’s filmmaking praxis. Stated at their most basic: the first stage is direct imitation of pre-existing colonizing forms while the second is the integration of indigenous or pre-colonial narratives, traditions, languages and rituals, though sometimes to a reductive and/or romanticized result. In the third stage, Gabriel asserts that a film culture has finally emerged as endemic to its place and time when it is able to imagine filmmaking as a public service; one of mass participation and polyvocality, with a diminished focus on technical or artistic “perfection” and instead an emphasis on practical and ideological challenges to existing power structures.
While today we have myriad methods by which to distribute and consume media, at this exact moment the social media platform Instagram holds sway. With over 800 million active users, 80% of whom live outside the United States, this visual storytelling platform is a ripe venue for both big business and independent artist-activists. In 2017 alone, the number of people actively using and viewing the “stories” feature on the platform tripled. 64% of Americans under the age of 30 are currently using the platform, so perhaps it is no coincidence, then, that this generation also happens to be one of the most politically engaged and informed generations in recent history. As socially engaged filmmakers continue to struggle within a perceived scarcity model of time, funding, distribution and audience, Instagram provides a low-cost way to tell compelling stories and find community with little to no post-production lag time. I seek to share a few examples of “handles” working in this space that effectively use the means and methods of Third Cinema to share content, engage with their community, control their own narratives, and– at times– seek remuneration.
Before I begin down that road, it bears mentioning that Instagram is owned by Facebook and was purchased by that entity in 2012 for (at that time) a record breaking $1billion USD. As the breadth and depth of just how multinational corporations continue to harvest, use, and abuse our data for financial and political gain becomes known, the implementation of any social media platform as a distribution strategy should come with many caveats. This paper will not address the many pitfalls of the big data surveillance state, but merely seeks to explore how independent organizations are using these corporate tools in ways beyond their original intentions.
There are several precedents that have paved the way for this particular moment. Citizen reportage has become an incredibly vital tool for revealing the unseen, amplifying the voices of the unheard, and rallying public outcry. The hand held video footage of Rodney King’s abuse has now evolved into an ever constant stream of social media posts displaying the oppressive violence enacted against Black citizens, and this in turn has sparked the hashtag of a movement: Black Lives Matter. What’s more, many cite social media’s involvement in landmark political moments such as the Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement, and– of course– the results of the 2016 US Presidential election. While it may all be 1’s and 0’s, no one can doubt that what happens online has a direct impact in what happens IRL.
For example, if one scrolls back far enough on the Facebook page of The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, one arrives at a simpler time, where their Facebook posts announced upcoming community events, diabetes screenings, and scheduled access to facilities. These posts had, on average, between 10 and 100 “likes” and a handful of shares a piece. However, between August 2016 and today, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe found in Facebook a way to make known their battle with the Army Corps of Engineers over the plans for the Dakota Access Pipeline. By late December 2016 the tribe’s page was not only posting daily updates from their own camp, calling for supplies, and disseminating press releases, they were also reposting news coverage from mainstream media outlets such as CNN, NBC, MSN, as well as independent documentaries made from within the Oceti Sakowin camp. Their use of social media enabled them to quickly signal boost their own struggle and rally both physical and financial support for their cause from across the Indigenous community and beyond.
Indigenous Identity on Instagram
While the audience of the Standing Rock moment was found mostly via Facebook, it is the hipper and more media savvy youth generation of the Indigenous diaspora who have taken to Instagram. @indigenousnews was begun in 2015 by a teenage Hondureña in response to her own community’s battles with mining and logging interests. With a consistent aesthetic that mimics newspaper headlines, this handle attempts to communicate “Daily News the Media Won’t Cover” and “Awareness for Native Communities”. She offers article-like captions that site news sources, makes use of the multi-image display function to tell larger visual stories, and openly engages with comments. It also bears noting that unlike traditional activists and storytellers, this young woman has no trouble blending her personal struggles with political ones. She is currently on a hiatus while dealing with the suicide of a tribal family member; for her the personal is political and vice versa. By sharing her own story in the context of the larger battle, she confirms her own relationship to and investment in the content she posts, garnering trust and identification with her audience.
By contrast, @reclaimyourpower is a prolific and somewhat impersonal handle with over 99K followers and counting. While not expressly political in its messaging, this handle’s goal is self-representation, and their popularity comes from the fact that the majority of their content is user generated from within the female indigenous community. Their mantra “Strong, Resilient, Indigenous” has been commodified into a clothing line, and many of the posts include photos of Indigenous folks wearing these garments, sometimes mixed together with traditional dress. While the handle does not actively engage in dialogue in the comments, the community itself is incredibly supportive of one another, doling out praise in an array of native tongues for representations of beauty, strength, and the active preservation of cultural heirlooms. While some may assert that this handle (and Instagram in general) are little more than vain gestures, @reclaimyourpower’s devoted following makes clear that this handle is filling a need for self-representation and empowerment outside of the norms of western (white supremacist) beauty standards.
In a different form of self-representation, the handle @indigenousgeotags is using hypersaturated images of nature and a consistent handwritten font to counter-map US landmarks with traditional Indigenous names. Each post comes with a caption, explaining the history of, say, The Washington DC National Mall, but within an Indigenous context. The handle was begun in September 2017 but has quickly gained a massive following by doing consistent outreach— as evidenced by how many people the handle itself follows. Of note is that this page has begun posting open ended questions to their audience, and then tagging other indigenous activists in the post in order to spark their engagement. One of the key assets of social media (as opposed to traditional linear narrative) is the democratic way that the audience is given space within the form to dialogue about the issues addressed. Top down hierarchy is heavily challenged, and can be encouraged or denied. The website for Indigenous Geotags not only teaches others how to create their own geotags, but also invites the Indigenous community to share the stories of their respective lands with the larger world. Free and open access to knowledge and tools is the cornerstone of a free and open internet, and when that ethos is brought into media projects everyone wins.
Which brings us to @whatbringsushere, perhaps one of the most formally traditional instagram handles in this list. Based on a short film produced by NFB, this instagram is a photoessay storytelling project that can be read from the beginning to the end like a film— credits included. It has a very small following and has been inactive for quite some time—it was evidently only created for this specific project with little other ulterior objective; a missed opportunity to be sure. If one begins with the first post, one can see that the project plays like a linear narrative- each photo is accompanied by interview text or ‘narration’ that explains the backstory of the project, all centered around a community organization on the search for missing indigenous women and girls. The photos are not ‘eye catching’ enough for the media-saturated world of instagram, and trying to tell a linear narrative in this space is largely ineffective, as the end user sees the last post first and posts do not arrive in one’s feed consecutively. By trying to bring top-down filmmaking rhetoric to the social media realm, this project fails to make use of the media rich tools and engagement strategies native to the form.
On the other hand, some individuals are well aware of the particular tools at their disposal, and the next generation of female warriors from “Soy Defensor de la Selva” have found their niche on Instagram. Sarayaku tribal member @ninagualigua began her account in June 2015, and while she does not have that many posts she already has a rather massive following. It bears stating that one of Nina’s biggest assets in this highly visual form is her own identity: many of her ‘selfies’ are striking and highly curated, are interwoven with captions from her personal life, and garner repeated comments on her beauty. However, Nina also intersperses these with updates on her activist interventions and stories of the people and traditions of her village. In this way she is using her platform and the tools available (her appearance, outsider fascination with indigenous culture) to her advantage. She has translated that cultural capital into financial capital by fighting fire with fire: her jewelry line– made in collaboration with the women of her village– funds community based economic initiatives that actively oppose deforestation, mining, and fossil fuel extraction.
Kurdish Warriors in Northern Syria
Some wage war against their oppressors by making jewelry, while others must resort to rifles. There is a string of handles operated by members of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, a largely Kurdish military and political campaign currently holding their own against Assad and ISIS. The primary handle is that of the “Press Office” of the military: @rojava_ypg_ypj which is a private handle, meaning one must be permitted to follow them and access their content. This is a tactic that activist groups can and should use– by gatekeeping who can see their content they are able to organize outside of the purvue of their antagonists. The YPG and YPJ handles consistently write their captions in multiple languages, and have a specific set of demands which are included in each post. These handles, unlike many previously mentioned, make active use of video content, mixing war reportage with documentary style narratives of specific (often martyred) soldiers, as well as cultural ephemera such as music, dances and community events. The editing styles are clearly intended to recruit young passionate people; and subtitles are always an effective way to grab the viewers attention as they scroll through their feed. These handles seem to have taken a cue from movements like Standing Rock by consistently tagging mainstream press outlets and certain celebrities within each post (including Yanni!?). They also cross post one another in a form of digital community signal boosting. They often include youtube links within their captions which is ineffective; it would be better to link to a specific youtube channel from their bio. Perhaps this is done for safety reasons, as a connection to a specific youtube channel would automatically tie them to a trackable email account. Some of their content comes with a content warning: selected images must be clicked on, and reveal scenes of extreme violence and bloodshed; a vivid example of the struggles they currently face. Not much information is given about the people behind these handles for good reason. Interestingly, the word “heval” means “friend” in Kurdish, so I wonder if some of these anonymously helmed handles are being operated outside of Syrian territory on their behalf.
Teenage Transmedia Storytelling: SKAM Austin
On the opposite end of the gravitas spectrum, SKAM Austin is the American iteration of a wildly popular show about contemporary teens originally created by NRK and Director/Writer Julie Andem. Dealing with topics like homosexuality, sexual abuse and the realities of being a young Muslim girl, the original Norwegian show took teens across the planet by storm. The global audience has translated the short episodes into various languages and added the stories to torrent sites everywhere. This new American iteration, set in Austin, Texas is currently being released on Facebook in real time, but the project uses Instagram as another element within their storytelling universe. The project has an official IG handle: @skamstan which serves as a promotional tool, but also connects their audience to the various fictional character’s handles, who in turn post narrative developments coinciding with the real time release of each episode. These posts play with all the available forms of teen-driven net content: from makeup tutorials to school news show segments to “live updates” and story posts. The show has a very active comments section where teens engage in discussion about the topics the show addresses, speculate on plot developments, and regularly complain about Facebook’s censorship of expletives. : /
Rural Queers finding their own
Perhaps my personal favorite on this list is one that hits close to home. @queerappalachia was begun by a small group of friends in direct response to the tragic suicide of their comrade, transwoman and artist Bryn Kelly. What began as a personal actualization of their long imagined zine project has since exploded into a very active instagram handle, website, fully funded print zine, social activism grant funding project, queer opioid recovery program and more. Much like @reclaimyourpower, what makes this project so successful is its standing invitation for submissions in the form of ‘electric dirt’. In fact, nearly all of their content is user generated, and the manager of this page said in a recent interview that maintaining their inbox alone is a full time job. The steady stream of content means this handle is constantly active and makes extensive use of the stories and highlights tools of Instagram. Posts can range from queer related content to protest announcements, political candidate endorsements or criticisms, local events announcements, handicrafts, memes… you name it, they’ll post it. In the realm of social media there is no need for consistent messaging, aesthetic or a singular POV. Interestingly this project was not started with the intention of garnering this type of following, and the social media manager of QA has said, “If we wanted to make this happen, we couldn’t have”, showing that they have made their name by listening to and meeting their audience’s needs rather than delivering a product no one needed. In January 2017 they started a gofundme to create a print publication based off the popularity of the IG handle. They initially asked for $8,000, but that goal was quickly met and they finally closed the fundraiser after they had made 3x that amount within the span of one month!
Transvisibility and the reclamation of narrative
Lastly I would like to point out how one trans activist, Reina Gossett, was able to turn the tables on the cis-gendered patriarchal film world with one simple instagram post. Gossett and her collaborator Sasha Wortzel have been working steadily on a project inspired by the life and work of Marsha P Johnson for several years, but were continually struggling to find funding. Last year when white gay male filmmaker David France released a netflix documentary “The Death and Life of Marsha P Johnson”, Gossett took to Instagram to lay bare the hypocrisy and (alleged) piracy of this content from her and Wortzel’s work. With one post Gossett raised questions of who had the right to the trans narrative and asserted her place as a scholar and vocal advocate for the community. A quick visit to the reviews section of France’s documentary on Netflix shows that this debate is far from over, and has raised very vital questions about who gets to profit off the life and struggles of whom. While Gossett has since removed the post (and de-activated her instagram altogether) she circled the wagons of her community around her and Wortzel’s project, Happy Birthday Marsha! which has it’s own IG handle, @hbdmarsha. Appropriately, this handle is not heavily concerned with self-promotion and instead spends most of its screen time sharing photos and stories of Johnson herself.
CONCLUSION
There are many that will tell you social media is not useful. Malcolm Gladwell himself has argued (in the typical, long winded, millenial-bashing fashion of most Boomers) that social media activism fails because it does not take risks; that ‘digital activists’ are too diffuse, their networks too superficial, their commitments to causes too broad and unspecific. However, I would counter the opposite. Millenials and Generation Zers were born into a world literally fraught with issues. In hopes of addressing as many as possible, members of this generation realize that problems are not singular, but interrelated; they require multi-tiered and interdisciplinary approaches, collaboration, and a chorus of voices sharing the mic. The real challenge of internet activism comes in the ‘act’ part: in his recent book “The End of Protest” Occupy organizer Micah White counters the rhetoric of ‘good ol’ days of protest luddites like Gladwell, arguing that we need to meet our foes where they are: the markets and ballot boxes, not the streets.
In her book Emergent Strategy, social justice organizer adrienne marie brown looks at patterns in the natural world as a model for how human beings can organize on both the personal and political level. Through imagery such as flocking and the mycellial network, brown suggests new ways of being and doing that embrace collaboration, entanglement, and organization on a macro level… even when our objectives are not unified on a micro scale. This rhizomatic, polyvocal, but consistently moving mode of being is what we see modeled in social media, where silos are broken, conversation is held, battles are waged, knowledge is disseminated, old narratives are challenged, and people acquire the right to tell their own stories in their own ways within their own means. This is in direct opposition to most modes of traditional filmmaking which– even in Third Cinema history– have been available to those of financial and educational means first and foremost.
It is my belief that in spite of it’s many criticisms, social media has many affordances. It transcends borders, finding affinity based community from the far corners of the globe. It has a lightning fast response time for breaking news and political organization. It enables democatic engagement and sharing with considerably less top-down hierarchical structure. The aesthetics of the internet are laissez-faire, and audiences have come to embrace low production value as an indicator of authenticity. Groups are able to signal boost one another or related interests in a model of inclusion and abundance, and communities are able to meet, discuss, (and unfortunately argue), in a space that enables polyvocality, knowledge sharing, humor, anger and more. As a visual medium, instagram is ripe for filmmakers to use, with the added benefit of contextual captions, geotags, hashtags, external bio links, and direct engagement with audience. In a mode of corporate jiu-jitsu, many communities are able to use male and white supremacist gaze, commodification, and the cultural capital of celebrities and the 1% to bring attention to their causes, fund their campaigns, and challenge their opponents. It is my hope that in the coming years we will see the fruits of this digital labor translate into tangible results at the ballot box, in the board room, and (perhaps most importantly) at the bodega.