Christal Seahorn, PhD
Associate Professor of Writing & Digital Rhetoric
University of Houston-Clear Lake
@ProfSeahorn on the socials
How are social media users engaging with the Montgomery Riverboat Brawl?
What conclusions can be drawn from the themes and patterns that emerge in this virtual participation?
To Contextualize the Event
Victor Turner's concept of spontaneous communitas
Edith Turner's work on collective joy
Adapt Sara Ahmed's theories on phenomenological re(orientation) and affect as cultural practice
Research Objectives
Emergent themes and what they allows us to say about expressions of Blackness and joy.
Peele beneath levity and entertainment to: 1) a cathartic reclamation of agency, 2) an expansion of historical and cultural knowledge, 3) a shared narrative experience that inverted expected social structures, and 4) the recognition of Black joy as a fraught emotion.
Step 0: Data selection
Popular Hashtags (total views)
#FoldingChair 28.6k
#MontgomeryBrawl 18.3k
#Riverboal 15.3k
#AlabamaBrawl 11.2k
n = 211 videos with at least 100k views
Limiters
Limited by date: August 5-19, 2023
Sorted by total comments
Omitted news and celebrity sources
Limited to videos with at least 500 comments
n = 129 videos
Step 1: Preliminary code generation and theme identification
Faculty team members watched the first 50 videos, noting significant and overarching themes
Faculty team members held a discussion to develop and standardize a preliminary codebook
Step 2: Codebook creation
RQs: How are social media users engaging with the Montgomery Riverboat Brawl?What conclusions can be drawn from the themes and patterns that emerge in this virtual participation?
Noted three primary categories: Tone, Theme, and Genre
Subcategories for each with distinct descriptions
Step 3: Revision/refinement of themes
Student and faculty team members met to train and test the codebook
Discussed naming and descriptions of categories and subcategories
Normed the same 3 videos, selecting examples and justifications
Discussed and debated the usability of the codebook and made revisions to themes and descriptions
Codebook created
Step 4: Coding
Student team members independently coded all 129 videos, reviewing each multiple times, making side notes where content emerged that was not captured in the codes
At least 2 researchers had to agree on a code for it to count
Reliability = 88.9%
Step 5: Final Cleaning and Totals
no longer available
no ref the event, only uses the #MontgomeryBrawl
pre-brawl videos
n = 113 videos analyzed in the results
Violence [Filtered]
42% Pride
68% Humor and Joy
Ancestors [theme—9%] + Family [theme—14%] show Comeuppance [tone—34%] and Pride [tone—34%]
Omit Sol Vid = nearly same percentages; expressions of Pride up slightly
Low numbers speculation for the YouTube corpus
Self-conscious joy [theme—4%]
Reparations [theme—3%] but CU
History [theme—4%]--Harriet II, black man, Nathaniel Alexander, patent the folding chair; history of Montgomery in Civil Rights movement; Montgomery riverfront location where enslaved persons arrived in Alabama
Artistic Production [Genre—2%]
Understanding Black Joy
Kristie Soares's "playful protest"
Saidiya V. Hartman's "Black enjoyment"
Audre Lorde on the erotic
Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer phenomenology: Orientations, objects, others. Duke UP.
Hartman, S. V. (1997). Scenes of subjection: Terror, slavery, and self-making in nineteenth century America. Oxford UP.
Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider. Essays and speeches by Audre Lorde. Crossing Press.
Soares, K. (2023). Playful protest: The political work of joy in Latinx media. Univ of Illinois Press
Turner, E. (2012). Communitas: The anthropology of collective joy. Palgrave Macmillan
Turner, V. (1982). From ritual to theatre: The human seriousness of play. PAJ Publications.
Research team: Dr. Wanalee Romero, Beverly Buari, Rachel Hardin, Kaira Jackson
Christal Seahorn, PhD
Associate Professor of Writing and Digital Rhetoric
Writing Program Director
University of Houston-Clear Lake
@ProfSeahorn on the socials
