Background--Aug 5, 2023, Riverfront Park, Montgomery, AL

Research Question

• 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?

Theoretical Framework

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.  

Methods: Thematic Analysis Steps

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

Results

Discussion Points 

Final Extensions

Understanding Black Joy

• Kristie Soares's "playful protest"

• Saidiya V. Hartman's "Black enjoyment" 

• Audre Lorde on the erotic

References

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. 

Acknowledgements

Research team: Dr. Wanalee Romero, Beverly Buari, Rachel Hardin, Kaira Jackson