Summer Research Reports: Alexis Wood on Social Media & Secessionist Movements
BCNM is thrilled to support our students in their summer research. Read about Alexis Wood on Social Media and Secessionist Movements!
This summer, Berkeley Center for New Media’s summer research grant provided support for an archival portion of my dissertation project, allowing for a multi-day trip to the California State Archives in Sacramento.
As part of my larger dissertation research concerning the intersection of rural socio-political movements, digital space, and climate change, I have been creating a qualitative database of state secessionist movements across the United States through time, called State of Mind, State of Mine, or SoMSoM, with an incredible team of undergraduates. The archival research conducted using the BCNM summer grant resulted in the digitization of dozens of photographs, newspapers, and letters in the California State Archive which will be published to a broader audience.
Over the past year, I have been mentoring seven URAP students and one Undergraduate New Media Research Fellow using this project as a framework to teach students how to conduct archival and social media research as well as the fundamentals of how to build a qualitative and spatial database. In this process, we are writing comprehensive profiles of each movement, providing historical context, key figures, motivations, and outcomes. For current movements, these profiles include public social media presence - documenting causes these movements have supported, rhetoric they have employed, and which platforms they utilize. These forms of social media have allowed secessionist movements to move past geographic boundaries in support and influence – this database allows us a cursory peek at the types of networks being built and used in political and social processes in the age of instantaneous media.
Over the summer, this project was picked up by the Leventhal Map Library’s Early Career Grant Program and will be published in partnership with the library next year.