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Forty years after the U.S. documented its first cases of HIV, Christopher Garcia-Wilde says a focus on basic essentials can help vanquish the worlds most persistent pandemic.

At 25, Christopher Garcia-Wilde has never known a world without AIDS, but the University of Miami medical and public health student envisions onethrough the kind of social activism that closed the worlds first prison camp for refugees with HIV.

Garcia-Wilde was not yet born in the fall of 1991. Thats when the U.S. imprisoned Yolande Jean and more than 200 other asylum-seeking Haitians who tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS in a detention camp on the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

But the fourth-year student at the Miller School of Medicine, a seasoned activist who studies the impact of social movements on public health, sees parallels between how the world treats many people living with HIV today and how the U.S. treated Jean and other refugees who fled the wave of terror that followed the military overthrow of Haitis first democratically elected president.

Christopher Garcia-Wilde

Yolande Jean and fellow refugees at Camp Bulkeley experienced unsafe, unsanitary, and deplorable living conditions that were oppressive and diametrically opposed to their health, Garcia-Wilde wrote in a student perspectivefor the July print issue of the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH).

Similarly, Garcia-Wilde continued, many people living with HIV are affected by government policies, corporate patents, health care systems, and discriminatory social conditions that are in opposition to their health. This reality holds true around the world, with millions of HIV-positive people facing daily food insecurity, poverty, language barriers, racism, sexism, homophobia, and criminalization.

The July issue, which is dedicated in part to the 40th anniversary of the first reported cases of HIV in the U.S., also includes an editorial by the Universitys graduate school dean, Guillermo Willy Prado, vice provost for faculty affairs and professor of nursing and health studies, public health sciences, and psychology, on the inequities of HIV prevention and treatment among Latinas.

Since June 1981, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention described the first U.S. cases of HIV, the virus has infected 76 million people around the world, killing nearly half of them. And despite the introduction in 2012 of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medications that can prevent HIV transmission, the virus still infects about 1.7 million new people every year.

As such, Garcia-Wilde contends that efforts to end the worlds most persistent pandemic wont succeed if they focus on the development of vaccines, sex education, biomedical prevention, or antiretroviral medications. Instead, he argues, ending HIV/AIDS will depend on broad coalitions demanding a social transformation to provide housing, health care, healthy foods, clean water, and other basic essentials to those who live without.

We can end HIV. We will end it, insisted Garcia-Wilde, who, as an undergraduate brought free HIV testing to students at the University of Florida. But we have to change peoples social context. A lot of the things we see in our hospital and clinics come from a lack of housing, health insurance, healthy foods, and from exposures to occupational or environmental riskswhich are often created by systems, structures, and laws that require power to change. So, we have to confront the people in power who can change them. Just like the people in the first prison camp for HIV-positive refugeesand their supportersdid.

As Garcia-Wilde documented in his AJPH commentary, Jean was arrested and beaten during the September 1991 military coup that ousted President Jean Bertrand Aristide. An organizer of adult literacy programs, she was pregnant at the time, and suffered a miscarriage. In hopes of seeking asylum in the U.S., she joined thousands of Haitians who fled in rickety boats.

Intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard, she was among hundreds of refugees taken to the Guantanamo Bay camp and, after testing positive for HIV, confined in tents that offered scant protection from the elements. The detainees received even less care or comfort for their trauma. Their meager belongings were burned. The women were physically abused and forcibly injected with a long-acting contraceptive. Soldiers in riot gear regularly swept the compound.

After 15 days of a hunger strike to protest the abuse, Jean was placed in solitary confinement. But as news of the protest spread, law students at Yale University coordinated rolling hunger strikes that moved to universities across the nation. As lawyers challenged the detentions in court, a broad coalition of religious leaders, immigration groups, and HIV/AIDS activists organized demonstrations, petitions, and media blitzes. Movie stars condemned the detentions at the Academy Awards.

When a federal judge finally ordered the detainees released into the U.S. in June 1993, their lawyers credited the legal victory in part to the outside organizers and their agitation strategywhat Garcia-Wilde calls confronting power.

The son of South Florida public school teachers, Garcia-Wilde became interested in the power of social movements after the 2012 death of fellow high schooler Trayvon Martin. The 17-year-old Miami-Dade student was shot by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman while visiting his father in Central Florida. Not much came from the walk-out Garcia-Wilde helped organize at his Miramar High School to compel Zimmermans arrest, but he soon found his ideological home with the Dream Defenders.

Launched by mostly college students after Zimmermans acquittal, the civil rights organization didnt succeed in its initial goal of repealing Floridas Stand Your Ground law. But it has evolved into a broader movement focused on bringing housing, health care, jobs, and upward mobility to all.

Last year, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Garcia-Wilde spent three days a week at St. Johns Baptist Church in Miamis Overtown neighborhood, where Dr. Armen Henderson, an assistant professor of medicine at the Miller School and fellow Dream Defenders volunteer, ensured the homeless could find free food, showers, clothes, and hygiene products as the rest of the world hunkered down.

Garcia-Wilde, who plans to specialize in pediatrics and internal medicine so he can help "everyone from newborns to elderly folks," said his St. John's experience reinforced the beliefs he expressed on the 40th anniversary of the first HIV cases in the U.S. I met a lot of people there who were concerned about their next meal or about losing their things if they used the bathroom, he said. They werent concerned about taking their meds to prevent or treat HIV. That wasnt a priority because they were just trying to survive.

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Medical student urges social transformation to end HIV/AIDS - University of Miami

In Black Lives Matter; Marxist Hate Dressed Up as Racial Justice? by John Perazzo, published by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, the editor of the publication writes: Editors note: In this just-released report on Black Lives Matter, author John Perazzo exposes the BLM movement as a racist, anti-Semitic, anti-family and anti-capitalist attack on the very foundations of American democracy.

Perazzo accurately shares the origins of BLM. It came into existence because of the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman who had been charged with the murder and manslaughter of Black teen Trayvon Martin in 2012. BLM was founded to end the virulent anti-black racism that permeates American society. The movement gained steam with the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 and with each Black death by cop after that.

Perazzo goes on to label the three women who founded BLM. All three were Marxists: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi. Tometi never openly stated that she was a Marxist, but she endorsed Venezuelas Nicholas Maduro and the late Hugo Chavez.

Perazzo then went on to list names of communists, socialists and dictators despised among conservative readers. The list included Fidel Castro, former Black Panther, convicted cop-killer, and longtime fugitive Assata Shakur, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, Saul Alinsky, Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. The list goes on.

This listing of names brought back memories of the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s where anybody who knew a communist or a socialist was guilty by association.

BLM is pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel (which does not make them anti-Semitic), anti-nuclear family, but pro-community, and Democratic. All these are dog whistles for evil in conservative circles.

BLM was blamed for violence and deaths in the race demonstrations that have taken place all over the country. BLM received blame for a dramatic increase in violent crime, especially in NYC: New York City was likewise turned into a cauldron of violence by BLM hatred Perazzo blamed BLM for the police pulling back from enforcing the law, fearful of becoming another Derek Chauvin, recently convicted of murdering George Floyd. Issues of the COVID pandemic were not considered in Perazzos arguments.

Perazzo concludes his pamphlet by stating, It is indeed a tragedy that a movement so evil and so ruinous has been able, with the help of a compliant mainstream news media, to dupe millions of Americans into embracing it as a crusade for racial justice. In reality, BLM is the very embodiment of Marxism, anti-semitism, and racism a trifecta of wickedness capable of destroying any society.

Lets look at some of Perazzos arguments from a more moderate perspective: First, an article in Time, written by Sanya Mansoor on Sept. 5, 2020, shared a survey by ACLED (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project) which found, The vast majority of Black Lives Matter protests more than 93% have been peaceful.

Of the 7,750 BLM demonstrations between May 26 and August 22 in 50 states and Washington, D.C., after the death of George Floyd, More than 2,400 locations reported peaceful protests while fewer than 220 reported violent demonstrations. The definition of violent protests varied according to the location from attacks on individuals and property, to fighting back against police, to toppling Confederate statues. ACLED suggests this disparity stems from political orientation and biased media framing such as disproportionate coverage of violent demonstrations.

In some cases, the violent response came from the government, in which authorities use force more often than not when they are present at protests and that disproportionately used force while intervening in demonstrations associated with the BLM movement, relative to other types of demonstrations.

These violent demonstrations occurred at a time when the Trump administration exacerbated tensions caused by racial inequality and police brutality. President Donald Trump and high-ranking members of his administration have frequently generalized protesters as violent anarchists.

Yes, BLM is left leaning and, yes, it favors the end of racial inequality. It is not against the law to be a Marxist, pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel or LGBTQ in this country. Those rights are protected by the First and 14th Amendments. There certainly has been no anti-semitism or talk of overthrowing our democracy in any of BLMs postings. It is ironic that it is those on the right who have demonized BLM have sought to minimize the Jan. 6 insurrection an attack on the very foundations of American democracy.

In October 2015, President Obama publicly articulated his support for BLMs agenda by saying: I think the reason that the organizers (of BLM) used the phrase Black Lives Matter was not because they were suggesting nobody elses lives matter. Rather, what they were suggesting was there is a specific problem thats happening in the African-American community thats not happening in other communities. And that is a legitimate issue that weve got to address.

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Looking at why BLM is considered evil in conservative circles - Enumclaw Courier-Herald

In 2015, artist David Butler helped curate a group exhibition at the Elijah Pierce Gallery dubbed Forceful Perceptions, which centered itself on the violence enacted on the Black community and included Butlers painting of Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed by George Zimmerman in 2012 at age 17.

Forceful was all about us talking about violence and the things happening to Black people, Butler said. Its number one purpose was to talk about the violence against the Black body, putting it on display, so that it was front and center.

For Whiteland, which opens at the Vanderelli Room on Friday, July 2, Butler wanted to explore similar issues of race, but without again centering Black pain, or being forced to educate a white audience on the Black experience innavigating tragedy. I didnt want someone coming in just because someone had died two months before the show, said Butler, who solicited contributions for 'Whiteland' from artists who previously displayed in Forceful Perceptions, along with a few new faces. As of press time, Butler said he expected at least eight or nine artists to show work, including Lisa McLymont, Lance Johnson and April Sunami, among others.

In conceiving the show, Butler decided he wanted toexplore the concept of whiteness, as well as how that idea plays into the larger societal contract and the continued repression of communities of color.

If we want to get into the underbelly of the real issue, its whiteness, he said. The issue is white people not wanting to come to the grips with the fact that whether youre rich or poor, well-to-do or rural Appalachian, or you just got here from Europe or Canada because of the color of your skin, youhave benefited from thesystem that has been created. And if you buy into that on any level, it becomes a problem for people who look like me.

This idea of the white populace not wanting to examine its own role in preserving systemic racism is one that is currently playing out in the conversation around critical race theory, an academic framework created four decades ago by legal scholars to explore how racism is embedded in Americas laws and institutions that has recently become the target of an intense right-wing disinformation campaign. (No, theyre not teaching critical race theory in your kids public school.)

Butlerstarted brainstorming ideas for the show by writing out a list of things that angered him, including the reality that Black people continue to be shot and killed by the police, as well asthe political personalities who are continually granted a media platform to sell white supremacist talking points to a national audience.

And I started asking, How can I talk about how all of these people still exist, and they look just like you? Butler said.

Going in, Butler said he knew he didnt want to paint portraits of individuals like Jason Meade, the sheriffs deputy who shot and killed Casey Goodson, or Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown. So instead he started to collect photos of these types, largely grouped into three categories: police officers who had killed Black citizens (Derek Chauvin, Meade, Wilson); politicians who regularlyespoused white supremacist ideologies (Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan); and their female equivalents in the worlds of politics and the media (Tomi Lahren, Ann Coulter, Marjorie Taylor Green).

Butler then fed these photos into Artbreeder, a website where users can create an account and upload up to eight parent photos, which are then used to producea composite child. The artist then painted a portrait of each of these unique digital spawns, none of whom exists in real life.

But it was freaky, because it felt like you knew the people. These are all people I could walk by in the Short North today, and thats creepy, Butler said of his initial reaction to seeing thecomputer-generated images. Then it becomes a metaphor for how you never know which person could do you harm. And it also brings up the idea that these children, these digital children birthed of these parents, [represent] the ways that racism reverberates through generations.

While Butler had zero interest in painting portraits of people like Meade, he said the digital amalgamations offered him a needed distance from the source material, describing the works as just data, and thats how I see them. I still havent painted a real white person in 10 years, he said, and laughed.

The trio of portraits by Butler will be flanked on the gallery walls by myriad complex pieces crafted by contemporariesincluding Lance Johnson, a graffiti artist Butler labeled an abstract gra-futurist. I was born and raised in New York City, so coming out of that bubble, it was a little disconcerting, said Johnson, who, in addition to a handful of pieces gracing the walls of the Vanderelli Room, also painted a mural on the exterior of the building. I call [the mural] We the People because America … should be a celebration of diversity. Weve come a long way, but theres a lot more to do.

Butler said that he hopes the work on display in Whiteland angers people, and forces them to confront a system that too many live comfortably within. And Im not saying you have to stop being white. You cant stop being white just like I cant stop being Black, he said. No, what you have to give up is the social construct that gives you power over my life. … And thats all anybody in this show is asking folks to do, is to remember that all of this (Butler gestures at the three composite portraits) creates dead Black people in the streets, the white-washing of histories and laws that are structured to preserve white supremacy.

Regardless of how this message is received, the artist said this group exhibit would likely be his last venture into this realm, serving as a bookend to a drive that started with paintings he started to create even prior to Forceful Perceptions.

This is my last hurrah with this type of [work], Butler said. After this show, Im only painting beautiful Black people and flowers. I want to be able to paint a landscape, or to do something surrealist that doesnt necessarily have race at its core, but that celebrates a more positive, joyful [aspect] of Blackness. And thats what Im going to do from here on out.

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David Butler tackles the other end of the racial spectrum in stunning Whiteland - Columbus Alive

'Boys n the Hood' - John Singleton

Often, to get the whole scope of a cultural problem, more than documentaries or news pieces, it is the work of fiction from those who live within the issue that is able to shed the most light. Initially developed as a requirement for an application to film school in 1986, John Singletons Boyz n the Hood would become a cultural phenomenon, voicing the issues of capitalism on the effect of black families living in poverty-stricken areas of Los Angeles.

Selling his work to Columbia Pictures upon Singletons graduation in 1990, his script drew inspiration from his own life as well the lives of those he grew up alongside in LA. I think I was living this film before I ever thought about making it, Singleton stated, whilst taking considerable inspiration from Rob Reiners 1986 coming-of-age film Stand by Me in crafting his own tragic tale of the adolescent transition.

Putting actors Ice Cube, Cuba Gooding Jr., Morris Chestnut, and Nia Long on the cultural map, Singletons film follows the lives of three males (Ice Cube, Gooding Jr. and Chestnut) living in the Crenshaw ghetto of Los Angeles, weighing up their future prospects as they avoid the troubles that are inflating around them. Dissecting questions of race, class and violence, it is remarkable how relevant John Singletons groundbreaking script remains, typified by one scene in which Laurence Fishburne, father of Cuba Gooding Jrs Tre Styles, lectures a group of people on the effects of gentrification in their local community.

Its called gentrification. Its what happens when the property value of a certain area is brought down, he explains. They bring the property value down. They can buy the land cheaper. Then they move the people out, raise the value and sell it at a profit. The themes and issues of Boyz n the Hood can be reduced into Fishburnes gripping two-minute speech which goes onto question the reason for drugs, guns and violence in the future, concluding his monologue by saying you have to think young brother, about your future.

Though, the characters of Singletons film, and indeed the lives of many black individuals across the USA, are caught within a systemic web of oppression and prejudice, causing violence, fear and in-fighting. Unfortunately, much of what is explored in the film remains equally pertinent in modern-day society, particularly evident following the Black Lives Matter movement that emerged in 2012 following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin.

Speaking of the films legacy, Singleton states: Its really of its time but its also timeless because the conditions and things that people are going through still exist, the director comments, elaborating, Whether thats those in urban environments living under a police state, prevalent black-on-black crime, or the nihilistic view of the world that young people have when they dont see anything else. Continuing, the director rightfully points out that neighbourhoods have changed and evolved but many things remain the same and as long as thats the case then things wont change.

At its heart, Boyz n the Hood is a tragic fable and coming-of-age tale, situated within the context of the prominent issues that disturb the everyday lives of the black community. Nominated for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay at the 64th Academy awards, Singleton became the youngest person, and the first African-Amcieran to be nominated for Best Director, demonstrating just how far-reaching the effects of the 1991 classic stretched, transcending cultures and generations in the process.

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Revisiting John Singletons classic Boyz n the Hood 30 years later - Far Out Magazine

When a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd last year, the video of his killing immediately ricocheted around the web. The massive social movement that followed may have been the largest in U.S. history. Millions took to the streets and the internet to express a desire for racial justice in the United States, in a movement that has become encapsulated by the viral hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.

But a year after Floyds killing many observers have begun to ask whatif anythinghas fundamentally changed? These questions are in part about the possibility of racial equality and real police reform in America, but also address the extent to which a political and social movement with online origins can break into the U.S. mainstream and effect real change. In the year since Floyds murder, online interest in Black Lives Matter has steadily grown. An analysis of more than 50 million Twitter posts between Jan. 28, 2013 and April 30, 2021 finds that the outpouring of online support for #BlackLivesMatter following Floyds killing resulted in a lasting shift and a more vocal and engaged online public, with no evidence of hashtag cooptation by more conservative users over the past year. While the Black Lives Matter movements impact on the policy landscape remains uncertain, its online presence is undoubtedly stronger.

The growth of a hashtag movement

On July 13, 2013, George Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin. Immediately, several Twitter users aired their disappointment and reminded the world of a simple truth: Black Lives Matter. Their tweets marked some of the first uses of a hashtag that would enter the mainstream a year later, on November 25, 2014, when a grand jury declined to indict Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brownand protesters online and off turned to the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag to express their anger and grief. As police violence has persisted and the movement for racial justice continues, the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag has emerged as an enduring feature of online discourse. As of April 30, 2021, it has been used in more than 25 million original Twitter posts, which collectively have garnered approximately 444 billion likes, retweets, comments, or quotesroughly 17,000 engagements per post.[1]

Since Floyds murder, this online activism has only accelerated. In the seven days between his death on May 25, 2020, and the police attack on protesters in Lafayette Square on June 1, the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag generated approximately 3.4 million original posts with 69 billion engagementsor roughly 13% of all posts and 15.5% of all engagements on Twitter in that period. #BlackLivesMatter content peaked on June 8, with some 1.2 million original posts mentioning the hashtag.This marked an astonishing increase in use of the hashtag: Prior to the June protests, the record for posts had been July 8, 2016, following the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, when original content reached 145,631 posts with an average of 7.4 engagements per post.

Figure 1 plots this dramatic increase in use of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, alongside markers of milestones in the movement. Following Floyds murder, posts increased exponentially and previous spikes in content barely register in comparison. The figure also plots use of #BlueLivesMatter, a hashtag movement expressing support for the police and that, here, illustrates the disparity in interest between the two hashtags. Between 2013 and 2021, #BlueLivesMatter has registered 1.6 million original posts and 1.7 billion engagements (about 1,000 per post), which while smaller in scope than #BlackLivesMatter, is not insignificant. Use of the two hashtag movements appear to rise and fall together.

Figure 1: Total Original #BlackLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter Posts

The basic time series detailed above highlights how atypical last summers social media discourse was surrounding #BlackLivesMatter. But the skewed nature of the data masks underlying patterns. Though it may not be immediately apparent, Floyds murder marked a turning point in Twitter conversations around #BlackLivesMatter. By transforming the data to a log-scale, the steady growth of a movement (and separation from a countermovement) becomes clear (Figure 2). This type of transformation is particularly useful on highly skewed data. Visually, the log transformation represents data as a percentage change, such that going from 1 to 2 will appear the same on a graph as going from 100 to 200, even though the absolute change in value (1 vs. 100) differs.

Figure 2: Total Original #BlackLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter Posts (Logged)

In the run-up to Floyds murder, #BlackLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter content tracked together, rising and falling in response to instances of police violence. But Floyds murder breaks this pattern: Both #BlackLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter content surge, but the former does not return to its pre-Floyd normal. #BlueLivesMatter content declines steadily in the subsequent months after the initial spike, but #BlackLivesMatter content rises relative to the time prior to Floyds murder. Between January 1 and March 31, 2020, the average daily number of original posts for #BlackLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter content was 1,829 and 836 respectively. During this same period in 2021, these numbers stand at 4,368 and 394 respectively. This represents a nearly 250% increase in #BlackLivesMatter content on the year, a sizableand seemingly durableshift.

Over the years, the overlapping spikes in #BlackLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter content have sparked intense rhetorical competition online among Twitter users. As a result, the sustained growth in #BlackLivesMatter content might be dismissed as a case of hashtag cooptation, in which the movements opponents ironically or negatively post using the hashtag. But by examining the expanded network of users sharing content, it is evident that this is not the case. Figures 3 and 4 plot the average political ideology of Twitter accounts using the #BlackLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter hashtags at two contentious political moments over the past yearthe January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol and the Derek Chauvin trial.[2]

Until early January, the political ideology of these users was as we would expect itusers sharing the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag more liberal, users sharing the #BlueLivesMatter hashtag more conservative. Then, the ideology of users sharing the #BlueLivesMatter hashtag becomes dramatically more liberal for a brief period of time. This is likely due to an ironic appropriation of the hashtag in response to the Capitol assault, which resulted in one police officer dying and many more being injured. By contrast, the steady ideological score associated with posts that used the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag suggests that content during this period was driven by users supportive of the hashtags message.

Figure 3: Average Political Ideology of #BlackLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter Hashtag Users

The political ideology of users posting #BlackLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter has held steady during other periods of upheaval, indicating that it is unlikely that hashtag cooptation is causing a significant portion of the growth in use of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag. Over the course of April, a police officer shot and killed Daunte Wright during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, while former police officer Derek Chauvin stood trial nearby for Floyds murder. Figure 4 shows that, as in January, the average ideology of users posting content with the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag barely fluctuated. Unlike in January, however, the average ideology of #BlueLivesMatter hashtag users did not change. Instead, what registers is an online battle for control of the #AllLivesMatter hashtag, which fluctuates wildly over the course of the month in ways that coincide with Wrights killing and Chauvins conviction.

Figure 4: Average Political Ideology of #BlackLivesMatter, #BlueLivesMatter, and #AllLivesMatter Hashtag Users

While support for the Black Lives Matter movement has declined in recent months, particularly in conservative America, there remains a steady interest in this online conversation. A growing number of users are actively engaged both during and outside the times of intense interest associated with moments of upheaval. For a social and political movement bolstered by a hashtag, this growth may serve as a silver lining to a challenging year. The difficulty, of course, is translating online activismcommonly critiqued as slacktivisminto offline political change. Yet some research has found that online support can translate to meaningful offline action. And this may be particularly true of young people, who unsurprisingly are disproportionately represented in online political conversations. This may be somewhat less difficult for #BlackLivesMatter, which began, in part, as a social media conversation and has now firmly entered the political mainstream.

Valerie Wirtschafter is a senior data analyst in the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies Initiative at the Brookings Institution and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles.

[1] In this analysis, I exclude retweets, which are counted as observations in some analyses. Instead, retweets are included in engagements, which also includes likes, comments, and quote tweets. Data for this analysis from January 2013 to June 2020 comes from Giorgi, et al. (2020), which due to Twitters terms of service, provides only posts ids for approximately 41 million tweets that reference #BlackLivesMatter, #BlueLivesMatter or #AllLivesMatter. I use the rehydratoR package in R to pull the Twitter content from the post ids provided. Finally, I use the Twitter API to pull the remaining posts from July 2020 through April 2021. Twitter post IDs for this expanded dataset can be made available on request.

[2] In his 2015 Political Analysis paper, Pablo Barber develops a strategy for calculating the partisan ideology of Twitter users, based on the network of Twitter users they chose to follow. The idea is that the decision to follow certain elites is a signal of political interest, which can then be used as an input to determine the partisan preferences of a given Twitter user. This estimation strategy aligns well with other common measures of ideology, including party registration records and DW-NOMINATE scores. Given that these calculations are data intensive and Twitter API rate limits for this content are fairly restrictive, I utilize this strategy but restrict my analysis to users who shared relevant content over a given time period that received at least fifty likes, retweets, comments or quotes. In order to ensure the precision of ideology estimates, I also exclude users who follow fewer than five elites. Elites include politicians, media outlets, think tanks, political commentators, and other influential Twitter users. Positive scores are more conservative and negative scores are more liberal. More details on the methodology and implementation can be found here.

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How George Floyd changed the online conversation around BLM - Brookings Institution