{"id":20587,"date":"2015-11-17T10:24:12","date_gmt":"2015-11-17T14:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=20587"},"modified":"2015-11-18T10:35:16","modified_gmt":"2015-11-18T14:35:16","slug":"in-medias-res-tracing-concernedstudent1950s-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2015\/11\/17\/in-medias-res-tracing-concernedstudent1950s-story\/","title":{"rendered":"In Medias Res: Tracing #ConcernedStudent1950\u2019s Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Front page of one of Columbia\u2019s local papers the day after the resignations<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The story emerged for me two Thursdays ago, when a colleague at the University of Missouri, where I work, asked if I wanted to accompany her to find a march in support of Jonathan Butler, a graduate student on hunger strike with demands that president Tim Wolfe resign over his inaction towards racism on campus. We encountered the protest as it moved out of the bookstore and followed it into the Memorial Union, where many students eat lunch. This was the point at which I joined the march and stuck with it across campus, into Jesse Hall, and finally to Concerned Student 1950’s encampment on the quad where the march concluded. Since then I’ve been trying to read up on what led up to this march, sharing what I find as I go. This task became much easier after Wolfe\u2019s announcement on Monday that he would resign, and the national media frenzy that followed. At first, however, learning about the march that I had participated in proved far more difficult than I expected. <\/span><\/p>\n

Once a story becomes national, journalists collate the facts and package them into a consumable narrative. Prior to that, however, interested parties have to scour a complex and fragmented landscape to answer a deceptively simple question: what\u2019s going on here? This is because \u201cnews\u201d is no longer the exclusive purview of corporate media conglomerates, or even local ones, but moves \u2013 or <\/span>transmediates<\/span><\/a> \u2013 through an ecology of personal networks, digital platforms, and large and small media organizations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Twitter\u2019s<\/a>
Twitter\u2019s curated Moments offer a convenient but shallow glimpse at the story<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For example, local news coverage of the protests \u2013 and, save for the story earlier this year of Mizzou student body president <\/span>Payton Head’s encounters with hate speech<\/span><\/a>, it seemed all coverage was local or regional within my state \u2013 alluded to the incidents that contributed to the unfolding events, but didn’t provide an easy thread to follow. Butler and Concerned Student 1950’s list of demands were referenced in many local news stories, but not in their entirety and without links to the full list of demands. Social media was similarly fragmentary, but Jonathan Butler’s Twitter and Facebook accounts (where he reposted an open letter to the university administration and the list of demands) helped clarify some things. The difficulty of following a story when it is still largely local seems like a well known problem. It was a problem in Ferguson early on, and as a lifelong resident of Columbia observing and participating directly in the protests, the problem really hit home for me again this week.<\/span><\/p>\n

An exhaustive timeline that could capture the details became a daunting task. In what follows, I recount the story as I encountered it, through local press, national media, from Jonathan Butler’s public correspondence on social media, and friends involved with Butler’s\/Concerned Student 1950’s protests.<\/span><\/p>\n