{"id":21874,"date":"2016-11-02T23:59:38","date_gmt":"2016-11-03T03:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=21874"},"modified":"2016-11-03T05:19:29","modified_gmt":"2016-11-03T09:19:29","slug":"eyewitness-virality-racism-and-journalistic-responsibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2016\/11\/02\/eyewitness-virality-racism-and-journalistic-responsibility\/","title":{"rendered":"Eyewitness virality, Racism, and Journalistic responsibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"md\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Some time ago, I spoke with a reporter regarding the Internet virality of Michelle Dobyne of “ain’t nobody got time for that”<\/em> fame. They intended to run a \u2018where are they now\u2019<\/em> follow-up piece on Dobyne\u2019s life post\u00a0\u201915 minutes of fame\u2019<\/em>. In the end, the\u00a0TV clip and its companion\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0condensed our 8-minute interview into these anonymous soundbites:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe asked a noted social media expert what makes a video viral worthy. She said catch phrases and exoticism, something that takes us away from our routine lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur expert said what Dobyne and other viral video stars are able to do long term with their 15 minutes of fame is anyone\u2019s guess.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since much of what I had to say about eyewitness virality, racism, and journalistic responsibility did not make the final\u00a0cut, I later transcribed my conversation with the reporter and wrote it up.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/p>\n

Eyewitness virality<\/h2>\n

In January 2016, Michelle Dobyne gave an eyewitness account after her apartment complex caught fire. In the original\u00a0interview<\/a>, her catchphrase \u201cNuh-uh, we ain\u2019t gon be in no fire. Not today.\u201d and her overall decorum caught the attention of the\u00a0television crew, who then put the clip up on Facebook. And well, you know the formula. The clip went viral. Dobyne\u00a0became a meme<\/a>. Romantic and commercial offers\u00a0were rumoured. Semi-officious merchandise became available.<\/p>\n

Three months later, the news network decided to run a follow-up piece on Dobyne. As it turns out, not much of her material circumstances have changed despite her transient internet fame. Rinse and repeat. The saving grace? Kind strangers started a gofundme<\/a> page for Dobyne. The backlash? Her neighbours\u00a0feel \u201covershadowed<\/a>\u201d by her fame and are still struggling post-fire.<\/p>\n

I am going to call this phenomenon \u201ceyewitness virality\u201d<\/strong>: The proliferation of television news interviewees, many of whom are themselves victims of the unfortunate event being covered, who attain overnight but transient fame through the news networks who curate and disseminate their eyewitness accounts on social media as humour and clickbait.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0Dobyne is just the latest addition to a string of eyewitness viral stars:<\/p>\n

July 2010: Antoine \u201chide yo kids\u201d<\/a> Dodson, who gave an eyewitness account after his home was invaded<\/a> and his sister avoided an attempted rape. (Official Facebook page here<\/a>, merchandise here<\/a>, music here<\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n

April 2012: Kimberly \u201cain\u2019t nobody got time for that\u201d<\/a> Wilkins aka Sweet Brown, who gave an eyewitness account after her building complex caught fire<\/a>. (Dental care advertorial here<\/a>, movie cameo here<\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n

May 2013: Charles \u201cdead giveaway\u201d<\/a> Ramsey, who gave an eyewitness account\u00a0after aiding in the rescue of the Ariel Castro kidnap<\/a> victims. (Official Facebook page here<\/a>, autobiography\u00a0here<\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n

June 2015:\u00a0Courtney \u201clike a tornado girl\u201d<\/a> Barnes, who gave an eyewitness account of a car crash<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These eyewitness viral stars are all Black. However, I also recall this eyewitness account\u00a0from a Portland woman who went off tangent and told reporters a \u201cvacuum cleaner guy\u201d has \u201cseen my tits\u201d<\/a>. Unfortunately, the original video has been taken down and I was unable to locate any news reports from official sources.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/p>\n

The reporter I spoke to asked about\u00a0the \u2018formula\u2019 for internet virality.<\/p>\n

\u201cTell me a bit about the whole viral video and social media.. what is it in a video that makes it go viral? What does society want to see that makes it get all these clicks?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

1) Unexpected responses.<\/strong> Viewers usually do not expect these eyewitness accounts to be so casual, light-hearted, humorous, or to some extent, flippant. Their body language, tone, and vocabulary may seem peculiar when juxtaposed against the severity of the situation, because viewers may not feel the interviewees are\u00a0expressing grief in \u201cnormative\u201d ways (i.e. crying). But this is not to say we should discount their grief.<\/p>\n

2) Catchphrases<\/strong>. With eyewitness virality, catchphrases that\u00a0gain traction and circulate as memes have been\u00a0those based on stereotypes of how we perceive people who look a certain way to say certain things (i.e. race and parlance, class and street talk, sexuality and flamboyance).<\/p>\n

3) Exoticism.<\/strong>\u00a0Viewers tend to exercising\u00a0a sense of distance from the eyewitnesses they see on screen. Perhaps we do not share in their plight, their poverty, their general precarity, or their demographic and associated identity markers (i.e. vocabulary, accents, posture). It is easy to meme the exotic when we project our partial understandings\/misconceptions onto caricatures.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/p>\n

Racism<\/h2>\n

The follow-up clip\/article<\/a> for which I was interviewed\u00a0seemed to pitch\u00a0a feel-good tone that highlighted four\u00a0things:<\/p>\n

1) The reporters did not expect the clip to go viral.<\/p>\n

2) Dobyne\u2019s reactions in the original news clip were authentic.<\/p>\n

3) Dobyne and her family have experienced positive (fun, merchandising, marriage proposals, potential career in comedy)<\/em> and negative (failed managerial relationship)<\/em> consequences as a result of her viral fame.<\/p>\n

4) Nevertheless, Dobyne wishes to use her fame for positive ends (raise awareness for domestic violence and homelessness)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This is despite the racist overtones of such virality. A handful of op-eds have alluded to\u00a0this:<\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/a> calls such incidents \u201clowbrow entertainment trenches\u201d that \u201ctrade on stereotypes\u201d, that cost some \u201cdignity\u201d in the vein of \u201cPoor People Say the Darndest Things\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Huffington Post<\/a> asks if viewers are laughing with Dobyne, or at Dobyne as \u201ca\u00a0separate, autonomous entity or as a stereotype \u2014 the archetypal loud, ratchet, uneducated black woman\u201d.<\/p>\n

This Blogher<\/a> writer appeals to readers with her own demographic (she is a White woman married to a Black man)<\/em> and tells them Dobyne \u201cdoes not represent the Black people I know\u201d. She also seems to think Dobyne was intentionally capitalizing on racial stereotypes for fame, and expresses her disdain.<\/p>\n

Salon<\/a> calls these formulaic routines the \u201cmemeification and autotuning of news interviews with poor and working-class people\u201d, and denounces \u201csociety\u2019s collective urge to gawk at the poor and working class\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/p>\n

The reporter I spoke to asked about the \u2018authenticity\u2019 of Dobyne\u2019s reactions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you think it was about Michelle exactly that caught so many peoples\u2019 attention? A lot of people thought she was faking it, but I met her afterwards and she\u2019s just got a personality like that. Within the first fifteen minutes it was already blowing up on our Facebook page.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Dobyne was obviously responding to a moment of grief in a manner that was very lighthearted, but we also know that people tend to deal with grief in different ways. A lot of times, for the people who are steeped in poverty or who are used to living a life of precarity where unfortunate incidents happen often, humour is a coping mechanism to cope with their circumstances. We viewers who are safe behind the screens, who are not experiencing poverty or troubles firsthand, may not understand that. We may not understand humour as a coping mechanism or as daily parlance.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Worst still, some of us may mistake this humour as an intentional act to play up one\u2019s \u2018five seconds of fame\u2019<\/em> on TV. I saw\u00a0this a lot on the YouTube comments on several incarnations of Dobyne\u2019s\u00a0interview. Almost every video had dozens of people commenting to the effect of \u201cShe\u2019s obviously copying from Sweet Brown\u201d, \u201cShe\u2019s following a trope\u201d, \u201cShe\u2019s playing up herself to gain some type of fandom or celebrity\u201d. This is quite worrying. Just because we are familiar with one eyewitness\u00a0viral star being memoralized in a particular light (i.e. Sweet Brown), we assess all other Black people or Black women who are in the same predicament, and make judgements on whether they can or cannot express themselves in a similar manner. And then we attach this to moral values of authenticity.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2013<\/p>\n

Journalistic responsibility<\/h2>\n

Dobyne\u2019s interview clip was originally shared on Facebook<\/a>\u00a0by a reporter on 11 January 2016, with the caption (as of 5 April 2016)<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou never know who you will run into covering the news of the day. News On 6 photojournalist Ethan Pierce met a lady named Michelle Dobyne this morning. Her description of a fire at the Casa Linda Apartments\u2026is incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The clip was than reposted on another reporter\u2019s Facebook page<\/a> on the same day, with the caption (as of 5 April 2016, emphasis mine)<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone, meet Michelle Dobyne, who is my new favorite person in the entire world<\/strong>. She and her family have to find a place to live for the next few days after an apartment fire hit their complex, but she still found humor in the situation and she is SO FUNNY<\/strong>. Charlie Hannema News On 6 and I can\u2019t stop laughing at her interview<\/strong> with News On 6 Photojournalist Ethan Pierce. Thanks Michelle, you are an awesome woman<\/strong>!\u201d<\/p>\n

I find these initial Facebook shares and captions to be a contradiction to the follow-up clip\/article\u2019s claim that the reporters\u00a0did not expect the clip to go viral, since:<\/p>\n

1) The caption clearly framed the clip as humour bait, and Dobyne as a larger-than-life personality.<\/p>\n

2) The reporters decided to share the clip on Facebook because<\/em>\u00a0the newsroom found it funny.<\/p>\n

3) Other news networks have previously pioneered such\u00a0known formulaic curations of eyewitness virality.<\/p>\n

The first reporter\u2019s\u00a0follow-up Facebook post<\/a> on 12 January 2016 was perhaps the saving grace, informing viewers than Dobyne was \u201csleeping in her car\u201d and calling for \u201ccards, clothes for the kids or cash\/checks\u201d donations for Dobyne and her family. He ends off: \u201cHopefully, Michelle\u2019s spirit during the struggles can be a message to people around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/p>\n

The reporter I spoke to asked about the backlash to such instant virality.<\/p>\n

\u201cMichelle\u00a0says that this \u2018fifteen minutes of fame\u2019, if you will\u2026 some people came out of the woodwork good and bad. So what comes with this quick rise to fame for somebody who may not be ready for it or who may not expect it?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The eyewitness\u00a0viral stars themselves might have ideas about how they want to manage this sudden fame and commerce, and the opportunity to perhaps better their life standing.\u00a0Many op-eds I\u2019ve read suggest we are giving these viral stars a \u2018lifeline\u2019 by helping them to cash in on their fame.<\/p>\n

But once the glitz and glamour wears out, once all these press interviews die down, once Dobyne\u00a0stops being a meme, once she\u2019s no longer the star of a viral news item, what\u2019s there to make of her livelihood and state after this? We seldom know how\u00a0such viral stars are doing once you\u2019ve capitalized on their instant fame for clicks on your\u00a0news articles or for internet laughs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cVery interesting. Well anything else stood out to you about Michelle? She does say that she wants us to use it as a platform to talk about things she\u2019s gone through, such as domestic violence and homelessness, but is there anything else the public should take away from this \u2018becoming famous with just one Facebook post\u2019 trend? What else do you want to say?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I see a lot of commentary about how we have discomfort speaking about Dobyne and\u00a0racism \u2013 is it alright to laugh at her, is it not? \u2013 but when I first saw her video I was immediately reminded of a clip in \u2018Dude, Where\u2019s My Car<\/a>\u2018, where two hungover,\u00a0high (?) White men were speaking to each other and repeatedly saying \u201cDude\u201d, \u201cSweet\u201d, \u201cDude\u201d, \u201cSweet\u201d<\/a>. But when viewers see this caricature on cinema screens, we probably don\u2019t believe there are actually<\/em>people \u2018in real life\u2019 who speak like this, like what my students would call \u2018White girl trash talk\u2019. We don\u2019t see \u2018real life examples\u2019 of these folks on screen.<\/p>\n

I was also concerned about how<\/em> this video was made public. In the news interviews, it was stated that the TV crew themselves had a really good laugh and then decided to put the clip on the internet. Here, we need to consider journalistic responsibility. These eyewitness viral stars, they don\u2019t become memes all by themselves. A lot of the gatekeeping happens in your press room, and I think the journalists\u00a0have the responsibility to help such viral stars negotiate their instant visibility and celebrity, and manage things such as\u00a0consent.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHuh, good point.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2013<\/p>\n

Dr Crystal Abidin is an anthropologist and an ethnographer. Reach her at wishcrys.com<\/a> and @wishcrys<\/a>.\u00a0This post was first published here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some time ago, I spoke with a reporter regarding the Internet virality of Michelle Dobyne of “ain’t nobody got time for that” fame. They intended to run a \u2018where are they now\u2019 follow-up piece on Dobyne\u2019s life post\u00a0\u201915 minutes of fame\u2019. In the end, the\u00a0TV clip and its companion\u00a0article\u00a0condensed our 8-minute interview into these anonymous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2067,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[43060,43062,43063,43061,43059],"class_list":["post-21874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","tag-antoine-dodson","tag-charles-ramsey","tag-courtney-barnes","tag-kimberly-wilkins","tag-michelle-dobyne"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2067"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21874"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21879,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21874\/revisions\/21879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}