Berkman Klein is thrilled to announce its Institute for Rebooting Social Media's inaugural cohort of Visiting Scholars—from disciplines ranging from law and philosophy to informatics and computer science. During the 2022-2023 academic year, these nine scholars will use their time with the Institute to collaborate with one another on existing work and begin new lines of inquiry.
“So many of us are brainstorming what to do about the state of social media without even being in a position to well understand what it’s doing to us and where it’s headed,” said Jonathan Zittrain, co-director of the Institute for Rebooting Social Media. “This extraordinary group of scholars represents some of the best efforts to deftly apply rigorous academic thinking to complicated and fast-moving phenomena, with an eye towards interventions that help without making anything else worse.”
Joanne Armitage, Ibtissam Bouachrine, Jabari Evans, Greg Gondwe, Kate Klonick, David Nemer, Yong Jin Park, Jon Penney, and Elissa Redmiles have been doing pioneering research into social media and the prospects for interventions to improve it. With the Institute, these scholars will focus on various topics, such as the decolonization of social media companies in Sub-Saharan Africa, online disinformation related to Brazil’s 2022 general elections, and digital violence against Muslim women.
“We are thrilled to officially welcome our first Visiting Scholars into the Institute’s growing community,” said James Mickens, co-director of the Institute for Rebooting Social Media. “We look forward to learning with them and engaging areas of shared concern, including digital governance, freedom of speech, privacy, community-based infrastructure design, and online inequality and discrimination.”
The Visiting Scholars will spend a portion of the academic year in residence at the Berkman Klein Center’s new home in the Reginald F. Lewis Law Center at Harvard Law School. In addition to their own projects, scholars will work with Harvard students, staff, and affiliates, and the broader Berkman Klein community, with the goal of producing research that is both academically rigorous and accessible to diverse audiences.
The Visiting Scholars Program is part of the Institute for Rebooting Social Media’s larger portfolio of programming, research, and educational opportunities. The Program will run annually throughout the three-year duration of the Institute, strengthening the community of interdisciplinary scholars tackling the most challenging problems of social media.
The Visiting Scholar selection committee included Harvard faculty Gabriella (Biella) Coleman, Nien-hê Hsieh, James Mickens, Jordi Weinstock and Jonathan Zittrain, as well as Hilary Ross and Rebecca Tabasky. The Institute and its programs are supported by generous contributions from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Reid Hoffman, and Craig Newmark Philanthropies.

This past Friday I had the honor of speaking with the multi-talented Amanda Seales on diversity, equity and inclusion within the media industries for department's Black History Month programming.  The conversation was enlightening in many ways and we touched upon intersectionality on screen, all diversity not being "good diversity," the sincerity of recent public decrying of anti-blackness in Hollywood and also lastly, where her journey in entertainment is leading her presently and the near future.  It wasn't recorded but the conversation allowed us to talk about ways in which inequities suffered by Black folk, both on screen and on stage, must remain in our memories if we are to adequately produce equitable futures for Black people in media.

I'm happy that  Recording Artist Vic Mensa will visit my Minorities, Women and the Media course on September 24th, 2021.  We will discuss his life in music but also get his views on misogyny and representation of Blackness in Hip-Hop.

This paper has yet to be officially released but this is the unedited version of what will likely be published in print this winter. Enjoy!

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Behind the Reasons: The Relationship Between Adolescent and Young Adult Mental Health Risk Factors and Exposure to Season One of Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why

By Jabari Miles Evans, Alexis R. Lauricella, Drew P. Cingel, Davide Cino and Ellen Ann Wartella

​Abstract
With increasing media choice, particularly through the rise of streaming services, it has become more important for empirical research to examine how youth decide which programs to view, particularly when the content focuses on difficult health topics such as suicide. The present study investigated why adolescents and young adults chose to view or not view season 1 of 13 Reasons Why and how individual-level variables related to adolescents’ and young adults’ viewing. Using survey data gathered from a sample of 1,100 adolescents and young adult viewers and non-viewers of the series in the United States, we examined how participants’ resilience, loneliness, and social anxiety related to whether participants viewed the first season or not. Our descriptive results indicate that adolescents who watched the show reported that it accurately depicted the social realities of their age group, they watched it because friends recommended it, and they found the subject matter to be interesting. Non- viewers reported that they chose not to view the show because the nature of the content was upsetting to them. In addition, results demonstrated that participants’ social anxiety and resilience related to participants’ viewing decisions, such that those with higher social anxiety and higher resilience were more likely to report watching season 1. Together, these data suggest that youth make intentional decisions about mental health-related media use in an attempt to choose content that is a good fit for based on individual characteristics.

Please find the article attached and feel free to contact me directly if there is any questions or concerns regarding this work.

​-Jabari

Friends and Fam,

In addition to successfully defending my dissertation last week, I'm also happy to announce I’ve just accepted an Assistant Professor position at University of South Carolina's College of Information and Communication (CIC) within The School of Journalism and Mass Communication (SJMC) focusing on Race and Media.

Though it will be difficult to leave my home of Chicago after all these years, I am hopeful for what looms in the future. (And you better believe I will be back during the summertime!)

Dissertation Findings:

I am hoping to turn my dissertation into a book project very soon.  However, I know most people aren't going to take the time to read a 300 page document so here's the most important details of my findings in 2 years of evaluating our in-school Hip-Hop Based Education program:

Implications for social work, youth work, and direct practice
Teaching Hip-Hop Artistic Practices can create:

1. learning opportunities that build on Black youth’s passions for local community issues.
   
2. an ethos of reciprocity with youth by showing Black youth they are cared for, valued, and heard.
   
3. a merger for formal academic opportunities with more welcoming settings of informal community youth media programs.

I've spent parts of the last five years just to get to this point and I believe I am likely one of the first Hip-Hop artists to sign to a major label and then engage in the world of academia as a PhD graduate.  I am really hopeful that my second act will be even more impactful than the first.  Even still, I also look forward to releasing new music REALLY SOON!

To get a learn more about my research, have me appear at an event, host a lecture for your organization or network, please contact me at naledge@u.northwestern.edu. 

Thank you all for your support over the last five years and I look forward to keep building.

Sincerely,
Jabari