Andrew Zalot’s Dissertation Defense
PhD candidate Andrew Zalot will present his dissertation defense, "'Tweet of the Town:' Synthesizing Local and Social Media Discourse on Book Bans." Zalot's dissertation committee includes Assistant Professor Rachel Magee, Chair, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Professor Emily Knox, Research Director, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Associate Professor Kathleen McDowell, Committee Member, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Professor Marianne Martens, External Committee Member, Kent State University.
Abstract
This dissertation examines the intersection of local and social media discourse during a book ban to understand how communities respond when a book ban takes place. At present, scholarship on book bans covers the subject within the context of local tensions that can arise when a book ban takes place. This study addresses this research gap by exploring the role social media discourse can play in community responses to book bans and the long-term effects book bans can have on communities. In 2022, the community of McMinn County, Tennessee, experienced a book ban when their district’s school board voted 10-0 to ban Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir, Maus, from the district’s eighth-grade curriculum. News of the ban traveled online and within a day of the school board’s meeting minutes becoming public, people across the world were engaging in conversations online about the ban. This project explores how social media discourse grew following news of the ban and the role it played in shaping community responses in McMinn County. Through a combination of tweets collected on Twitter (X) about the ban and semi-structured interviews with residents who lived in McMinn County during the ban, this study provides insights into how local and social media discourse can become entangled during a book ban. As interviews and tweets showed, there was significant opposition to the school board’s decision that led many outsiders to come into the discourse in McMinn County wanting to push back against the school board through actions such as critiquing school board members online and sending copies of Spiegelman’s graphic memoir to residents. This illustrated a disconnect in community needs in McMinn against perceived needs by outsiders, where many residents felt that outsider intervention was not always helpful in advocating to get Maus reinstated. This dissertation provides a framework for understanding how social media discourse can intersect with local discourse through the concept of Localized Social Media Intervention, a concept that builds upon Danielle Allen’s discourse flow model. Localized Social Media Intervention suggests that outsiders, through social media, have the ability to influence local discourse and affect change in ways beyond the digital world.
Question? Contact Andrew Zalot.