Finally, according to Nielsen, 19 million, or 28%, of Twitter’s 67 million users are African American. And about one in five African Americans are on Black Twitter.

A 2016 study found that education, amplifying marginalized voices and pushing for structural changes to policing were the main goals for Black Twitter users dedicated to BLM. My dissertation clearly shows that the Black community, especially Black millennials and Gen Zers, use Black Twitter as a primary source of information about police brutality.

I discuss this in greater detail on the Opinion Science Podcast and Emerson College’s Campus On The Common Podcast.

Without Black Twitter, one of the Black community’s main information channels would not exist.

For many social media users, Black Twitter is the first way they hear of stories involving police brutality.

In fact, I have found that hashtags have replaced breaking news headlines for some Black Twitter users.

“Honestly, I hear about most cases on Twitter,” one interviewee told me during my research. “It’s always on Twitter before it becomes main headline news. News will pick it up like a day or two after I’ve already seen it on Twitter.”

On Twitter, a hashtag is no longer just a name. Instead, it often blossoms into awareness campaigns that seek police reform. Hashtags are often the catalysts for mobilization, and this mobilization would be significantly slower in a world without Twitter.

Twitter is often used to document and upload videos of police brutality. For instance, the video of George Floyd’s death in police custody was first publicized on Twitter, and then mainstream news circulated the footage.

I like to think of Black Twitter as the fuel, while mainstream media are the wheels on the information highway.

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