Major: Sociology

Pronouns: She, Her, Hers

People of color are always targeted or accused of crimes that they don’t commit and carry a double consciousness when entering public spaces. The goal of my research study was to understand how people of color experience surveillance, my research question was: how do people of color share their surveillance experiences on the microblogging website Twitter? The existing studies that reflected my research were about how racial profiling exists in public spaces like shopping centers. As well as what the role of race politics is within the scope of surveillance and prejudice toward minorities. Other literature that coincided with my research was related to stigma and crime perception and its racial exploitation of Black men and women.

To analyze data pertaining to perceptions of racism in surveillance, Twitter was used to gather viewpoints from different Twitter users on how they felt about surveillance. To make analyzing tweets easy, the search was narrowed down to tweets including the hashtag LivingWhileBlack. The findings of the research were that there is a negative outcry on law enforcement, detainment, and the safety during the global pandemic of COVID-19. The tweets had a few limitations in that they were brief, and most tweets were not personal experiences but rather issues that had occurred and weren’t just, as well as anger, frustration and fear for individuals who’d been wronged by law enforcement. There is still work to be done in understanding the experiences of minority individuals in regard to surveillance, but what can be said is that there is need for reform in surveillance. Change is needed in how police are given power, and that there is a disproportion health and safety disadvantage being faced by Black men and women in the face of current events involving face masks.

Link to full paper: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w5O5nZpWYhAgd2yJrF5FvWIAFyz_c8ze617sqLUCK1M/edit?usp=sharing