JUSTIFICATION OF RESEARCH
It is with this in mind that I want to look at another sort of movement that has been occurring mostly in the virtual realm, with moments of uprising within the physical: the anti-bullying movement within the queer community as started by the “It Gets Better” campaign. It Gets Better was started by Dan Savage and his husband, Terry Miller. In September 2010, Savage, a journalist, and Miller, posted a video on YouTube in response to the recent spate of suicides amongst young people who had been bullied because of their presumed sexual and/or gender identity expression. Originally, the video was meant to be a “one-off,” a one-time posting that gave hope to young queer individuals who were facing harassment in their lives. The message was simple: please don’t kill yourself because it gets better. Within a week, the video went viral and soon more people were uploading videos to the official YouTube site with the same message: “It Gets Better.” To date, there are over 50,000 It Gets Better videos uploaded to the Internet, there have been MTV specials recorded, a book has been published, and there are grassroots campaigns across the globe that are trying to change policy within communities and societies to legislate against homophobic bullying (“It Gets Better,” 2013).
The “It Gets Better” movement, like the others that Castells’ (2012) examined, was born out of outrage: specifically Savage’s outrage at the seeming social apathy at homophobic bullying and suicides. Also, like the other movements examined by Castells (2012), this movement is sustained by hope: in this case, literal hope that if queer youth can just stay strong, it will eventually get better. While there has been vocal criticism of this approach, mostly that we as a society cannot really guarantee that it is going to get better for all queer youth, there is no denying that the movement has been a cultural zeitgeist and that there has indeed been change in states like Hawaii and Michigan, which have added anti-bullying statues and states like Massachusetts which have broadened already existing anti-bullying laws to include bullying based on sexual and/or gender identity expression (“Bully Police,” 2012). More importantly, however, is that the virtual network created by the It Gets Better campaign is giving life-sustaining hope to queer youth who are living in states where there is no legal protection against anti-gay bullying. This campaign, however, has not been a queer utopia of hope, and while it has been the subject of praise from the highest critics, it has also been subjected to some of the harshest critiques, especially within the queer community. It is because of this seeming contradiction that I am interested in studying the It Gets Better campaign as a new kind of social movement.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Another issue that I am interested in for this project is the fact that most of the videos posted to the It Gets Better YouTube page are created by regular people throughout the world. While Savage and Miller created the first video, they do not purport to “own the idea” and encourage others to post videos and disseminate the information found in the videos. In this way, it echoes Coleman’s (2013) examination of creative commons and “copyleft” laws. Rather than trying to control the information and ideas expressed in the original It Gets Better video, Savage and Miller have opened it to the global virtual community. In essence, the It Gets Better campaign has done away with the idea of a romantic author within the project. My research question in regards to this line of thinking is how that has affected the credibility of the campaign—both amongst the people whom the videos are targeted at (queer youth) and policy makers at the political level.
METHODOLOGY
ARGUMENT/HYPOTHESES
INITIAL AUTHORS/REFERENCES
Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. Theory, Culture & Society, 7, 295-310. doi: 10.1177/026327690007002017
Bully Police. (2012). Bully Police USA. Retrieved from http://www.bullypolice.org
Castells, M. (2012). Networks of outrage and hope: Social movements in the Internet age. Maiden, MA: Polity.
Coleman, E. G. (2013). Coding freedom: The ethics and aesthetics of hacking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Hall, S. (1996). New ethnicities. In D. Morley & K-. H. Chen (Eds.), Stuart Hall: Critical dialogues in cultural studies. London: Routledge.
It Gets Better. (2013). It Gets Better- About Page. Retrieved from http://www.itge