This presentation analyzes Lin-Manuel Miranda’s strategies for mobilizing activism on Twitter by comparing his response to hurricane recovery efforts with that of protests in Puerto Rico. I begin the presentation by outlining the rhetorical strategies that Miranda typically uses to build affective alliances with his Twitter followers, for example, how he uses “you” to invoke his audience. I then review his response to hurricane Maria’s landfall in Puerto Rico, including the #AlmostLikePraying benefit song project. I move on to describe how Miranda distances himself from Puerto Rican protest movements, for example, those against austerity measures that took place on May 1, 2018. I argue that comparing Miranda’s responses to these different events points to the limits of cultivating empathy and intimacy on Twitter in order to mobilize activism. This presentation forms part of a larger research project on Latinx creative writers and their use of Twitter.
Dr. Jean Lee Cole’s Aperio project strives to recover the lives and literary voices of members of the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore (1890-1941). This presentation will detail the content and process of this ongoing project, from the transcription of Club documents to the questions of access and exclusion they raise to the digital tools used to display the wealth of information recovered thus far. The iterative process resembles an agile methodology, and it is possible that similar long term evolving digital scholarship projects can implement lessons learned from the software development community.
