In our very blood the use of social media in the 2018 west virgi

University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2021 In Our Very Blood: The Use of Social Media in the 2018 West Virginia Teachers' Strike Everette Scott Sikes esikes@vols.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Library and Information Science Commons, and the Social Media Commons Recommended Citation Sikes, Everette Scott, "In Our Very Blood: The Use of Social Media in the 2018 West Virginia Teachers' Strike., University of Tennessee, 2021.edu/utk_graddiss/6689 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact trace@utk. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Everette Scott Sikes entitled "In Our Very Blood: The Use of Social Media in the 2018 West Virginia Teachers' Strike." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Communication and Information.

Suzie Allard, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Carolyn Hank, Bharat Mehra, Tamar Shirinian Accepted for the Council: Dixie L. Thompson Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official student records.) IN OUR VERY BLOOD: THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE 2018 WEST VIRGINIA TEACHERS’ STRIKE A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Everette Scott Sikes May 2021 Copyright © 2021 by Everette Scott Sikes All rights reserved. ii DEDICATION For all the teachers in my life. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe tremendous gratitude to every member of my dissertation committee.

Carolyn Hank has been a dependable source of good humor and sensible guidance, and our conversations allowed me to probe deeper into and to think more critically about the role of social media in our lives. Tamar Shirinian in so many ways provided invaluable direction toward a path beyond the bounds of Information Science. I knew from the first moments in a seminar with her that her guidance could help me imagine this work in an entirely different way. Bharat Mehra has been a mentor, collaborator, and friend to me every step of the way along the whole of my graduate school journey.

I am a better scholar because of him, and I will be ever grateful for the role he has played in my life. My committee chair, Dr. Suzie Allard, has taught me so very much about being an open, patient, and gracious guide. In my own work with students, she will continue to serve as a model of generosity and scholarship.

Margaret Taylor is an unsung hero in the College of Communication and Information. I am thankful for her nurturing spirit and for her help with navigating the innumerable forms, processes, and deadlines of the doctoral program. Likewise, Tanya Arnold and Pamela Durban in the School of Information Sciences have been reliable touchstones for any question or need. I am grateful to have found a home at the University of Tennessee.

Each of my fellow students and every member of the faculty and staff whom I have gotten to know has been a teacher to me. Talmage Stanley at Emory & Henry College willingly read every word of this dissertation and provided crucial insight for every draft. For twenty-five years, our conversations have leant clarity and substance to my thinking. Without his friendship, my life would have been diminished, most especially because he somehow knew where I was headed even when I myself did not.

And he always believed. I could never have done this without the love and support of Dr. Felicia Lowman- Sikes, my steadfast partner and spouse. She pointed the way and reminded me without fail that this is what I was meant to do.

In the most difficult moments and through all the long days of back-and-forth trips to Knoxville, both Felicia and our daughter, Madeline, constantly pushed me forward. Finally, and most importantly, I am thankful to every teacher who took the time to talk with me. To a person, they were willing and enthusiastic contributors, never hesitating to share or to answer my questions. The heart of this story belongs to them, and they are to whom I owe the most appreciation.

iv ABSTRACT The 2018 West Virginia teachers’ strike exemplifies the changing shape of social movements and events of dissent and protest in the digital age. The use of information communication technologies (ICT) and social media have changed the ways such events develop and unfold. These technologies offer new tools for organizing and strategizing, for generating large numbers of participants, and for communicating crucial information while reducing temporal and spatial barriers. The teachers’ strike presents an opportunity to increase our understandings of these issues and to widen the scope of research in the field of information sciences to include the impact of ICTs on the social world.

Further, the location of West Virginia within the region of Appalachia means that additional questions regarding the role of collective identity in social movements can be explored in the context of a state with an extensive history and heritage of labor movements. Through in-depth interviews conducted with teachers who participated, this study takes a critical approach to understanding the role of social media in the 2018 strike, the significance of social media to the outcomes of the strike, and the importance of an Appalachian collective identity in the event. The qualitative data is presented in a creative and unconventional way that highlights the voices of the teachers and richly illustrates the complexities of their individual perspectives. This work operates from an understanding that a standardized and positivistic approach to social scientific inquiry is unhelpful for making sense of the contradictions, complications, and uncertainties found in the personal experiences of the West Virginia strike.

As a critique of modernist and overly rationalistic understanding of the world and of academic research, it serves instead as a call for an understanding that we are shaped by forces that are larger than human reason and that are wholly subjective but no less powerful. Keywords: Social media, social movements, Appalachia, collective action v TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One Introduction. 5 The Decline of Institutions, the Rise of Social Media, and Implications for the Polis. 10 Collective Identity and Resistance.

16 Dialectical Thinking and Critical Inquiry. 19 The Necessity of an Information Science Perspective. 20 Chapter Two Literature Review. 23 Collective Action and Social Movements.

24 Overcoming the Problem of Self-Interest. 24 Rationalism, Modernity, and its Discontents. 31 Meaning in Contradiction: Dialectical Thinking and the Critical Perspective. 35 Technology and Social Movements.

38 Techno-centrism and the Modern World. 38 Social Media and Contemporary Social Movements. 40 Implications for Collective Action. 42 Social Media and the Promise of Democracy.

45 A Critical Perspective of Social Media and Protest. 47 Collective Identity, Place, and Refusal. 52 Collective Identity and Social Movements. 53 Social Media and Identity.

54 Place-based Identity. 56 Imagined Appalachia and Refusal/Resistance. 59 Chapter Three The Problem of Methods. 64 Slaying the Positivist Father.

65 A Critical Perspective and the Methodological Conundrum. 72 Building the Bricolage. 78 Using Qualitative and Interpretivist Methods for Critical Inquiry. 78 The Spirit of Ethnography.

85 Sampling and Procedures. 90 Unruly Doubts and Tumultuous Realities. 93 Chapter Four Telling the Story. 135 Research Question One.

135 vi Research Question Two. 138 Research Question Three. 142 Chapter Five Conclusions. 144 The Role of Social Media.

147 The Strike as a Successful Failure. 149 The Role of Collective Identity. 160 List of References. 187 Appendix A: Interview Guide.

189 vii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION On February 22, 2018 nearly 20,000 teachers, bus drivers, and related public- school personnel walked off the job in the state of West Virginia. While the dismal level of salaries for teachers in the state became a central focus of media coverage during the strike, of primary concern to the educators themselves were proposed changes to the health insurance program for West Virginia public employees. These changes would have impacted the costs of annual premiums, reduced overall healthcare coverage, and required the enrollment of employees in a wellness program that raised significant issues of privacy (Brescia, 2020). Frustrations and anger around a host of festering problems related to public education, along with a perceived lack of respect for the profession, reached a tipping point in the face of the proposed policy changes to the public health insurance plan.

The financial implications of these changes were considerable and would have resulted in a net loss of income for teachers who were already among the lowest paid in the United States (Blanc, 2019; McAlevey, 2018). To fight these measures, the teachers took action to affect a nine-day work stoppage across all fifty-five county school systems. The strike ultimately forced the West Virginia legislature to reverse its course by suspending the proposed health insurance changes for further review and by including in the upcoming annual state budget an increase in the pay rate for teachers (Bidgood, 2018). The 2018 walkout occurred in response to policies that affected all public employees in West 1 Virginia.

Furthermore, teachers were joined in their action by service personnel who also worked in public schools (Blanc, 2019). Nevertheless, the event has come to be commonly referred to as the teachers’ strike and, for the sake of clarity, the same wording will be utilized throughout this narrative. The West Virginia teachers’ strike of 2018 has taken its place among a host of movements of dissent, protest, and revolution that have occurred across the globe in the last decade in which social media played a fundamental role (Brescia, 2020; Tufekci, 2017). From Occupy Wall Street to the Arab Spring to Tahrir Square to Black Lives Matter and the MeToo movement, among many others, the use of social media in the organizing of mass movements for social and political change has illumined a host of implications for the understanding of such events and the general role of digital media technologies in the social world (Dencik & Leistert, 2015).

Frustrated as they were by a perceived lack of action on the part of union leaders, the teachers organized themselves primarily through the utilization of private Facebook groups, prompting a media narrative that characterized the walkout as a “crowd-sourced strike” (Bidgood & Robertson, 2018). Additionally, the event in West Virginia ignited a storm of similar work stoppages and walkouts across the country, notably in Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, and in the city of Los Angeles, by teachers who also made significant use of digital technologies to organize and mobilize for collective action (Balingit, 2019; Uppercue & Alvarez, 2018). The study of social movements has been dramatically transformed by the rise of social media and the use of related information communication technologies (ICT) in events of protest (Howard & Hussain, 2013; van Stekelenburg & Roggeband, 2013). 2 Digital technologies are seen by many to upend what McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilley (2001) termed the dynamics of contention.

By negating gender, socioeconomic, and circumstantial obstacles, digital activism reduces personal and collective risk, allowing for greater and more effective expressions of dissent from marginalized groups (Schmidt & Cohen, 2014). Such technologies are thought by some to have ushered in a new age of social change in which social, spatial, and temporal barriers are nullified, enabling activists to organize and mobilize faster, with fewer costs, and with little need for hierarchical structures and organizations (Gunel & Baruh, 2016; Wellman, 2001).