CTRL

The far-reaching effects of Black women’s work on social media platforms are in danger of being erased. 

I’m inviting Black disabled women to archive your Twitter/X feed or other online disability content/activism/media with The Disabled Black Women Activism Digital Archive Project. 

Why?

CTRL: The Disabled Black Women Activism Digital Archive Project was started to collect, document, and archive the online activism and cultural work of Black disabled women and femmes across social movements and subcultures, from the early 2000s to today. 

The focus of the first phase of this project is collecting Twitter/X feeds from disabled Black women, with their explicit permission, and moving onward from there. 

How?

Here’s how to download your Twitter/X archive:

https://help.x.com/en/managing-your-account/how-to-download-your-x-archive

Why now?

How much longer will Twitter/X be available, as we know it? Especially for people to download their own data, as they can do now? Twitter was at the heart of so much social activism, sharing, and living over the past decade, and a central space for racial justice, feminism, and disability justice activism online.

Why just not rely on Twitter/X to share what I have put on there? Why ask us?

I’m asking directly because what is available online about you is never all of you. So you should choose what you want to share. If you aren’t comfortable sharing with the archive project, this should be your own choice.

However, Twitter/X significantly limits what researchers and similar people can get — and charges a lot. The purpose of this project isn’t to make money, but to archive the collective knowledge of Black disabled women.

So what do you mean by Black disabled women and others with a marginalized gender identity?

This is meant to be inclusive rather than exclusive. If you are Black, you count here. If you are disabled, you count here (including chronically ill people and those that have any disability or disabling condition, and those are part of communities like the Deaf community). If you are a cisgender or trans woman, femme, or a person with an expansive gender identity, you count here (including anyone of any gender who has been socialized as a girl/woman). 

What is the reason to focus specifically on Black disabled women?

Since the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, “listen to Black women” has been used as a rallying cry to uplift Black women’s voices and highlight gender and racial inequality, online and off. However, there remains a dearth of research and writing focused singularly on documenting the experiences of Black disabled women.

The far-reaching and lasting effects of the work Black women have accomplished and will accomplish within the temporal structure of social media platforms is in danger of not being recorded, and therefore not able to be remembered or researched. This project aims to collect these efforts not for one specific research project, but instead to create an archive so that the work of Black Disabled women can be studied rather than forgotten or suppressed.

What is the specific research focus?

This is not a research project with a preset scholarly focus; it is an archive. This means once enough information is collected researchers can use the archive for their research, but this project’s goal is to collect, not to have a specific agenda.

So this means that my spicy Tweet about Method Man or Janelle Monae is going to be included?

If that’s what you want and you think it’s important! You get to decide how much or how little of your Twitter feed or digital content is included. If there are things you don’t want to be shared, then please don’t feel obligated share that! But the silly, ridiculous, and horny stuff is also part of what makes you you — and that is important too to share to get a more complete picture of Black disabled women online. 

Who is running this archive? Is this connected with a university?

I’m Keidra Chaney and I’m a Black disabled woman. I came up with this project as a part of the Emerge Fellowship at the The Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University.

This project isn’t presently connected with a university because like many Black disabled women, I’m an independent scholar and have a day job. I plan to expand this project, but that will take time and funding. Right now, I just want to collect information before it is lost forever!

How do I share my Twitter data?

You can submit your archived Twitter feed (or zines, blogs, or any other content) to the archive’s intake form.

Please contact blackdisabledwomenarchive@gmail.com if you have any questions!

Thank you for your time. Feel free to reach out with questions — and forward on this request to anyone else you think would be interested.