Draft:Ra'il I'Nasah Kiam

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Ra'il I'Nasah Kiam[1] is an artist, writer, tech critic, and independent researcher based in North Carolina. I'Nasah Kiam (xe/they) works primarily as a writer and photographer, in addition to curating black art.

I'Nasah Kiam is notable especially for xir role, along with Shafiqah Hudson, in the 2014 #YourSlipIsShowing online campaign, which uncovered far-right trolling tactics and countered a political disinformation harrassment campaign designed to divide left-leaning online communities, particularly communities of women, and to discredit and insult Black women.

While Hudson created the hashtag for the #YourSlipIsShowing counter-disinformation campaign, Kiam uncovered and then worked to publicly expose twitter and 4chan posters who were creating fake accounts and pretending to be black feminists who wanted to "end fathers day" due to their supposedly being misandrists, who were also supposedly hostile to white women. This attempt to divide online feminist communities by using an inflammatory hashtag, created by the trolls, was orchestrated on 4chan and deployed mainly on Twitter. This #EndFathersDay online campaign saw trolls contributing to the hashtag, spreading misinformation and using fake African American Vernacular English to make harmful statements that played into racist and sexist stereotypes, and trying to create a wave of online hatred towards Black women in general and Black feminists in particular.

I'Nasah Kiam, tweeting under the name @so_treu, was the first person to find the original 4chan post that birthed the #EndFathersDay movement. Xe then exposed these tweets and accounts with Shafiqah Hudson's #YourSlipIsShowing tag and worked to correct the record and educate people about black feminists online[2]. Together, @so_treu (Kiam) and @sassycrass (Hudson) worked tirelessly for weeks to use the online networks and communities that make up Black Twitter[3] to try to bring attention to what was happening, and show that it was a politically motivated campaign that was likely a dry run for other, similar campaigns.[4] Within a year, the Gamergate online mobbing became front page news, with trolls using similar tactics and techniques, refined for a different target. Both Kiam and Hudson, as well as scholars of social media,[5] disinformation, and online attacks had been vocal about the missed opportunity to learn from what happened to Black feminists during the #EndFathersDay harassment and disinformation campaign in time to alter the events that led to Gamergate and many other similar harassment campaigns.[6] Journalists and scholars have located this event as a precursor to not only Gamergate but also the online trolling and harassment tactics associated with the self-described "alt right" working to get former President Trump elected in 2016.[7]

After exposing online trolls, I'Nasah Kiam received a multitude of rape, death, and doxxing threats online.[8]

Since then, I'Nasah Kiam has continued to be a vocal critic of technology and warn about the dangers that poorly-moderated, large social media platforms can present for marginalized communities--often seen as a kind of canary in the coal mine in this situation--and also for society as a whole.[9] Kiam continues to give public talks and write about what xe sees as the broad importance of this issue for the Black community as well as for white communities online and offline.[10] Kiam pursued a master's in fine arts degree in North Carolina in 2019 and currently runs multiple online accounts showcasing xir own and others' photography, including a Black art curation site, and sites dedicated to cultural theory, Afropessimism, and Black community and politics.[11]

  1. ^ Kiam, Ra'il I'Nasah (2022-05-18). "Where a Name Is From". CONTINGENT. Retrieved 2024-08-20.
  2. ^ Hampton, Rachelle (2019-04-23). "The Black Feminists Who Saw the Alt-Right Threat Coming". Slate. ISSN 1091-2339. Retrieved 2024-07-08.
  3. ^ Handel, Sarah, Mehta, Jonaki (May 24, 2023). "The challenges of accurately archiving Black Twitter on All Things Considered". NPR.org.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. ^ Reagan (2020-08-06). "I'Nasah Crockett and the Power of Signal Boosting". rae's media notebook. Retrieved 2024-08-20.
  5. ^ Thomsen, Ian (2022-04-29). "What is the future of Black Twitter under Elon Musk?". Northeastern Global News. Retrieved 2024-08-20.
  6. ^ ""Raving Amazons": Antiblackness and Misogynoir in Social Media". Model View Culture. Retrieved 2024-08-20.
  7. ^ Clark, Meredith (2024). We Tried to Tell Y'All: Black Twitter and the Rise of Digital Counternarratives (1st ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190068141.
  8. ^ Hampton, Rachelle (2019-04-23). "The Black Feminists Who Saw the Alt-Right Threat Coming". Slate. ISSN 1091-2339. Retrieved 2024-08-20.
  9. ^ Gallagher, Ferghal, A. B. C. News. "Minority communities fighting back against disinformation ahead of election". ABC News. Retrieved 2024-08-20.
  10. ^ "Srcconpower2018 Talks Inasah | SRCCON:POWER | December 13 & 14, Philadelphia". power.srccon.org. Retrieved 2024-08-20.
  11. ^ authorsofcolor. "Authors of Color". A place to find literature and writing by authors of color. Retrieved 2024-08-20.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Ra%27il_I%27Nasah_Kiam&oldid=1241301711"