When Twitter Got #woke : Black Lives Matter, DeRay McKesson, Twitter, and the Appropriation of the Aesthetics of Protest

This chapter takes as its focal point a press photograph of the arrest of DeRay McKesson, a prominent black figure associated with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the United States. In the photograph, McKesson is shown wearing a T-shirt, produced by the social media company Twitter, that bears the hashtag #StayWoke. This photographic image is examined by deploying an ‘anatomy of an image’ approach, defined by two qualitative modes of analysis. First, looking at the use of the photograph in the mainstream online press as well as selectively on Twitter; second, by treating the image and, in particular, the T-shirt McKesson wears as a starting point for a discussion of relationships between BLM, McKesson, and Twitter.