ABSTRACT
Amid conservative attacks on public education, we detail how one hashtag meme helped teachers, students, and parents in Jefferson County, Colorado, oust a conservative school board majority in 2015. We introduce collective identity theory and ecological methods as tools capable of understanding “social movement 2.0” in its complexity. We then situate the case in context: following revisions to the Advanced Placement US History (APUSH) curricular framework, the newly elected conservative majority began instituting unpopular decisions that inspired teacher and student protests. Four days after a Board majority member called for JeffCo to review (and possibly reform) APUSH, #JeffCoSchoolBoardHistory went viral. We analyze the meme (Shifman, 2013), detailing how it helped shape the emergent collective identity as “critical thinkers questioning authority.” The meme’s content encouraged participants to remix historic facts and lessons through irony, while the form provided an easy template through which to mock the Board majority. We note particularly how the meme’s stance of critical thinking and questioning authority helped memesters reign in the excesses of irony. We conclude that #JeffCoSchoolBoardHistory aggregated and archived sarcastic tweets, protesting, petitioning, and voting as performances of the collective identity, resulting in consequential action and providing hope in rhetoric’s strategic capacities (Cox, 2010).
