Making Black Lives Matter: on the circulation of images of black death on social media Bramble, Victor author Azoulay, Ariella advisor Bogues, Barrymore reader Brown University Department of Modern Culture and Media sponsor text theses 2017 139 p. reformatted digital eng Senior thesis (AB)--Brown University, 2017 Modern Culture and Media With the 'massification' of digital media technologies comes their entanglements not only with our lives but that moment which defines each life, death itself. To fully understand the implications of this entanglement we must pay special attention to death as not simply natural, but as the product of social, economic, and political forces. This thesis focuses on an understudied element of this entanglement, the relation between these technologies and the racialized production and exploitation of death, particularly the circulation of images of Black death on social media. Chapter 1 situates the current circulation on digital media in a longer history of Black death's mediation through photography. Chapter 2 moves on to examine the mobilization of the image of Michael Brown's dead body on the micro-blogging website Tumblr, asking what work this image does in its circulation. Finally, Chapter 3 engages with the Facebook Live video of the immediate aftermath of St. Anthony, Minnesota Police officer Jeronimo Yanez shooting and killing Philando Castile. I conclude that while the circulation of these images on social media enables a renegotiation of the terms through which Black life is made valuable, the only chance for direct intervention comes through the situated device, the smart camera-phone, and not through social media. Social media Digital media Violence Anti-Blackness 10.7301/Z02F7KV2In CopyrightCollection is open for research.