My goal is to increase awareness about the long history LGBTQ activism has at UNT. If I were to incorporate social media into my project, I would create “this day in history” content that tracks the story of the DGA (and other related events) through posts on Instagram on the anniversary of those events. Instagram features posts that can take the form of photos with captions or short form videos – called “reels” – that can also include text in the caption. Posts for this project would feature an image of a relevant primary source (like a scan of an article in the North Texas Daily), a person, a piece of ephemera, or some other significant image. The caption would detail what happened on that day and why it’s significant to LGBTQ history. In order to have broader appeal and more material to discuss, I imagine that the events included on this account would not be limited to UNT’s LGBTQ history. Since there are other events that are relevant to the story, I think other aspects of LGBTQ Texas history could be incorporated, such as anniversaries of significant legal decisions, birthdays of famous LGBTQ Texans, etc.
Audience/Messaging
This strategy would specifically aim to reach LGBTQ Texans interested in the history of the gay rights movement/the cultural impact of LGBTQ Texans in years past. I want to convey a sense of shared history/provide a sense of heritage for people who live in a state where it’s sometimes still difficult to be “out,” but by providing information that has been vetted as true and presented in a way that allows for nuance. Content that appears too “academic” can often leech the emotion out of the information being shared, while accounts run by non-academics can – often accidentally – spread mis/disinformation. Several factors have contributed to there being a lack of LGBTQ “elders” compared to the number of LGBTQ youth, and it’s important to demonstrate that these identities are not new (though content on the account would not feature events prior to ~1890 in order to avoid opining on the theoretical debate between essentialism and social constructionism), in order to demonstrate that fact. This both contributes to a sense of shared history and refutes arguments common on the political right about these identities being new and a result of propaganda, etc.
Platform
I chose Instagram over Facebook because the audience on the latter is generally older and more conservative. I don’t think it would gain much traction there and, if the comments sections of other accounts that discuss LGBTQ history are any indication, much of the engagement would be negative. While this still provides an algorithmic boost, my main goal is not to grow the number of views or comments, so Facebook is not my priority. There is easy crossposting of content between the two platforms since they’re both owned by Meta, so I absolutely might do that in the hypothetical future, but it’s not how I’d start. Instagram’s demographic is more suited to my project as well.
Logistics
I’d post three times a week to start. Since these are “on this day in history” posts, I’d have the ability to create multiple posts in one sitting and save them until the relevant day. My ultimate goal would be to get to a point where I was posting once a day. In terms of when I’d post, I don’t have a specific time of day in mind – that used to really matter algorithmically on Instagram, but engagement early on is much more important now. I’d do some testing with different posting times, but I suspect I’d settle on some time in the midafternoon.
Success
Success would mainly be measured by follower count, followed by likes and shares. I’m not aiming for quantitative engagement as much as qualitative engagement. My goal is to provide valuable information to people and I think people choosing to follow that account would be a better affirmation that I was doing that than number of comments (which could include negative reactions) or something similar.
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