Building Accountability

Unknown Speaker 05:20
Okay well we're at 116 and we got a lot to pack into 45 minutes and we really want, Eve, hopefully some time for some discussion towards that note we do know that we are going to be talking about for what some people might be something that maybe they don't want to publicly put into chat so right away I'm going to drop in the jam in the chat, a jam board if anybody wants to be able to share anonymously so please feel free to use that and I'll repeat it in, if we get more people joining in a little bit, but welcome everybody. You are with creating an accountability matrix we are a data team from mass action and we're going to do a quick introduction starting with Juline.

Unknown Speaker 06:10
Hi everybody, my name is Julian shivali I use she, her, hers pronouns, and I am a middle aged white woman with a round face of gut fading pink short pink hair purple glasses, a black and white polka dot shirt on, you sitting in my office is behind me is a bookshelf with a rainbow array of plastic animals from mold aroma machine, which I love very much. I also have a rainbow machine in my windows so that is the rainbows that are going around behind me. Meeting a little bit of fancy in my day, I am calling to you today from the James A Michener Art Museum, which is in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, which is the ancestral homeland of the Manabe people.

Unknown Speaker 06:59
Hi everyone, my name is Gretchen Jennings, I'm a white older woman in my seven days with white hair and blue glasses and a black turtleneck and necklace silver necklace. I'm sitting in my sunporch so I behind me our plants and shutters and bookshelves. My pronouns are she, her, and I'm in Washington DC on the unseeded lands of the Piscataway and Anacostia and people's.

Unknown Speaker 07:36
My name is Sara Phalen I use she her pronouns and I am a light skinned Mexican American woman, I have dark kinky hair and today a blue shirt with some embroidery, that's short sleeves because it's 72 degrees here in Chicago, which is the ancestral homelands in the suburbs of the Kickapoo Peoria Kaskaskia and Pottawatomie, and I do also want to say that I am calling from my home and I sit on land that was the largest and longest operating company town in the state of Illinois that house Mexican immigrant workers. So we are very happy to be with you all today presenting some information about a team of us that came together from mass action to pull some data after the public statements were made following the murder of George Floyd, and some of the real issues that the team came together around was, there's this been this long struggle for change, and we have had a lot of discussions in various arenas, but we've lacked some data around what museums are actually saying, and follow up to those statements, and when the, the launch and the huge amount of statements came out in the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd we thought it was a great time to really activate and to utilize what was coming out. Gretchen is going to walk us through the accountability matrix and the six. The six factors that we use with that data.

Unknown Speaker 09:13
Right, we decided if we were going to really look carefully at the various kinds of statements, and there were, you know, MANY different types of postings postings of art, and so forth, that we needed to have some common criteria that. And also we knew we would be looking at a large number of statements so we wanted to have something in common that we could all use in looking at the statements and trying to analyze them. So, over at least one, maybe two meetings of mass action, we came up with these six, and the first and in my view anyway and I think all of us that the most important and basic is does the statement acknowledge this Museum's complicity in systemic racism, not just as MANY of them did we decry racism we decry the killing of George Floyd or we acknowledge that the museum field is racist but does the statement, acknowledge that particular museums, history and complicity in systemic racism. Then secondly, in what areas then of the museum system or structure. Does this racism exist, that the white supremacy the the oppression the colonialism, so is there any kind of structural analysis of how the the board and staff, the collections the public image where, where does this museum where is it aware of its racist operation. Thirdly, are there any specific actions, mentioned in the statement. We're going to call a community board together to look at our collections we realize that they're very monolithic and, and we're hoping to to look at those, or examine our board makeup or. And so, what kind of actions will some museums said that they would appoint a director of diversity. So we're looking for specific ways that the museum felt it could address what it analyzed as its as its racist structure or were there any desired outcomes mentioned. If we examine our collections. What do we hope will come from that a greater diversity a greater inclusion of various kinds of artists or or artifacts. Are there any deadlines involved by next year or within six months, we plan to have a Director of Diversity, or we plan to have a an inventory of our, of our collections or invite new board members. And finally, is there any kind of financial commitment. We did set the board high for all of these, or set the bar high. And so, not very MANY did make a financial commitment but there were some museums that did commit money to positions, paid internships and other kinds of financial commitments that, in our view, showed, you know, a more definite and specific commitment. So those are the six and and Juline will then share kind of how we went about using these in analyzing the various museums that we looked at

Unknown Speaker 13:03
inscription. So we have these categories that we want to basically score. You'll hear us use the term score and code fairly interchangeably. What I started to view this as is a content analysis, which can mean that you are looking with very strict criteria at text usually whether it's printed text. In this case it is, but it could be a movie a video, a TV show and you've got very strict criteria and you're trying to apply them. And so oftentimes that means that even though you could interpret something to mean. Well I know what they're trying to say, Well, they didn't directly say it. Can you go back a few. Sorry. I do that all the time I was like what am I pushing. So, so we had to create a data set, we decided to use a accredited institutions, we know it's not ideal. We know this is that all the museums, doing dei work, but it is a set that exists in the world and you have to start somewhere. We did some data mining so that set of uncredited institutions, that's the list of more than 1000 institutions. So, a large number of volunteer that would say 20 to 30. Spend some time the summer of 2020 you know dipping in and out into a shared dock to look at beach institutions website, social media, Facebook, Instagram etc and document whether or not they had made a statement. We then started to refine the criteria we didn't have all of the criteria refined in the process. This was MANY months MANY hours of meetings, we had to figure out what how we were scoring things, how we were coding things and whether we were agreeing and applying those in the same way. And also working through our individual biases, you know, A lot of us have worked at these institutions or had personal knowledge that wow that's doing great work but their statement is incredibly weak, I want to give them credit for that. No, we can't we're just looking at that statement. And we also knew that there's tons of stories behind the scenes here right we know, working in museums how much shaping and editing and tweaking goes into a public statement about a incredibly politically charged in a politically charged time and event and so we know that these statements were often, you know, wordsmith to within an inch of their lives. So we, we were aware of that. So, Sarah will be speaking a little bit later about a separate survey that we did to ask people about the process of developing statements, And we definitely want to acknowledge the history of hashtag museums respond to Ferguson, I feel like it's the fact that so MANY that that hashtag is something that was one of my early acknowledgments of the lack of museums responses to social situations that I think because museums were called out for not doing that museums felt they needed to reply now. Thank you can go to the next one. So this was how we divided our three, we gave, we coded in those six categories that Gretchen listed. So if this, if we found evidence in the category of clear, unambiguous fulfilment, it was an A, if it was kind of there like, oh I don't know you would have to interpret it, but it could be there that the B and then C very very vague or Super General and that, so I was saying that you know a content analysis is strict, but it's also squishy. And also we're doing this as volunteers can go to the next slide. So want to make sure that our data is transparent and one of the things that I spent last week doing was making our data, cleaned up enough so that it can be shared widely, so that first link is a link to the statement rubric so you can see the criteria we use more well laid out, and then you can see a spreadsheet of all of the codes that we did if you and make those are bitly links to both of those are case sensitive and I did just pop them in the chat as well can go to the next slide. So this is a screenshot of the statement as you can see what we tried to do we encourage our coders to copy text from the statements themselves into the spreadsheet so you can see why we selected the category that we did and if you click Next. You can highlight those. All of the state's unique coded statements, all of those are hyperlinked to documents that feature the full statement. So this is what I did with my summer last year when I was unemployed I sat outside and I copy and pasted statements from museums into Google Docs for you to enjoy now. What did We Learn

Unknown Speaker 18:21
did am accredited museums make a statement 5050 Generally, so I'm 52% Yes 47.9% know what kinds of museums made statements, and we're going to dissect this a little bit more, but mostly art and history. When you look at the numbers this way this is all 1000 Plus museums looking at whether there was a statement or not. This breaks down a little bit differently than what the a m breakdown is so museum type of am accredited museums 41% identify as art museum or center and 22 as history so it seems like more history museums made statements that there exists, or percentage wise it's different than the breakdown, we'll get into a little bit later, why that may or may not actually be the case. This is a statement versus no statement by museum type and again we're looking at that full 1000 Plus list. So art museums are much more likely to make a statement twice as likely than not, history, culture, more likely not to make a statement out of their large numbers, and then you can see, kind of 5050 for Science Natural History and then combination combination is anything that's like art and science or art and history or history and something else. The next one, distribution of ratings per category so all accredited museum. So this is those this is that ABC looking at how well, museums, did across those 1000 Plus museums. So, the purple fuchsia, clear, unambiguous that's the a plus, wow they really knocked it out of the park. Orange, unclear, maybe a little bit vague, and they're, they're getting there at something but not much. Poor or non existent is the gray and then included in this graph are museums that did not make a statement so you can see, it's really interesting if you look at those black and gray lines. Most institutions that made the statement, they didn't really say much. Unfortunately, it's, it's close to those who did the amount that did not make a statement. So we've got very, very low numbers of folks that we scored as a plus, and still relatively low numbers as far as, you know, as the B category, go to the next slide. Break down the same and so here's where those original numbers we dig into a little bit more. If we look at the number of statements that existed period what happens, at least in the aim list that we were working from of 1038 30,060 plus Museum. For example, New England history. That is a single organization that has more than 30 institutions individually listed. So they all are listed as an individual accredited institution, but they all had the same statements backing them up basically because of that overarching organization. So of all of those statements of around 578 statements, only 73% were unique. There were duplicate statements like I just mentioned. And then there was a small percentage of places that shared other organizations statements. Some of the Smithsonian organizations share just quoted Lonnie Bunch of statements, and MANY organizations that were part of universities just shared the university statement, we kind of we put those off to the side because there were MANY other organizations either Smithsonian museums or university museums who even though they had a higher organization, they made their own specific statement to the museum, but next slide. So, when we take all of those duplicates out when we take out sharing somebody else's statements, we have 432 unique statements, and have those results still aren't great, most statements, we're still not saying anything, again, the pink bars at the top are the best grades that they could get for those categories. The orange is. Okay, and again the gray is. We didn't see enough to really get you any point. Now, it's a bummer. This is back to that what kind of museums made statements, this again is looking at all statements so all 1000 Plus statements if we go to the next slide. When we take out those duplicate, just looking at those 400 unique statements, we see that there are MANY more art museums which better reflects the general distribution of museums, accredited museums and am.

Unknown Speaker 23:21
And yes, thank you. Now we can go to skip to your Sarah. That's just a comparison of what I just talked about and that's different comparison.

Unknown Speaker 23:33
So the other thing that we mentioned at the beginning is we thought it was important, we were looking at public statements that were made, but we did know from talking to friends in the museum field that other institutions were, were also having internal statements but we did think it was really important for follow up to not branch out beyond these this dataset because we really wanted to hone in on the data side. And another point that we felt were in was important was those who mentioned they would provide updates. So out of those 432 unique statements, only 28 promised some type of update. In actuality, when we looked at those I will say this had a better distribution as we had 22 of the 28 did provide some type of statements some type of update, but I do really want to call out that when we went back to those 28 institutions. It was a pretty low bar so they just had to say something. After that initial June, most of them posted in June, the beginning of June 2020 something. Almost all of them, as we look at transparency and accessibility to this work and institutions, almost all of them only posted it to the website. I think one out of the 28 actually said hey, we posted the statement we want to let you know where we're at on their social media. And if we look at where most of the general public is consuming things from institutions, a lot of that is on social media. We're not all regularly checking museum websites for institutions actually had this on their homepage, which was wonderful, one of them it was even like the middle black bar which was fabulous, eight institutions, it took one click to get into the statement so maybe it was in their menu tab, maybe it was at the bottom and the about us, and then 10 of them took two plus clicks and some of them you actually had to download the statement. So if us as researchers are looking through this but if you think about the normal general public, how accessible is this how transparent Are we being about this work that MANY of us are saying is foundational to our field moving forward. And how do we, how are we positioning these discussion points. And then we also looked at the survey so mass action put out a survey to widely, we spread it out on social media we spread it out within our network saying hey, if you were working on a statement and you think, our scoring might not Capture what really happened, please fill out the survey. We got 36 responses which is not overwhelming, but it did give us an overview, 25 people actually responded to as their individual take and then 11, people who were identifying themselves as official museum representatives did post an update. I did post on the survey and then here you can see I also did an update 11 who responded to the survey for those institutions to update later. And we look at some of what the actual big fields that people could give us a little bit of information from individuals. A lot of them felt like they were left out of what the institution was doing in putting out these statements, some felt that their institution was following a trend, and wanted to have the appearance of being progressive. We've heard a lot about these, you know appearance making but not a whole lot of substance going on. And that really was borne out in these in these surveys, a lot of face saving happening, and just feeling the pressures, and then the directors fear or the fear from leadership at the top of institutions to we have to get something out from the institutional referee representatives we heard again they wanted to acknowledge and make some statements about the past racism that has influenced their institutions and how we all currently operate, and a lot of the institutional representatives did mention that they did want to actually show solidarity with the black community, and wanting to want it to be known that they were trying, and that staff members also this was an important, important discussion point to that staff members within the institution, we're putting pressure on leadership saying we have to make some kind of a statement. When we look at the breakdown to one of the questions that we asked was is your institution have, are you aware of anti black racism at your institution, and have you experienced or observed the anti racism at your institution, the 73% of our respondents which, if you follow change the museum on social media. This is not a huge surprise. 73% responded that they are aware of anti black racism, and just a little under 70% had experienced or actually observed it themselves. And again this is a small small survey but at least it helps to give us a little background.

Unknown Speaker 28:27
And then as we presented this Gretchen is going to talk a little bit about some of her observations as her work with the empathetic Museum has also given her a lens as to the stretch of this work and how there's a little bit of a disconnect that is seen out in this data. And Gretchen you're on mute.

Unknown Speaker 28:53
Sorry. One thing is certain, just the last couple of slides so that it's very interesting that institutionally, workers observed racism within the institution and yet the formal statements, and maybe it's because a lot of them were crafted by the directors or whatever, didn't really seem to acknowledge that, and as I was going through the data. And then around the certainly even earlier this year and later last year, we began to observe so MANY curators of color, for example, resigning very publicly from institutions and citing the real trauma that they were experiencing in, in working at an institution and to me this, the kind of the skeleton or the structure behind these resignations. Also MANY just frontline workers and if they weren't let go so MANY people leaving the museum profession. If you look at the the six criteria that first one in particular, the lack of awareness, the fact that of the more than 500 museums that made statements, only about 50 or 10%, seem to have any consciousness at least stated publicly that they as a museum we're participating in in institutional racism, if there's that kind of oblivious situation that kind of blindness, then to me that helps explain it may not be a cause and effect but certainly it's correlated with the trauma that MANY staff members and curators of color, talk about in their resignation statements or in their discussion of how they have to really engage in in aggressive self care. In order to be able to continue working in in an institution for any length of time, so I feel that this, this data provides a kind of a structure and a framework for understanding why we are so far from really addressing the situation of inclusivity and justice in our museums with that when push comes to shove, even though museums felt that they were obligated to say something. So MANY of their statements were came across as as inauthentic as insists insincere as performative and, and then this explains why so MANY museums in our country are still so difficult to work in, especially for people of color, and also maybe are not visited as they should be by audiences of color because kind of at their core, there's still this blindness to the way that we are a part of the systemic racism of our country.

Unknown Speaker 32:17
I think I saw some discussion a chat about some of the silence, and if, if your institution made a statement, especially if you're not am accredited and we didn't gather that data and you want to share in the chat or in that link that we've dropped in the jam board if you want to share anonymously, please do because we're also still trying to figure out what what's next and what does this data mean now that we actually have a substantial data pool, but also looking at the world on fire, and then blown up, and then lit on fire, again, that we are living in, and how do institutions that talk a good talk of, you know, being civically active in the community, how do we, you know it's not we can't release a statement every time something happens because unfortunately the world we live in, we be releasing statements, multiple times a day, perhaps. So what does that look like, and if, and what is this data set. Now, what are the ramifications for it and what are the six criteria look like alongside of some of the other accountability metrics and things people are putting out there, and how do we look at a broader view of positioning institutions to just be built in policy and sustainable ways of showing empathy and compassion to the various sectors of the world around us. But then also, what is the public expect from us, and how, how could data sets like this be used for the public. We saw a ton come out of the Detroit museum that art museum. And we saw one though one person in the public, and I will pull it in a minute and drop it in the chat but about. I'm not going to donate and I you know I wasn't going to give you a lot of money but you were in my will and you're no longer there. No can accountability, leave the walls of the museum and also can these tools be empowered. Excuse me be things to empower the, the general public. And that leads us to the question of and we'd love to hear some thoughts in the chat and hopefully we'll have some time at the end of the presentation for some questions and discussion. But where does accountability live, if we see public statements that don't even acknowledge the institutional racism that is built into our structures, who whose job is it and once a statement is made, whether it's internally or externally, whose job is that to follow up with the website something that couple other data projects that came out of mass action one was just looking at accountability and accessibility on a website. There are a lot of accessibility links, there's a lot that don't don't have that, there are some equity D AI anti racism whatever the institution's calling them that are on a website, but again, how MANY clicks does it take to get there, who's writing it something that we didn't present the data on but you'll see in the full data set is when these statements were made who signed it was assigned by the board president, was it signed by the CEO was it a joint one, two, they have no signature, who knows. So who's taking accountability for what these statements are looking like. And again, social media if we're plopping it on a website that's in the maybe a DEA plan or a strategic plan that takes downloading but we're not sharing it to social media, how are we really creating access points for museum workers, the general public, around us, and then even once we distill down online, whose voices are being prioritized and accessible through those platforms, and then creating internal policies are we creating policies within our institutions that also address employee safety and treatment, a lot of the DEA statements were all outwardly facing, it was about what we're doing in the community, while museum workers are fleeing the field, while people are looking to unionize because our institutions aren't protecting us where we do have some of our museum associations that are even doing simple things like requiring salary disclosures in job postings, who's protecting the workers and how does that all shake out and balance. And then for all of us as individuals, what is our role in this work. And then also what do we do with the data, do you mean I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about the hopes and dreams for what this data that you have made so beautiful.

Unknown Speaker 36:44
Sure, I mean, I, I'm going to jump to the bottom of this list of empowering the public with specific calls to action, because I've been following a lot of the Union formations that have been happening and we're always up against the session about unionizing theory, which is happening right now, but I was really impressed with a call to action from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, social I've posted here, they are really active on social. They, From what I could tell at least reported on social. They encourage more than 200 people to send emails to museum leadership. I hope that that, that kind of action can happen from having these resources available. Wow, a year and a half. This museum, said they were, they cared a lot and they were gonna do something and we're gonna listen and work on it. What What have you done, and then let's, let's get people in that community to, you know, send an email and ask what have you done, I know different museums respond differently I have worked at museums in the past where if you get an email from the public, that everything has to stop and we have to address that message, because, oh no, somebody who's upset or, you know, and that can be good but it can also, you know skew things one way or the other. i One of the things that I know is that we live in an echo chamber here, of, of people in mass action people who are attending the session at MC N. We're in the field we care deeply we're tuned in, how do we get those outside of this bubble to care as well and start to put pressure on. So I would love to people to use for people to use that data of like gosh look at how, look at what the statements were they weren't very impressed. I was saying before the call started I spent a lot of time looking at the data again over the last week when I was on vacation I was getting angry all over again at how weak and pathetic some of these statements were. Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, we've got this great set of criteria, we certainly do not want this to be a tool for how to write better statements, that's, that's not what this is about. But if another statement needs to be written, then at least make sure that it does acknowledge complicity does have concrete steps in it, things that are meaningful instead of just listening and learning which is what, which is a phrase that was out there a lot.

Unknown Speaker 39:25
It's a great point Juline And something that I should have mentioned in the introduction, too, I think, as we worked on this and as discussions with Max action, the larger group too. We really wanted to make sure that this was not about shame and blame, but it was about being real about what was being said, and then using that as accountability jumping points, because as, as soon as put in the chat, it is about once you make that public statement, then we do actually have something to hold you accountable for, then we do have the you said you're going to follow up okay well four of you haven't yet, so you know, where are you working on this and what, what are the expectations around that and we hope that the data can be, can be a point of action for that. And then again, what's our individual positioning. It's something that I think all three of us found very disheartening. And especially, there were days that we were tasked with looking at 10 and then coming together and sharing what we each thought of each of them. And it was hard to not have your personal bias or maybe at the start of it you were like, Oh, okay. No, they're, they're getting a B here but by your fourth or fifth you're just angry, and you're like No, like I'm not giving anybody credit for that. And then also as we compare those who wrote really great statements, just a quick Google search on change the museum's would pull up like her horrific statements by museum workers. So then, what were the ramifications from that, they got a really high score based on our matrix, but we know that day to day, people are being traumatized and re traumatized and so how do we how do we also incorporate that. And then again it is the museum workers as Juline saying how do we get people beyond our bubble to care. But how would you we realize that they already maybe care because maybe they don't come to our institution, or maybe they've walked in one time, all it took for them to say this place is not for me, I'm out of here. And so how, how do we bear out this data to the reality of the variety of communities we're trying to reach and who, who has really been impacted by what this looks like. And then again back to leadership, which I think we've seen in a lot, those of you who may be in these areas having these discussions, there's not a whole lot of directors, talking about these with in in wide open groups we are not openly thinking through the huge ramifications this actually has for our field, and where we go from here. And then before I open it up for last statements and some questions we did really want to call out, as Juline said a huge large amount of people helped us with data. And some of this work is moving forward and we're welcome to welcome anybody new who wants to help mind through some of those, but we really do want to call out all those people who put ours in the summer of 2020 into this work and have been continuing that I'm going to stop share Gretchen and Juline I don't know if you have any other last statements that you'd like to make or if anybody has any questions, feel free to raise your hand and we can work that way.

Unknown Speaker 42:38
I think just what would be most useful to you all, I think, you know, how can we, we've got this data, What been looking at it off and on for a long time. And, you know, would there be anything useful to take to a director to offer the board to share with docents, I don't know what kind of, you know one pager summary of things would be useful if at all.

Unknown Speaker 43:21
Aaron, you want to go ahead, please. Sorry, so I think it would be really helpful if you published an article, because a bunch of independent museum professionals got together and recorded a bunch of statements from a bunch of websites, doesn't hold any weight in a boardroom full of, you know, board members. So, but something that appears in curator, or, you know, what's the other one that I read all the time. Volunteers volunteer something in something volunteer quarterly, like the big nonprofit. I agree that, like I wish we didn't have to publish but sometimes to change the system you have to work in the system. So, this is the system. and I think it would be very helpful to have, have that published somewhere, widely in in a peer reviewed journal.

Unknown Speaker 44:24
We've made a couple of posts on the mass action blog, and we've got one that hopefully we should be going up soon, hasn't gone up yet. But, but yeah, we, we agree I think there's also just will what everybody knows, again is, volunteer hours and real jobs are exhausting and then do it later but I think it is good to hear that encouragement and as, as well and knowing knowing that frustration of yes it's not in print. It doesn't it doesn't count and our white supremacist society.

Unknown Speaker 45:01
I just like to. There's a question here that says, appreciate the work on external statements but what are your thoughts on building internal accountability. And I think there are a number of resources right now that are available for free online for example the mass action Toolkit, which is at mass actions website I don't know Juline Do you have that on the top of your head or the but

Unknown Speaker 45:29
action.org

Unknown Speaker 45:30
museum action.org There's the empathetic Museum. Maturity Model which is at empathetic museum.com And there's also the museums and race report card, which is on the site of museums and race.org I believe, but those are three tools that could be used interchangeably, and along, you know, along with each other and and to you know to provide variety that are available that address internal structures and ways that museums can work on internal accountability.

Unknown Speaker 46:11
The other thing that we've had some discussion, as we've talked to various groups and presented this in different formats is. Could this also be something that could be open source and people can, you know, input their own institution, especially knowing that we only focused on those a little bit over 1000 Am could people upload what their institution is doing either nice anonymously or not anonymously. And could that be checked against things you know I think we've seen a lot of red flags and I love all the recent red flags Twitter, things that identify some, some issues in our field. But would that be an issue for a consultant who's gonna you know working with an institution to go and run the name against the database or someone applying for a job, or even a board member or potential board member who could go and look at this and have the actual statements pulled out that are now so far down in the social media field and actually look at that and take that back to leadership and say, I want the update I know and I think that's where the accountability comes in. Something that I will say that I don't know those are Gretchen mentioned some great tools that already exists that we dropped into the chat, but something that we don't have a good handle on is empowering workers, I mean, if we look at these union attempts which were at like what two events successful have had successful vote so far and hopefully a lot more to follow. But, where, where do we hit an issue of people afraid for their jobs, which is a reality, and how do we how do we create accountability systems that allow and have the buy in, and perhaps it is as Erin mentioned through publishing and having pour from the, the museum God's giving, giving credence to some of this, unfortunately.

Unknown Speaker 48:05
I just want to end by saying thank you to Gretchen and Sarah, this has been a really long process, with a lot of long conversations, and I really find this volunteer work, really energized frustrating but energizing and they're exceptional colleagues and it's been such a joy to work which

Unknown Speaker 48:23
I would agree. I think that that this project is something that really gave me a place to focus during a particularly last year during the long kind of lonely shutdown that I knew that this was something that would be worthwhile, and it was it was a real anchor for me and I agree, I, I loved working with, with you, so thank you.

Unknown Speaker 48:49
And I think something else that that has been really important it's been talked about for a long time that has been great to work with this whole team has been data we lack so much data. So if you have a couple of friends that, you know, none of us have extra time but have a little bit of extra time, like throwing more data out into the field around this work, we need it, we have next to nothing to go on so I'm Teres Quinn who's at Muse the news program at UIC in Chicago has also been doing a little bit of work around around gathering more data around this work too. So there's, there's definitely avenues or start your own, there cannot be enough data around this right now,

Unknown Speaker 49:30
and I'll say that the point of copying and pasting the statement into those Google Docs was so that it was text based, it's not 100% there, so that it could theoretically if somebody has some fancy algorithms to be able to term search to be able to do that really deep data work, you know, that is computer generated not just human like looking for hashtags. Thanks everybody, really appreciate your time.

Unknown Speaker 49:58
Yep, thanks and as was mentioned, please continue the discussion on the Slack channel and then we'll update MCA on once, once we're published.

Unknown Speaker 50:08
And I think the wrap up is happening after this, so we hope to see you there.

Unknown Speaker 50:14
Thanks everybody.