In Conversation with Conscious Lee: Journalism, Justice, and Finding Truth in the Feed

How does a social influencer cut through the noise of the news cycle to build trust and promote social justice? In an era of information overload and algorithmic division, traditional journalism is grappling with how to reach the public. Meanwhile, content creators like George “Conscious” Lee are building massive, engaged audiences by directly, and critically, highlighting social and political issues that demand widespread awareness.

Please join the Institute for Public Knowledge, NYU Journalism, and the Race and Public Space Working Group for a critical conversation between orator, educator, and influential content creator Conscious Lee and scholar-journalist Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika. They will discuss Conscious Lee’s unique approach to the news — how he determines what’s true, how he communicates complex stories, and how his work promotes dynamic understandings of justice through compelling, accessible public political education. Together, they’ll explore how his practice both intersects with and pushes the boundaries of journalism, how it relates to different genres of journalistic work, and where the limits and risks of social media as “news” come into view.

This event will delve into Conscious Lee’s methods for engaging constituencies, particularly working-class communities, that have too often been both overlooked and ineffectively served by progressive and mainstream legacy media. We’ll explore the lessons his work holds for journalists, educators, and anyone looking to bring critical awareness and engagement into the work they do — including cautionary perspectives on what social platforms can and cannot do as vehicles for journalism. The discussion will be particularly useful for journalists rethinking their practice, educators and scholars, social media users, and anyone curious about how to engage with the news and forms of injustice more productively and publicly.

Conscious Lee is a prominent orator, innovator, educator, and influential content creator. His work sits at the intersection of media, socio-political issues, and popular culture. Lee is “purposefully provocative” as a tool to elevate and educate around pertinent topics of his generation through social media content. He has a dedicated, engaged audience of over 3M across TikTok, IG, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. In 2022, he received YouTube’s Content Creator Choice Award, was nominated for his first NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Social Media Personality, and was selected for the second creator class of YouTube’s Black Voices Fund.

Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika is a journalist and organizer who teaches nonfiction audio journalism and podcasting at New York University. He is the creator and host of the podcast Empire City, an eight-part narrative series investigating the complicated and largely invisible history of the New York Police Department. He has written in scholarly venues such as Popular Music & Society and Popular Communication, as well as public venues such as The Intercept, Transom, NPR’s Code Switch, All Things Considered, Invisibilia, and VICE.