Proposal

“The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public peace” those were the words used by Lilburn Boggs, governor of Missouri in Executive order #44 of 1838 an execution order against Mormons. Families were forced to leave their homes and forfeit all property by the Missouri State Militia.

Though this order was rescinded in 1976 there are many people who still actively search out members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to attack and persecute them. Dealing with such adversity has been part of what it means to be a member of the church since the restoration. Though, these days the adversary takes a different form. Men do not come to our houses in the middle of the night, beat us unconscious, tar and feather us, as they did to Joseph Smith. However, there are still those who use social media, such as YouTube, to seek out and attack the church and it’s members.

My case study will focus on the response of individual church members to these attacks. I will not be looking at anti-Mormon videos, but anti-Mormon comments and the reactions from individual members to those comments. The videos will be official church videos either from one of the church’s official YouTube channels (Mormon channel, Mormon.org, Mormon newsroom, BYUtelevision, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, BYUDivineComedy) as well as non-official church material (such as General Conference talks) from non-official YouTube channels.  I will be focusing on the comment section from a variety of videos. The videos will range from those discussing deep doctrinal themes to entertainment only videos. I will look at anti comments which get  responses from multiple members and see how they respond differently to the same attack. I will also look at anti comments that have not gotten any response, since ignoring the comment is another way of reacting to persecution.