Afro-Futuristic Selves: Black Adolescents' Use of Media and Technology to Represent Their Future Self-Concepts

• In Event: Building Identities and Dismantling Discourses With/in Media

Abstract

This paper examines the ways that Black adolescents construct future-possible academic selves through media representations in culturally distinct ways. These "Afrofuturistic Selves" use media and technology to assist in the development of self-concepts to highlight the communicative and socially liberatory practices of Black youth who intwine their academic goals with racial group solidarity. Through the use of cross-case portraiture (Hackman, 2002; Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997), this paper depicts four participants' Afrofuturistic selves via detailed qualitative analysis of concepts. Implications include race-specific understandings of psychological constructs and a discussion of the possibilities and limits of popular and social media as identity formation and informal learning tools.

Authors

• Josh Schuschke, Johns Hopkins University
  Presenting Author

• Brendesha M. Tynes, University of Southern California
  Non-Presenting Author