Making a Revolution: The Radical Possibility of Digital Black Space Making

• In Event: Social Identity, Power, and Mis- and Disinformation

Abstract

For decades, much debate has existed about the relative political importance and efficacy of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook in mobilizing politically disenfranchised and socially excluded groups like young, Black, queer, and immigrant Americans. In this age of misinformation, the lack of confidence in the veracity of online news sourced from increasingly unknown sources has only undermined social media’s potential benefits to society. However, young Black Americans continue to navigate social media in innovative ways which create and sustain new political spaces rife with transformative possibilities to fundamentally alter the political landscape of American Politics. This has been clearly articulated in the mass uprisings after the killings of Trayvon Martin in 2012, Michael Brown in 2014, and, more recently, George Floyd in 2020. In this article, I ask, how have young Black Americans leveraged social media to build alternative political spaces for movement organizing, political knowledge transmission, and social identity affirmation? Further, what is the radical potential for Black space making in the digital age? Using 100 interviews collected with young Black Americans between 2018 and 2022, I show that many see social media as a central component not only in their social world-building but in building more radical political outlooks among their demographic. Moreover, for many, social media, like Twitter, remains a site for the building of politically revolutionary ideas and attitudes which extend into brick and mortar style political organizing and collective action.

Author

• Jenn M. Jackson, Syracuse University