(iPoster) Strange Roommates: Discursive Integration in Black Media

• In Event: Poster Session: Racial, Ethnic, Gender, LGBTQ+ Politics & Sexuality and Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Racial, Ethnic, Gender, LGBTQ+ Politics

Abstract

How does the development of the Black press alter Black political information networks today? Building upon a legacy of researching the Black press as an important tool of advocacy journalism, I argue that the constraints placed upon Black media required a counterbalance of the explicitly political with popular culture and entertainment news in Black media across its most popular modes. The history will outline the continuity of this practice of discursive integration across four distinct periods: the Black press's inception with newspapers, the shift towards the prominence of Black magazines like Ebony and Jet the period following World War Il into the 70s and 80s, the rise of Black television networks like BET and TV One in the 90s, and the current era following the explosion of Black digital and new media. The paper will examine the nuanced consistencies and divergences in Black media through the lens of the counterpublic that required them to become masters of intersecting "hard" and "soft" news long before it entered the broader media landscape.

Author

• Norris Louis Davis, University of California, Berkeley