Black Women and Involuntary Image Sharing on the Internet

• In Event: 324 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables (one-hour). Table 01. RGC and Media Representations

Abstract

One social media phenomenon that seems to have escaped widespread sociological attention is the trend of involuntary online image sharing, in which unsuspecting people are photographed in public spaces. These images are later uploaded to social media websites and blogs for mockery. These websites often obtain most of their content from user submissions, and elicit large numbers of comments from both regular users and passersby. Similarly unexamined is the impact of online social media on the representations of black women. This study finds that images of black women on the popular mock website PeopleofWalmart.com are contextualized using the three media archetypes of black women – welfare queens, jezebels, and mammies – identified by Patricia Hill Collins and others. Keywords: social media, black bodies, privacy, representation, encoding/decoding

Author

• Leslie Jones, University of Pennsylvania