Constructing the (Digital) Self: Creating Black Counter Narratives, Images, and Counterspaces Online

• In Event: 1284 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 13. Student Racial/Ethnic Identities

Abstract

Racial identity formation has been extensively studied but lacks an adequate accounting of one of the dominant forms of modern communication: social media interactions. I qualitatively examine the impact of social media interactions on racial identity formation for black undergraduate students, leveraging in-depth interviews, surveys, and content analyses of participant social media communications. I combine traditional qualitative methods with novel social media research techniques creating a robust (digital) ethnography of participant on- and offline experiences. Results suggest that black Millennials strategically manipulate a variety of social media sites, and specific online interaction types, to mitigate the adverse impacts of student life on predominantly white university campuses. Additionally, black students are engaging in a new type of social and political participation, by digitally countering and deconstructing negative controlling images and narratives of blackness, through their social media accounts. Lastly, I have developed a new theory of online racial identity formation to explain how a fractured identity structure is created and performed across the constellation of participant social media networks. In brief, this new framework identifies three elemental processes in the contemporary identity-work of black undergraduate students.

Author

• David Alan Martin, Aquinas College