Trending Topics: Social Media’s Roles in Supply and Demand, Criticism, and Engagement With Black Women on Television

• In Event: Scandalous Representations: Across Four Decades of Black Women in Primetime Television

Abstract

The overwhelming interest in the story lines of Olivia Pope (Scandal) and Mary Jane Paul (Being Mary Jane) characterize a growing demand for representation of black womanhood on television. By turning conversations about these women into trending topics, social media users participate in ongoing, global dialogue about the media’s portrayal of black women’s lives while simultaneously producing an additional text to consider alongside the network television drama: the audience conversation. With trending topic status, online conversations about black women on television have resulted in a transformative media experience that previous generations could not have imagined – an experience that has fulfilled black women’s desire to see stories about their lives and allowed for the revolutionary act of critiquing and reacting to those representations in a public and accessible space. This paper explores how black women’s engagement with social media is influencing the ways media audiences experience and demand representation on television and in the news.

Author

• Felicia Harris, University of Georgia