Evolving Representations of Race Within Internet Communication: The Life of Race Captured Within Subreddits, Translation, Twitter, and Blogging

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

RATIONALE:

The concept of “race” has evolved over the life span of computer-mediated communication (Kendall, 1998; Young, 2014). As scholars of race, we choose to center the emphasis of our work on historically-marginalized populations and critically examine traditionally-overlooked implications of Internet-mediated technologies. Race acts as an important lens for interrogating shifts in communication expectations, transformations in media use, and changes in interaction patterns. Covering underexplored intersections of race with computer-mediated communication, this collection of papers addresses specific online practices engaged with race across four digital sites: subreddits, translation, Twitter, and blogging. Representing an evolution of Internet communication, this panel highlights the significant ways that race has been (re-)created from long-form blogs online, to microblogs on Twitter, through digital translation services, and in gay men’s online and offline interpersonal relationships.

The order of the work presented in our panel ranges from microaggressions that people of color experience online, to the emergence of online communities of color in response to absolutely outrageous acts of violence:

Examining sexual racism online, Jenny Korn and Maggie MacAulay focus on GayBros, a gay men’s community of the popular social networking site Reddit to illustrate members’ reflexive references to and use of upvoting and downvoting.

Addressing Anglo-centered, ethnically-insensitive algorithms within digital translation software, Laura Gonzales provides strategic recommendations for improving online translations that account for diversity within languages and cultures.

Speaking to the myriad ways that Black Twitter has been referenced, Dr. Meredith Clark combines technologically- and culturally-relevant theories to identify six processes within social-identity maintenance work by self-identified participants of Black Twitter.

Focusing on Black blogger responses to Ferguson, Dr. Catherine Knight Steele highlights how political agency is expressed through long-form blogs and how online writing is overlooked as a method of self-care for the oppressed.

Our panel promotes graduate student projects, emphasizes institutional diversity, and includes African-American, Asian-American, Latina, and Caucasian straight- and queer-identified presenters from Canada and the United States.

In terms of division and interest group co-sponsor suggestions, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies Interest Group, Intergroup Communication Interest Group, Feminist Scholarship Division, Interpersonal Communication Division, Intercultural Communication Division, Language and Social Interaction Division, and Political Communication Division would all have scholars interested in our work.

Sub Unit

• Ethnicity and Race in Communication

Chair

• Jenny Ungbha Korn, UIC

Individual Presentations

• “No Rice, No Spice, No Chocolate:” The Online Affirmation of Sexual Racism via Upvoting in the GayBros Subreddit - Jenny Ungbha Korn, UIC; Margaret MacAulay, Simon Fraser U

• Contextualizing Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in Digital Spaces: Digital Translation Tools and Culturally-Localized Information Design - Laura Gonzales, Michigan State U

• What We Talk About When We Talk About Black Twitter - Meredith Clark, U of North Texas

• Blogging Ferguson: Self-Care and the ‘Practice of Freedom’ for Marginalized Writers and Communities Online - Catherine Knight Steele, Colorado State U

Respondent

• Jenny Ungbha Korn, UIC