Racialized Users as Digital Vanguard

• In Event: Race as Intervention in Media/Communication Studies

Abstract

This paper draws on long-term ethnographic research on a network of Black American digital and social media users and content creators - including Twitter, podcasting, and citizen journalism – to demonstrate that racialized users are often an unrecognized vanguard of digital practices. Often studies of Black users are assumed to be of value solely for their insight into race, marginalization, or Black cultural practices. Yet, for centuries, Black Americans have cultivated complex processes that mirror the participatory impulses attributed to contemporary convergence culture and the recombinant meaning-making processes central to digital vernaculars like memes. Thus, digital media scholars can stand to benefit greatly by looking to the sophisticated practices of Black users for insight into technology and the emerging digital landscape.

Author

• Sarah Florini, Arizona State University