Beyond Hashtags: Racial Politics and Black Digital Networks

Sarah Florini

Open Access Published by New York University Press 2019

Beyond Hashtags

Racial Politics and Black Digital Networks

Sarah Florini

Volume 19 in the series Critical Cultural Communication

https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479892464.001.0001

Overview
Contents

About this book

How black Americans use digital networks to organize and cultivate solidarity

Unrest gripped Ferguson, Missouri, after Mike Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson in August 2014. Many black Americans turned to their digital and social media networks to circulate information, cultivate solidarity, and organize during that tumultuous moment. While Ferguson and the subsequent protests made black digital networks visible to mainstream media, these networks did not coalesce overnight. They were built and maintained over years through common, everyday use.

Beyond Hashtags explores these everyday practices and their relationship to larger social issues through an in-depth analysis of a trans-platform network of black American digital and social media users and content creators. In the crucial years leading up to the emergence of the Movement for Black Lives, black Americans used digital networks not only to cope with day-to-day experiences of racism, but also as an incubator for the debates that have since exploded onto the national stage. Beyond Hashtags tells the story of an influential subsection of these networks, an assemblage of podcasting, independent media, Instagram, Vine, Facebook, and the network of Twitter users that has come to be known as “Black Twitter.” Florini looks at how black Americans use these technologies often simultaneously to create a space to reassert their racial identities, forge community, organize politically, and create alternative media representations and news sources. Beyond Hashtags demonstrates how much insight marginalized users have into technology.

Author / Editor information

Florini Sarah :

Sarah Florini is an Assistant Professor in Film and Media Studies at Arizona State University.

Reviews

Well suited for myriad human communication contexts… This is an engaging and accessible look into an often ignored yet painfully important element of the networked century.

Aymar Jean Christian, Northwestern University:
Ranging across a host of new media, Beyond Hashtags places blackness at center of our understanding of digital distribution. In expanding what we think about politics, journalism, and society, Florini honors the expansive network of people working across media platforms to produce discourses around black identity and culture.

André Brock, Jr., Georgia Tech:
A masterwork of ethical, nuanced research on race and new media. Skillfully assembling analyses of multiple online media platforms, users, and practices, Florini examines how the 'interstitial hustle' of Black podcasters engaging audience across Facebook, Twitter, Patreon, and merchandising sites enables safety, political activism, and innovative content.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction Open Access Download PDF	1
1. Mapping the Transplatform Network Open Access Download PDF	33
2. Enclaves and Counter- Publics: Oscillating Networked Publics Open Access Download PDF	69
3. “MLK, I Choose You!”: Using the Past to Understand the Present Open Access Download PDF	103
4. “This Is the Resource Our Community Needed Right Now”: Moments of Trauma and Crisis Open Access Download PDF	137
Conclusion: Race, Culture, and Digital Studies Open Access Download PDF	183
Acknowledgments Open Access Download PDF	205
Methodological Appendix Open Access Download PDF	209
Notes Open Access Download PDF	221
Index Open Access Download PDF	263
About the Author Open Access Download PDF	271