Skip to main content Site map

Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures


Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures

Paperback by Brock, Jr., André

Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures

WAS £27.99   SAVE £4.20

£23.79

ISBN:
9781479829965
Publication Date:
25 Feb 2020
Language:
English
Publisher:
New York University Press
Pages:
288 pages
Format:
Paperback
For delivery:
Estimated despatch 22 - 23 May 2024
Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures

Description

Winner, 2021 Harry Shaw and Katrina Hazzard-Donald Award for Outstanding Work in African-American Popular Culture Studies, given by the Popular Culture Association Winner, 2021 Nancy Baym Annual Book Award, given by the Association of Internet Researchers An explanation of the digital practices of the Black Internet From BlackPlanet to #BlackGirlMagic, Distributed Blackness places Blackness at the very center of internet culture. André Brock Jr. claims issues of race and ethnicity as inextricable from and formative of contemporary digital culture in the United States. Distributed Blackness analyzes a host of platforms and practices (from Black Twitter to Instagram, YouTube, and app development) to trace how digital media have reconfigured the meanings and performances of African American identity. Brock moves beyond widely circulated deficit models of respectability, bringing together discourse analysis with a close reading of technological interfaces to develop nuanced arguments about how "Blackness" gets worked out in various technological domains. As Brock demonstrates, there's nothing niche or subcultural about expressions of Blackness on social media: internet use and practice now set the terms for what constitutes normative participation. Drawing on critical race theory, linguistics, rhetoric, information studies, and science and technology studies, Brock tabs between Black-dominated technologies, websites, and social media to build a set of Black beliefs about technology. In explaining Black relationships with and alongside technology, Brock centers the unique joy and sense of community in being Black online now.

Back

Middlesex University logo