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.
