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.
