Resisting media marginalisation: Black women’s digital content and collectivity

ABSTRACT

Based on analysis of 23 interviews, this paper examines how social media and online content is implicated in the collective, resistant and transnational media experiences of Black women in Britain. It contributes to scholarship concerning race and the virtual marketplace by examining tensions between the countercultural, communal and commercial qualities of Black women’s online experiences. Drawing upon theorising of the oppositional spectator gaze of Black women, and narratives of technology consumption, we unpack how Black women’s digital activity can enable them to navigate the hegemony of US content, their marginalisation in British mass-media, and situate them within a Black experience that transcends Britain’s borders. Our work illustrates how Black women’s online encounters can be a source of resistance, Black digital commentary and community, as well as being subject to corporate co-optation. We conceptualise such online experiences as being shaped by transnational dimensions of the relationship between race, media and markets.

KEYWORDS:

• Black women
• digital
• intersectionality
• media
• race
• resistance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 People who construct video blogs (vlogs) are referred to as vloggers (video bloggers).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by University of Dundee [PhD Studentship (2015-2018)].