Examinations of the unprofitability of authentic Blackness: insights from Black media professionals

ABSTRACT

Current research describes how the history of Black representation in the United States’ mainstream media – both on screen and behind the scenes – impacts Black media professionals and complicates the reproduction of authentic Blackness in the twenty-first century. Coupling Hall’s model of encoding and decoding with media production studies, we analyze 22 interviews with self-identified Black media professionals at a Black-owned full-service communications company that targets Black consumers for mainstream brands. Findings suggest that mediated representations of Black people, which are inescapable and influential, are also narrow because white audiences’ perceptions of authentic Blackness determine which depictions of Blackness are profitable. By contrast, Black media producers argue that profitable Blackness is not authentic because it does not include the diversity of the Black experience. We leverage participants’ understandings of Blackness and the role of media to provide practical insights into how media industries can incorporate notions of diversity and inclusion to create authentic mediated Blackness.

KEYWORDS:

• Race
• Black/African American
• media industry
• stereotypes
• encoding/decoding

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Departments featured in this subset include Creative (5), Account Management (5), Account Planning/Research (3), Media (3), Broadcast Production (2), Engagement Marketing or Public Relations (2), and one intern and one freelancer.

2 As Mayer et al. (2009) suggests, Production Studies considers that ‘directors and editors, lighting technicians and storywriters, contract casting agents and full-time studio caterers are all cultural actors, too’ (p. 17).

3 Although the topics addressed in the latter part of the interview occasionally emerged earlier in the interview, they were revisited and explicated by the interviewer in the latter part ensuring that relevant information was included in the final transcripts.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Charisse L’Pree Corsbie-Massay

Charisse L'Pree Corsbie-Massay, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Communications at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Charisse investigates how media affects the way we think about ourselves and others as well as how we use media to affect the way others think about us.

Breagin K. Riley

Breagin K. Riley, Ph.D., is a Clinical Professor, Marketing Department, Kenan-Flager Business School at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She studies how social justice issues affect consumer markets and consumer behavior. Areas of research include consumer behavior, social contracts and market evolution.

Raiana Soraia de Carvalho

Raiana de Carvalho, M.A., is a doctoral student in Mass Communications at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. She is interested in critical studies of media and identity, with a research focus on Brazilian diasporas and their media usages.