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

Francesca Sobande (Lead / Corresponding author), Anne Fearfull, Douglas Brownlie

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    36 Citations (Scopus)
    989 Downloads (Pure)

    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.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)413-428
    Number of pages16
    JournalConsumption, Markets and Culture (CMC)
    Volume23
    Issue number5
    Early online date29 Jan 2019
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2020

    Keywords

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

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Social Psychology
    • Anthropology
    • Economics and Econometrics
    • Marketing

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