Race, Diaspora and Tech Research Reading List

Thanks for browsing my curated reading list on race, diaspora and technology. This reading list is inspired by Idil Galip’s ‘Meme Studies’ and Zoe Glatt’s ‘Digital Ethnography’ research networks and reading lists. You can find them here, and here, respectively.

This list privileges scholarship by and about Black people, although we also centre research from other racialised folks. Black feminisms heavily inform my curatorial practice. By doing this list I hope to, in some tiny way, mitigate against the erasure and exclusion that Black women, in particular, face in the academy.

The list is organised by topic, and also alphabetically. Some scholarship appears in multiple categories.

Citation style: American Psychological Association, 7th edition.

Black Twitter

Afeworki, N. G. (2018). Eritrean Nationalism and the Digital Diaspora: Expanding Diasporic Networks via Twitter [Masters Thesis, University of California, Los Angeles]. In ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (2015164934). ProQuest One Academic. https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/eritrean-nationalism-digital-diaspora-expanding/docview/2015164934/se-2?accountid=11862

Brock, A. (2012). From the Blackhand Side: Twitter as a Cultural Conversation. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56(4), 529–549. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2012.732147

Brock, A. (2018). Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis. New Media & Society, 20(3), 1012–1030. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816677532

Brock, A. (2019). Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures. New York University Press.

Chatelain, M. (2019). Is Twitter Any Place for a [Black Academic] Lady? In E. Losh & J. Wernimont (Eds.), Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and the Digital Humanities. University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctv9hj9r9

Clark, M. D. (2014). To Tweet Our Own Cause: A Mixed-Methods Study of the Online Phenomenon ‘Black Twitter’[Doctoral Thesis]. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Florini, S. (2014). Tweets, Tweeps, and Signifyin’: Communication and Cultural Performance on “Black Twitter”. Television & New Media, 15(3), 223–237. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476413480247

Graham, R., & Smith, S. (2016). The Content of Our #Characters: Black Twitter as Counterpublic. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 2(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649216639067

Gray., & Adeyemo, B. (2021) Not “falling for the okey-doke”: #BlackLivesMatter as resistance to disinformation in online communities, Feminist Media Studies, 21:5, 868-871, DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2021.1952468

Hill, M. L. (2018). “Thank You, Black Twitter”: State Violence, Digital Counterpublics, and Pedagogies of Resistance. Urban Education, 53(2), 286–302. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085917747124

Jackson, S. J., Bailey, M., & Welles, B. F. (2020). #Hashtagactivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=2376012

Jones, F. (2019). Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets. Beacon Press.

Kaskazi, A., Copeland, A., & Gonzalez, A. (2015). ‘With Class’: Exploring Black Female Identity and Cultural Expression on Twitter and Instagram. Exploring Gender, Race and Sexuality with Social Media Data, 8.

Lockett, A. (2021). What Is Black Twitter? A Rhetorical Criticism of Race, Dis/Information, and Social Media. In Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods (pp. 165–213). The WAC Clearinghouse, University Press of Colorado.

Okoye, V. O. (2021). Black Digital Outer Spaces: Constellations of Relation and Care on Twitter. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, tran.12495. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12495

Peterson-Salahuddin, C. (2022). Posting Back: Exploring Platformed Black Feminist Communities on Twitter and Instagram. Social Media + Society, 8(1), 205630512110690. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051211069051

Sharma, S. (2013). Black Twitter? Racial Hashtags, Networks and Contagion. New Formations, 78(78), 46–64. https://doi.org/10.3898/NewF.78.02.2013

Williams, S. (2015). Digital Defense: Black Feminists Resist Violence With Hashtag Activism. Feminist Media Studies, 15(2), 341–344. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2015.1008744

Black Womanhood(s)

Bailey, M. (2015). #transform(ing) DH Writing and Research: An Autoethnography of Digital Humanities and Feminist Ethics. Digital Humanities Quarterly, 9(2). Publicly Available Content Database. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/transform-ing-dh-writing-research-autoethnography/docview/2555207914/se-2

Curtis, T. (2015). At Arm’s Length: The Selfie, Public Personae, and Instagram Use in Young Black Women and Adolescents. In New Media in Black Women’s Autobiography Intrepid Embodiment and Narrative Innovation. Palgrave Macmillan.

Gray, K. L. (2012). Race, Gender, and Virtual Inequality: Exploring the Liberatory Potential of Black Cyberfeminist Theory. In R. A. Lind (Ed.), Producing theory in a digital world: The intersection of audiences and production in contemporary theory. Peter Lang.

lasade-anderson, t. (2022). Digital Safe Spaces and Self-Definition: Black British Women’s Confessional Vlogs [Master’s Thesis]. MediArXiv. https://doi.org/10.33767/osf.io/heg8k

Macias, K. (2015). Tweeting Away Our Blues: An Interpretative Phenomenological Approach to Exploring Black Women’s Use of Social Media to Combat Misogynoir [Doctoral Thesis]. Nova Southeastern University.

Maragh-Lloyd, R. (2020). A Digital Postracial Parity? Black Women’s Everyday Resistance and Rethinking Online Media Culture. Communication, Culture and Critique, 13(1), 17–35. https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcz046

Neil, L., & Mbilishaka, A. (2019). “Hey Curlfriends!”: Hair Care and Self-Care Messaging on YouTube by Black Women Natural Hair Vloggers. Journal of Black Studies, 50(2), 156–177.

Perrine, A. (2020). Black Faces in White Spaces: Black Women’s YouTube Channels in Brazil as Fortalecimento. Journal of Lusophone Studies, 5(1), 203–223. https://doi.org/10.21471/jls.v5i1.321

Sharp, S. (2020). A Dramaturgical Analysis of Black Women Graduate Students’ Social Media Use as a Space for Reclamation, Resistance, and Healing [Doctoral Thesis, Indiana University]. In ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (2420970823). ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. http://abc.cardiff.ac.uk/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/dramaturgical-analysis-black-women-graduate/docview/2420970823/se-2?accountid=9883

Sobande, F. (2020). The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain (1st ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.

Steele, C. K. (2015). Signifyin, Bitching and Blogging: Black Women and Resistance Discourse Online. In S. U. Noble & B. M. Tynes (Eds.), The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class and Culture Online (Vol. 105). Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.

Stringfield, R. K. (2022). #BlackScholarJoy: The Labor, Resistance and Joy Practices of Black Women Graduate Students. Digital Humanities Quarterly, 16(3). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/16/3/index.html

Wright, M. M. (2005). Finding a Place in Cyberspace: Black Women, Technology, and Identity. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 26(1), 48–59. https://doi.org/10.1353/fro.2005.0017

Diasporas and the Digital

Akinbola, B. (2022). #AfricanAunties: Performing Diasporic Digital Disbelongings on TikTok. Text and Performance Quarterly, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/10462937.2022.2044071

Brah, A. (1996). Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. https://0-www-taylorfrancis-com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/books/9780203974919

Everett, A. (2009). Digital Diaspora: A Race for Cyberspace. Suny Press.

Gajjala, R. (2006). Editorial: Consuming/Producing/Inhabiting South-Asian Digital Diasporas. New Media & Society, 8(2), 179–185. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444806061941

Lee, E. (2013). Formation of a Talking Space and Gender Discourses in Digital Diaspora Space: Case of a Female Korean Im/Migrants Online Community in the Usa. Asian Journal of Communication, 23(5), 472–488. https://doi.org/10.1080/01292986.2013.772216

Mainsah, H. (2014). Young African Norwegian Women and Diaspora: Negotiating Identity and Community Through Digital Social Networks. Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture, 5(1), 105–119. https://doi.org/10.1386/cjmc.5.1.105_1

Shi, Y. (2005). Identity Construction of the Chinese Diaspora, Ethnic Media Use, Community Formation, and the Possibility of Social Activism. Continuum, 19(1), 55–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/1030431052000336298

Online, (discourse), blogs

Akiwowo, S. (2022). How to Stay Safe Online: A Digital Self-Care Toolkit for Developing Resilience and Allyship. Penguin Life.

Bailey, M. (2021). Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance. New York University Press.

Beckles, C. A. (2001). Black Liberation and the Internet: A Strategic Analysis. Journal of Black Studies, 31(3), 311–324. https://doi.org/10.1177/002193470103100305

Brock, A. (2009). ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’: Race, Representation, and Cultural Rhetorics in Online Spaces. Poroi, 6(1), 15–35. https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1013

Brock, A., Kvasny, L., & Hales, K. (2010). Cultural Appropriations of Technical Capital: Black Women, Weblogs, and the Digital Divide. Information, Communication & Society, 13(7), 1040–1059. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2010.498897

bruce, k., Walcott, R., Kihoro Mackay, K., Osei, K., lasade-anderson, t., & Sobande, F. (2022). Black Feminist and Digital Media Studies in Britain. Feminist Media Studies, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2021.2006737

Causevic, A., & Sengupta, A. (2020). Whose Knowledge Is Online? Practices of Epistemic Justice for a Digital New Deal – A Digital New Deal. It For Change. https://itforchange.net/digital-new-deal/2020/10/30/whose-knowledge-is-online-practices-of-epistemic-justice-for-a-digital-new-deal/

Clark, M. D. (2020). Drag Them: A Brief Etymology of so-called “Cancel Culture”. Communication and the Public, 5(3–4), 88–92. https://doi.org/10.1177/2057047320961562

Erigha, M., & Crooks-Allen, A. (2020). Digital Communities of Black Girlhood: New Media Technologies and Online Discourses of Empowerment. The Black Scholar, 50(4), 66–76. https://doi.org/10.1080/00064246.2020.1811601

Gabriel, D. (2016). Blogging While Black, British and Female: A Critical Study on Discursive Activism. Information, Communication & Society, 19(11), 1622–1635. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1146784

Gallon, K. (2016). Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities. In M. K. Gold & L. F. Klein (Eds.), Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016. University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctt1cn6thb

Kishonna L. Gray (2012) INTERSECTING OPPRESSIONS AND ONLINE COMMUNITIES, Information, Communication & Society, 15:3, 411-428, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2011.642401

Lai, G., & Fung, K. Y. (2020). From Online Strangers to Offline Friends: A Qualitative Study of Video Game Players in Hong Kong. Media, Culture & Society, 42(4), 483–501. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443719853505

Lee, E. (2013). Formation of a Talking Space and Gender Discourses in Digital Diaspora Space: Case of a Female Korean Im/Migrants Online Community in the USA. Asian Journal of Communication, 23(5), 472–488. https://doi.org/10.1080/01292986.2013.772216

Lu, J. H., & Steele, C. K. (2019). ‘Joy Is Resistance’: Cross-Platform Resilience and (re)invention of Black Oral Culture Online. Information, Communication & Society, 22(6), 823–837. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1575449

Mackay, K. K. (2021). Digital Black Lives: Performing (Dis)Respect and Joy Online. The Sociological Review. https://doi.org/10.51428/tsr.txar3307

Maragh-Lloyd, R. (2020). A Digital Post-racial Parity? Black Women’s Everyday Resistance and Rethinking Online Media Culture. Communication, Culture and Critique, 13(1), 17–35. https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcz046

Mislán, C., & Ashley, R. R. (2018). Black(er)face and Post-Racialism: Employing Racial Difference and “Progressive” Primitivism Online. Communication, Culture & Critique, 11(2), 247–264.

Nakamura, L. (2013). Cybertypes Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet. Taylor and Francis. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&AN=714731

Nakamura, L. (2014). Gender and Race Online. In M. Graham & W. H. Dutton (Eds.), Society and the Internet (pp. 81–96). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199661992.003.0006

Noble, S. U. (2016). A Future for Intersectional Black Feminist Technology Studies. Scholar & Feminist Online, 13.3-14.1, 7.

Richard, G. & Gray, K. (2018). Gendered Play, Racialized Reality: Black Cyberfeminism, Inclusive Communities of Practice, and the Intersections of Learning, Socialization, and Resilience in Online Gaming. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 39(1), 112–148. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5250/fronjwomestud.39.1.0112

Russell, L. (2020). Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto. Verso

Sobande, F. (2019). Re-meme-bering, Romanticizing and Reframing the Obamas Online. In R. A. Lind (Ed.), Race/Gender/Class/Media: Considering Diversity across Audiences, Content, and Producers (4th ed., pp. 47–50). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351630276

Sobande, F. (2020). The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain (1st ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46679-4

Sobande, F. (2021). Spectacularized and Branded Digital (Re)presentations of Black People and Blackness. Television & New Media, 22(2), 131–146. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476420983745

Steele, C. K. (2016). The Digital Barbershop: Blogs and Online Oral Culture Within the African American Community. Social Media + Society, 2(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305116683205

Steele, C. K. (2018). Black Bloggers and Their Varied Publics: The Everyday Politics of Black Discourse Online. Television & New Media, 19(2), 112–127. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476417709535

Tanksley, T. C. (2015). Education, Representation and Resistance: Black Girls in Popular Instagram Memes. In S. U. Noble & B. M. Tynes (Eds.), The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class and Culture Online. Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.

Williams, A. (2017). Fat People of Color: Emergent Intersectional Discourse Online. Social Sciences, 6(1), 15. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6010015

Wright, M. M. (2005). Finding a Place in Cyberspace: Black Women, Technology, and Identity. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 26(1), 48–59. https://doi.org/10.1353/fro.2005.0017

Social Media

Abidin, C. (2020). Hanging Out at Home as a Lifestyle: YouTube Home Tour Vlogs in East Asia.

Akinbola, B. (2022). #AfricanAunties: Performing Diasporic Digital Disbelongings on TikTok. Text and Performance Quarterly, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/10462937.2022.2044071

Akiwowo, S. (2022). How to Stay Safe Online: A Digital Self-Care Toolkit for Developing Resilience and Allyship. Penguin Life.

Auzenne-Curl, C. T., & Carr, D. (2021). The Implications of Social Media Scholarship on Forming a Knowledge Community in Black Cyberculture: A Co-Constructed Narrative. In C. T. Auzenne-Curl & C. J. Craig (Eds.), Developing Knowledge Communities through Partnerships for Literacy (Vol. 37, pp. 231–243). Emerald Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-368720210000037014

Bailey, M., & Cole, D. (2021). New Tools, New House: Building a Black Feminist Social (Justice) Media Platform. Feminist Media Studies, 21(5), 857–859. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2021.1954970

Brown, N. M. (2019). Methodological Cyborg as Black Feminist Technology: Constructing the Social Self Using Computational Digital Autoethnography and Social Media. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 19(1), 55–67. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708617750178

bruce, k. (2022). ‘Everyone Has a Pic Like This in the Album!’: Digital Diasporic Intimacy and the Instagram Archive. WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, 50(1–2), 246–263. https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2022.0020

Carlson, B., & Frazer, R. (2021). Indigenous Digital Life: The Practice and Politics of Being Indigenous on Social Media. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84796-8

Chen, C.-P. (2016). Forming Digital Self and Parasocial Relationships on Youtube. Journal of Consumer Culture, 16(1), 232–254. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540514521081

Frazer, R., Carlson, B., & Farrelly, T. (2022). Indigenous Articulations of Social Media and Digital Assemblages of Care. Digital Geography and Society, 3, 100038. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diggeo.2022.100038

Kuo, R. (2018). Racial Justice Activist Hashtags: Counterpublics and Discourse Circulation. New Media & Society, 20(2), 495–514. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816663485

lasade-anderson, temi. (2022). Digital Safe Spaces and Self-Definition: Black British Women’s Confessional Vlogs[Master’s Thesis]. MediArXiv. https://doi.org/10.33767/osf.io/heg8k

Macias, K. (2015). Tweeting Away Our Blues: An Interpretative Phenomenological Approach to Exploring Black Women’s Use of Social Media to Combat Misogynoir (1720264163) [Doctoral Thesis, Nova Southeastern University]. ProQuest One Academic. https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/i-tweeting-away-our-blues-interpretative/docview/1720264163/se-2?accountid=11862

McMillan Cottom, T. (2010). Where Platform Capitalism and Racial Capitalism Meet: The Sociology of Race and Racism in the Digital Society. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 6(4), 441–449. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649220949473

Miller, G. H., Marquez-Velarde, G., Williams, A. A., & Keith, V. M. (2021). Discrimination and Black Social Media Use: Sites of Oppression and Expression. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 7(2), 247–263. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649220948179

Monk-Payton, B. (2017). #LaughingWhileBlack: Gender and the Comedy of Social Media Blackness. Feminist Media Histories, 3(2), 15–35. https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2017.3.2.15

Neil, L., & Mbilishaka, A. (2019). “Hey Curlfriends!”: Hair Care and Self-Care Messaging on YouTube by Black Women Natural Hair Vloggers. Journal of Black Studies, 50(2), 156–177.

Perrine, A. (2020). Black Faces in White Spaces: Black Women’s YouTube Channels in Brazil as Fortalecimento. Journal of Lusophone Studies, 5(1), 203–223. https://doi.org/10.21471/jls.v5i1.321

Phelps-Ward, R. J., & Laura, C. T. (2016). Talking Back in Cyberspace: Self-Love, Hair Care, and Counter Narratives in Black Adolescent Girls’ YouTube Vlogs. Gender and Education, 28(6), 807–820. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2016.1221888

Rawlins, S. (2021). Archival Interventions: Instagram and Black Interiority. Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 60(4), 194–200. 2022/08/10. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2021.0054.

Sharp, S. (2020). A Dramaturgical Analysis of Black Women Graduate Students’ Social Media Use as a Space for Reclamation, Resistance, and Healing [Doctoral Thesis, Indiana University]. In ProQuest Dissertations and Theses(2420970823). ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. http://abc.cardiff.ac.uk/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/dramaturgical-analysis-black-women-graduate/docview/2420970823/se-2?accountid=9883

Sobande, F. (2017). Watching Me Watching You: Black Women in Britain on YouTube. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 20(6), 655–671. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549417733001

Sobande, F. (2019). Constructing and Critiquing Interracial Couples on YouTube. In G. D. Johnson, K. D. Thomas, A. K. Harrison, & S. A. Grier (Eds.), Race in the Marketplace (pp. 107–120). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11711-5_7

Sobande, F. (2019). Memes, Digital Remix Culture and (re)mediating British Politics and Public Life. IPPR Progressive Review, 26(2), 151–160. https://doi.org/10.1111/newe.12155

Sobande, F. (2020). On Digital Remixing and Regulations [Personal blog]. Margins. https://marginstwenty.home.blog/2020/12/16/on-digital-remixing-and-regulations/

Steele, C. K. (2021). Black Feminist Pleasure on TikTok: An Ode to Hurston’s “Characteristics of Negro Expression”. Women’s Studies in Communication, 44(4), 463–469. https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2021.1987822

Wang, X., & Chang, B. (2020). The Impact of the Audience’s Continuance Intention Towards the Vlog: Focusing on Intimacy, Media Synchronicity and Authenticity. International Journal of Contents, 16(2), 65–77. https://doi.org/10.5392/IJOC.2020.16.2.065