QCQ for Blackfishing on Instagram
Quotation
“The technocultural aspects of new media highlight how culture and technology have become inextricable from one another, rendering Black identity intelligible through digital and discursive means, and Twitter is one space where racial performativity is particularly prominent.”
Comment (250-500 words)
I think this quote does a great job of representing how culture has become integrated within social media over the years and how today the two are nearly inseparable. However while culture and social media are connected for uses of good such as finding community, there are stigmas and stereotypes of ‘how to act’ on social media that hinder the expression of those in certain cultures. Mentioned above, certain cultures pertaining to Black and African American identity have been suppressed compared to those of white Americans posting their cultural culture. This is expected due to the already existing racial stigma existing in the United States, but slightly more disappointing due to the ‘brand new’ and cutting edge nature of social media, one would expect racism and xenophobia to be less prominent. Current news is also somewhat favored by certain cultures, for example, ‘Black Twitter’ has its own name because there isn’t a platform-regulated system to accommodate black culture.
Therefore, African Americans had to create their own sub-media forum almost, to publish news and events relating to black issues, whereas Twitter should default in order to accommodate all news sources and types. The example mentioned above is needlessly separating groups of people and their cultures because of a skewed media flow, and as stated in the quote, Twitter is one of the most racially performative platforms. I think personally it’s unfair to bias one culture when it’s so intertwined with social media today because said social media is marketed toward everyone. If anyone can use a platform to post and search for events, they should be able to freely find anything they’re looking for without searching through a hashtag.
Question
Do you think social media would be more advanced and successful today if it was or wasn’t catered towards certain people and cultures?
