This volume gathers scholarship from varying disciplinary perspectives to explore media owned or created by members of the African diaspora, examine its relationship with diasporic audiences, and consider its impact on mainstream culture in general. Contributors highlight creations and contributions of people of the African diaspora, the interconnections of Black American and African-centered media, and the experiences of audiences and users across the African diaspora, positioning members of the Black and African Diaspora as subjects of their own narratives, active participants and creators. In so doing, this volume addresses issues of identity, culture, audiences, and global influence. Chapter 11 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
From pamphlets denouncing slavery to boycotts of Hollywood, African Americans have fought for adequate representations of themselves in the mass media industries of the United States. This book provides readers with an interdisciplinary overview of the past, present, and future of African Americans in U.S. media and the ongoing project of gaining racial equality in media: a process which spans generations. Catherine Squires introduces the reader to the varied ways in which Black Americans have navigated cultural, political, and economic obstacles both to make their own media and to critique mainstream media. Synthesizing the work of social scientists, historians, cultural critics, as well as comments from audience members and media producers, African Americans and the Media gives readers a lively entry point to classic and contemporary studies of Black Americans and mass media. Across the chapters, readers follow African Americans’ struggles to harness the power of print, broadcasting, film, and digital media, through five main themes which are woven through the book: representation, circulation, innovation, audience and responsibility. Taking in examples as diverse as Blaxploitation films, the work of 20th Century black activist journalists such as Ida B. Wells and A. Philip Randolph, and popular television such as The Cosby Show, this book will be essential reading for all students and scholars of media and communications and African American studies.
This volume gathers scholarship from varying disciplinary perspectives to explore media owned or created by members of the African diaspora, examine its relationship with diasporic audiences, and consider its impact on mainstream culture in general. Contributors highlight creations and contributions of people of the African diaspora, the interconnections of Black American and African-centered media, and the experiences of audiences and users across the African diaspora, positioning members of the Black and African Diaspora as subjects of their own narratives, active participants and creators. In so doing, this volume addresses issues of identity, culture, audiences, and global influence.
Whose images are being juxtaposed? What information is being conveyed? Which aesthetics are being valued? - Frances Gateward and John Jennings, ""The Blacker the Ink"" ""Afrofuturism is moving [toward] a more applied, theoretical, critical, and transdisciplinary approach"" - Reynaldo Anderson, ""Afrofuturism 2.0"" ""What is dark matter?"" - Sheree R. Thomas, ""Dark Matter"" Cities Imagined symbolizes the dynamic relationship between real and imagined spaces, subjects, and objects across disciplines. Forged from lifetimes of academic work that balanced critical insight with constant creativity, Julian Chambliss and Walter Greason document, analyze, and synthesize multiple traditions of critical analysis and aesthetic performance. In tracing the history of culture, identity, and structures over the twentieth century, Cities Imagined provides a framework to rethink modern history. From the emergence of the Booker T. Washington's ""Tuskegee Universe"" in the late nineteenth century through the trans-dimensional character of the comic book city and transpatial power of the Black Lives Matter moment, Cities Imagined offers a sequence of templates that will guide scholars, activists, architects, and theorists through processes of metropolitan creation in pursuit of equal justice for all people. Chambliss and Greason move their readers from the dreams of Booker T. Washington, Anna Julia Cooper, and Martin Luther King, Jr. through the recognition of Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, and Sonia Sotomayor as shapers of an uncharted future. How do dreams become real? The examination of spatial change though both literature and history provides a furnace and an anvil for the creation of Audre Lorde's new tools. Cities Imagined is the hammer we all need.
This study aims to help fill the gap about the effect of social media on the Black African diaspora in the U.S. by researching how social media advertising affects consumer behavior within the Black co-cultures. Specifically, this study aims to look at how Twitter advertising affects the Black co-culture's intention to engage with the brand and intention to purchase the advertised product across diasporas. This study is an experimental research design that researches how language identified with the Black African diaspora in advertising used on Twitter affects the intention to click and purchase the advertised product. The findings indicated that when the Black African diaspora has more positive attitudes toward a Twitter ad they are more likely to engage with the sponsored ad. They are also more likely to purchase the sponsored product when their attitudes are highly positive toward a Twitter ad. Also, they are more likely to purchase the product when they engage with the advertisement. There were no significant differences found in the hypothesis that African American consumers who resonate with the AAVE style language will show higher positive attitudes toward the Twitter ad. Finally, the findings indicate that the hypothesis that the higher the ethnic identification of the audience with the culture, the higher the attitudes, engagement, and intention to purchase could only be partially supported.
Kevin Dawson considers how enslaved Africans carried aquatic skills—swimming, diving, boat making, even surfing—to the Americas. Undercurrents of Power not only chronicles the experiences of enslaved maritime workers, but also traverses the waters of the Atlantic repeatedly to trace and untangle cultural and social traditions.
Winner of the National Communication Association's 2018 Diamond Anniversary Book Award With the exception of slave narratives, there are few stories of black international migration in U.S. news and popular culture. This book is interested in stratified immigrant experiences, diverse black experiences, and the intersection of black and immigrant identities. Citizenship as it is commonly understood today in the public sphere is a legal issue, yet scholars have done much to move beyond this popular view and situate citizenship in the context of economic, social, and political positioning. The book shows that citizenship in all of its forms is often rhetorically, representationally, and legally negated by blackness and considers the ways that blackness, and representations of blackness, impact one’s ability to travel across national and social borders and become a citizen. This book is a story of citizenship and the ways that race, gender, and class shape national belonging, with Haiti, Cuba, and the United States as the primary sites of examination.
This book examines how African, Asian, Middle Eastern and Latin American diasporas use media to communicate among themselves and to integrate into European countries. Whereas migrant communities continue employing print and broadcasting technologies, the rapidly growing applications of Internet platforms like social media have substantially enriched their interactions. These communication practices provide valuable insights into how diasporas define themselves. The anthology investigates varied uses of media by Ecuadorian, Congolese, Moroccan, Nepalese, Portugal, Somali, Syrian and Turkish communities residing in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK. These studies are based on research methodologies including big data analysis, content analysis, focus groups, interviews, surveys and visual framing, and they make a strong contribution to the emerging theory of diasporic media.
Africa’s Media Image in the 21st Century is the first book in over twenty years to examine the international media’s coverage of sub-Saharan Africa. It brings together leading researchers and prominent journalists to explore representation of the continent, and the production of that image, especially by international news media. The book highlights factors that have transformed the global media system, changing whose perspectives are told and the forms of media that empower new voices. Case studies consider questions such as: how has new media changed whose views are represented? Does Chinese or diaspora media offer alternative perspectives for viewing the continent? How do foreign correspondents interact with their audiences in a social media age? What is the contemporary role of charity groups and PR firms in shaping news content? They also examine how recent high profile events and issues been covered by the international media, from the Ebola crisis, and Boko Haram to debates surrounding the "Africa Rising" narrative and neo-imperialism. The book makes a substantial contribution by moving the academic discussion beyond the traditional critiques of journalistic stereotyping, Afro-pessimism, and ‘darkest Africa’ news coverage. It explores the news outlets, international power dynamics, and technologies that shape and reshape the contemporary image of Africa and Africans in journalism and global culture.
Exploring the intersections of digital humanities and African diaspora studies How can scholars use digital tools to better understand the African diaspora across time, space, and disciplines? And how can African diaspora studies inform the practices of digital humanities? These questions are at the heart of this timely collection of essays about the relationship between digital humanities and Black Atlantic studies, offering critical insights into race, migration, media, and scholarly knowledge production. The Digital Black Atlantic spans the African diaspora’s range—from Africa to North America, Europe, and the Caribbean—while its essayists span academic fields—from history and literary studies to musicology, game studies, and library and information studies. This transnational and interdisciplinary breadth is complemented by essays that focus on specific sites and digital humanities projects throughout the Black Atlantic. Covering key debates, The Digital Black Atlantic asks theoretical and practical questions about the ways that researchers and teachers of the African diaspora negotiate digital methods to explore a broad range of cultural forms including social media, open access libraries, digital music production, and video games. The volume further highlights contributions of African diaspora studies to digital humanities, such as politics and representation, power and authorship, the ephemerality of memory, and the vestiges of colonialist ideologies. Grounded in contemporary theory and praxis, The Digital Black Atlantic puts the digital humanities into conversation with African diaspora studies in crucial ways that advance both. Contributors: Alexandrina Agloro, Arizona State U; Abdul Alkalimat; Suzan Alteri, U of Florida; Paul Barrett, U of Guelph; Sayan Bhattacharyya, Singapore U of Technology and Design; Agata Błoch, Institute of History of Polish Academy of Sciences; Michał Bojanowski, Kozminski U; Sonya Donaldson, New Jersey City U; Anne Donlon; Laurent Dubois, Duke U; Amy E. Earhart, Texas A&M U; Schuyler Esprit, U of the West Indies; Demival Vasques Filho, U of Auckland, New Zealand; David Kirkland Garner; Alex Gil, Columbia U; Kaiama L. Glover, Barnard College, Columbia U; D. Fox Harrell, MIT; Hélène Huet, U of Florida; Mary Caton Lingold, Virginia Commonwealth U; Angel David Nieves, San Diego State U; Danielle Olson, MIT; Tunde Opeibi (Ope-Davies), U of Lagos, Nigeria; Jamila Moore Pewu, California State U, Fullerton; Anne Rice, Lehman College, CUNY; Sercan Şengün, Northeastern U; Janneken Smucker, West Chester U; Laurie N.Taylor, U of Florida; Toniesha L. Taylor, Texas Southern U.
