Racial Formation and the Political Economy of Web Traffic
Charlton Mcilwain
New York University, USA
My primary aim is to lay a theoretical foundation for exploring how race is systematically represented online and how such representations may reveal forms of race-based inequality that is systematically produced in online environments. That is, I begin to address the question: does racial inequality exist online, and if so, how can we determine whether and how it gets produced. I begin by first arguing that racial formation theory provides the most useful framework for understanding how racial inequality might be produced in online environments. Second, I outline the dominant political and economic logic underpinning the Web today. I do so using a spatial analytic common to both historical racial formations, and evolving technological formations on the Web regarding “traffic.” Third, I draw on an original dataset and network graph to document and demonstrate the traffic patterns among and between race-based websites and the nature of the spaces in which traffic circulates. Ultimately, I am concerned with what both the spaces themselves, and flow of traffic between them tell us about how race is variously represented within the structure of the Web’s central structure. More importantly, I draw on this data – which also includes a number of traffic metrics – to demonstrate the ways in which a race based hierarchy might systematically emerge on the Web in ways that help us to identify disparate forms of value, influence and power that exist among and between race and non-race-based sites.
GIFs as Racial Discourse
Charlton Mcilwain, Diana Kamin, Rachel Kuo
New York University, USA
It takes a network to build a movement. This paper focuses on the animated GIF, from the 1990s to the present, to explore the history and present of networked Black cultural production. This research is part of a larger project that seeks to answer how the current #BlackLivesMatter network emerged from a collection of disparate sites that existed in the late 1990s. Focusing on GIFs provides an opportunity to illustrate the ways that Blacks have continuously repurposed the Internet and digital tools build collective consciousness and pursue collective, racial group interests.
This approach to GIFs will provide an essential lens onto the construction and circulation of racialized expression online, while also deepening and broadening our historical narratives about technology. This paper thus relies on interviews with primary sources to fill in this history, in addition to using archival research, visual analysis, data, and empirical evidence to discuss ways that GIFs play a current role in racial discourse today.
PLATFORMED RACISM AS ARTICULATION OF WHITENESS: VISUAL SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE ADAM GOODES BOOING CONTROVERSY
Ariadna Matamoros-Fernandez
Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Issues of race and identity are being increasingly discussed on the Internet (Nakamura, 2002), especially on social media platforms, since they are embedded in our everyday social practices (Burgess, 2015), and are surrounded by rising concerns about the thriving of hate online (Shepherd, Harvey, Jordan, Srauy, & Miltner, 2015) and how to tackle it (Banks, 2010).
As platforms sustain the majority of online sociability and creativity (van Dijck, 2013), they are a critical locus of research to understand the socio-cultural constructions of broader phenomena such as racism. This paper considers platforms as having an active role in the construction of racism through their corporate logic and technical infrastructure. Platformed racism is the entanglement between the governance and ideology of platforms, their technological affordances and the user practices that they mediate. This paper examines platformed racism by focusing on social media as issue spaces, and especially the uses and contributions of visual social media content in response to a recent racist controversy in Australia, the booing of indigenous footballer Adam Goodes in 2015.
Six seconds to talk back: The emergence of racial comedy as a sociopolitical discourse genre on Vine
Kendra Nicole Calhoun
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
In this paper I analyze how a new discourse genre has emerged on the video-based social media platform Vine as a result of its technological affordances (Hutchby 2001) for video production and dissemination. “Vine racial comedy” is a form of comedic performance that functions as a sociopolitical discourse genre by addressing issues of race in the United States within the 6-second time limit of each video. Pioneered by King Bach, a 28-year-old African-American male who is the most-followed person on Vine (15.1 million followers), this genre of Vine comedy challenges the sociopolitical status quo in the tradition of Black stand-up comedy (Rahman 2004), including stylistic use of non-standard language varieties (e.g., African American English) and critical engagement with cultural stereotypes (Carpio 2008). The auditory and visual semiotic features of King Bach's comedy have become markers of genre now that they have been adopted by popular Latino, Arab, East Asian and other Viners of color. Vine racial comedy is significant as both an innovative online discourse genre and a new iteration of using social media to “talk back” to mainstream media (cf. Bonilla & Rosa 2015) that often ignores or misrepresents racial issues (Cottle 2000). Vine and its affordances have created a space in which this social media performer can use comedy to direct the attention of his millions of followers to sociopolitical issues they might otherwise ignore.
Platform labor: On the gendered and racialized exploitation of low-income service work in the "on-demand" economy
Niels van Doorn
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, The
This paper deals with the gendered, racialized, and classed distribution of opportunities and vulnerabilities encoded in the emergent rules, policies, and conventions of digital labor platforms, particularly in the US context. Its argument unfolds in four parts. Part one opens with the argument that contemporary “sharing”, “on-demand”, and “crowdwork” economies are embedded in, and present intensifications of, the neoliberal assault on labor that has been taking shape over the past four decades. Part two then contends that while platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, Uber, TaskRabbit, and Handy are careful to position themselves – both legally and through branding strategies – as tech companies offering software as a service, they effectively operate as labor market intermediaries who exercise a significant measure of control over the ostensibly independent workforce they claim to “serve”. As such, they can be understood as new players in the expanding temporary staffing industry, whose sociotechnical infrastructures and practices exacerbate the already precarious conditions of low-wage workers in today’s global service economy. In part three it is argued that the gig-based and largely obscured service work delivered by contingent workers, many of whom are women of color, crucially ensures the reproduction of the more visible and valued productive activities associated with white(-collar) masculine creative/knowledge work. Finally, the fourth part of the paper addresses the need to combine ethnographic research with grassroots organizing and activism, in order to generate infrastructures dedicated to the revaluation of service work and the cultivation of platforms for solidarity among gig workers.
