Introduction

This chapter begins with a retelling of the events of Ferguson, emphasizing the role of Black digital media networks as the news first spread and then as media outlets broadcasted the aftermath. It then considers the nature of these networks, their origins and functions, and how they interplay with broader racial discourses and media narratives, as well as the context for these networks, including the prevalence of race-based disparities, the predominance of neoliberal racial discourses that proffer nonracial explanations for racist outcomes, and the contemporary technological environment that allows for digital networks to exist. In this environment fighting racial oppression requires strategies for making race and racism visible, in the collective context in which they materialise. In critiquing the development of digital technologies around neoliberal values, the chapter also looks at Black adoption of and innovation in digital technologies.

Conclusion

Beyond Hashtags concludes with a brief discussion of the radical changes in the dominant racial discourse that have taken place since the 2016 presidential election. In noting the decreased visibility of the Movement for Black Lives and the constant media coverage of Donald Trump’s presidency and his unprecedented violation of US political norms, it looks at of issues of sustainability and monetization for podcasts that rely on an interstitial mode of production.

“MLK, I Choose You!”

Chapter 3 examines roles of memory and history in the network, exploring how participants in the network resist dominant historical narratives and reassert accounts of the past that highlight ongoing racial oppression and resistance. It looks at how the This Week in Blackness podcast Historical Blackness uses history as a resource for reinterpreting the present in ways that undermine dominant racial discourses, as well as at complex ways the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. is deployed for neoliberal political ends. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how King has been invoked to condemn the tactics of the Movement for Black Lives and how the movement has reclaimed and re-remembered King in ways that position its participants as the inheritors of his legacy

Enclaves and Counter-Publics

Chapter 2 examines how different affordances of the network allow, and sometimes force, users to shift between creating digitally enabled enclaves and directly debating dominant discourses forwarded by those outside the network. Contextualizing the network in the history of Black alternative media production as well as within the tradition of Black social enclaves, it goes on to explore moments when the more visible elements of the network serve a counter-public function to challenge mainstream legacy media and the political establishment. The chapter also analyzes debates over the racial dynamics of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Game of Thrones fandom under the hashtag #DemThrones, and the #BernieSoBlack hashtag, which emerged during the 2015 presidential primary as a criticism of some of Senator Bernie Sanders’s supporters’ desire to minimize the importance of racial issues in the candidate’s platform.

“This Is the Resource Our Community Needed Right Now”

Chapter 4 explores the role these networks played at moments of racial trauma, particularly the Zimmerman acquittal, the death of Mike Brown, and the subsequent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. It shows how the flexible, malleable character of the network allowed it to be deployed for a number of simultaneous, overlapping, yet distinct activities, including creating community and solidarity through catharsis and collective grieving, circulating oppositional interpretations of events, organizing responses and political engagement, and both bypassing and directly intervening into mainstream corporate media narratives.

Mapping the Transplatform Network

The first chapter outlines the structure of the Black digital network and its discursive construction as an explicitly Black space. It argues that the network’s multimedia, transplatform character allows it to function as a broadcast-style network and as a digital social network and makes it a flexible, multilayered space in which to negotiate racial discourses. The chapter also demonstrates how deeply interconnected the elements of the network are and how conversations move across the network via a range of platforms and media.