This reflection paper should be 5-7 pages long (not including references – separate page for references), double-spaced, using 12-point Times New Roman font with a 1-inch margin on all sides. Do not include a title page, but you should include a title
You will select a technology to reflect on. How has technology helped/hindered you? Pick one or two technologies (eg: apps, gloves, masks, glasses, whatever) and reflect on your time. Reflect on how it has shaped you, shaped society. You should have a section on the history of the technology in society as well as a critical reflection of how it has shaped you and society at large. Especially think through the pandemic – how has your relationship with technology changed? Use the readings to guide your reflection – the point of this is to think about how the readings have helped you think about technology in these strange times.
You must cite (in the bibliography) at least three class readings, at least five times total (total references/quotes/etc). This is bare minimum.An “excellent” paper will include more than three readings from the class, and make a specific attempt to reference them multiple times.
Other readings are fine to include, but three class readings is minimum.
—— Also, over the years three things have emerged:
1) Students reference a lot of other readings instead of the class readings. Don’t do this. The point is to reflect on the readings and the world, if you spend all your time referencing other people’s readings, you won’t have space/time to write about the interesting ideas you have.
2) Students will quote the readings at length instead of using their own voice. Also, do not do this.If you have a brief (one line / sentence / few words) quote, that is fine. But if you’re using multiple lines to quote, it reads like you’re padding your (already short) essay. This paper is zero fluff allowed which is why its so short. Use your words.
3) Students will quote readings and leave them there without any reflection, context, or articulation of their own. Why would you do this? Do not.If you are quoting a thing, it should be for a reason – because that thing made you think. I do not live in your head, so you need to spell out and make clear the connection. The entire point of this assignment is to see how you think – if you don’t share it with words, how else can I read it?Not mindreading, that is for sure.
Technology Report
You will select a technology to create a research report on.
The report should be 5-7 pages long, not including your Bibliography page(s).
This report is on a SPECIFIC technology. Not on ALL technology. Pick one! Really… ONE TECHNOLOGY.
Examples (not exhaustive): Glasses (the ones on your face) / LASIK?, shoes, doorknobs, clocks / watches, windows, fire, headphones, speakers, books, clothing, cameras, chairs, the wheel, airplanes, etc… (EVERYTHING THAT IS NOT YOU)
The point of the class is to think about technology and about how it affects you. The point of this paper is to illustrate and reflect upon how YOU are thinking WITH the course readings, not to just tell a history of a technology. The more you use the readings and reflect on a technology WITH the readings, the better off you’ll be. The more you just name a bunch of technology stuff, the worse off you’ll be. Focus on a particular technology and reflect on how it has changed you and culture, society, the world / etc.
I REPEAT: THIS IS NOT A HISTORY PAPER. IT IS A REFLECTION PAPER. THE HISTORY PART HELPS YOU THINK ABOUT AND SET UP THE REFLECTION
Your report should have two main components (in addition to the bibliography):
1) SUMMARY / HISTORY
Historical, contemporary, and future trajectory of the technology
Describe the history and background of the technology. When and how did it emerge and develop? What were its predecessors? When and how did it take off and become popular? Who are its major competitors? Discuss of the future of the technology. How might it evolve and change over time? Will it survive and thrive much longer or is it in decline? Why?
2) ENGAGEMENT
Communication & technology: critical engagement
Select one of the themes we have covered in class that has a bearing on the technology you are examining. Discuss its relevance to the technology you are writing about. You should pick a way to critically engage with this technology and evaluate it using the readings and concepts from the class, joined with your own personal thoughts and experiences.
For example, you can evaluate the role of that technology for self-presentation, forming and maintaining social relationships, civic and political engagement, health and well-being, news and journalism, privacy, reputation, censorship, copyright, freedom of speech, and so on.
You can also discuss the composition of the people using that technology. Are there any groups that are particularly likely to use it? Are there any groups that are excluded from using it, either by choice or by necessity (think access and equity here)? Some relevant user characteristics to consider may include age, gender, race & ethnicity, ability, sexuality, education, income, etc. This is not absolutely necessary for all technologies, but it is often necessary to consider who things are and aren’t designed for, or how certain technologies benefit different groups in different ways.
You could also describe the role the technology plays in everyday life. What motivates people to use it? Think of key user goals that this technology may serve: seeking information, communication, social relationships, entertainment, self-presentation, self-improvement, etc. What social practices, rules, or norms have developed around the technology? That may include, for instance, using specific slang, jargon, or acronyms; using the technology in new or unexpected ways (e.g. changing your profile picture to support a cause), developing social rules for appropriate behavior (e.g. killing players in certain locations in virtual worlds is considered rude, even though the game allows it), and so on.
Whatever you choose – engage on a personal level to show us how YOU are rethinking technology through the class.
Reports should comply with the following requirements:
References and bibliography
The report should cite at least three different course readings, citing them at least five times total (eg: two readings cited twice each, and another once, or one three times and two others). There should be at least five sources total at a bare minimum – whether all five come from course readings or not is your choice. Additional citations may come from other types of sources (e.g. stories from reputable and credible media outlets or industry reports). Those additional citations may help you develop and support your arguments. The citations and bibliography should be formatted in APA. You can use a free citation manager to store and format citations (e.g. www.zotero.com), or a simpler online tool to format selected citations (e.g.
www.refme.com/citation-generator/apa
or www.bibme.org/apa).
REPEATED HINT: The point of this paper is to illustrate and reflect upon how YOU are thinking WITH the course readings, not to just tell a history of a technology. The more you use the readings and reflect on a technology WITH them, the better off you’ll be.
Formatting and length
The report should be 5-7 pages long (not including references), double-spaced, using 12-point Times New Roman font with a 1-inch margin on all sides. Do not include a title page, but you should include a title.
Writing quality and organization
The report should be clearly and logically organized. Different sections should not repeat the same information, though you can refer to previously mentioned ideas if you are building on them to develop a new argument. You need to carefully proofread the final draft of the report before submitting it. You should confirm that it meets all the requirements and make sure that the text is clearly written, grammatically correct, and free of spelling errors
Attached are readings you can choose from and an example paper
1
NAME
COMM200
Final Technology Report
DATE
Tattoo Technology: Skin and Self-Representation
Tattoo practices have long existed among non-Western cultures but have evolved and
become incorporated in mainstream society through modernization. Earliest documentations of
tattoos can be seen on the preserved body of Otzi the Iceman, whose body markings date back to
3300 B.C. (Stevenson, 2008). The term “tattoo” was first recorded by Captain Cook during his
voyages in the South Pacific, where the practice is known as “tatau” or “tatow”, with ta meaning
“to strike or to stamp” (Salvador-Amores, 2002). Through examination of tattoo technology of
indigenous and western practices, in addition to scholarly work on digital self-presentation, this
paper extends literature to the physical body, arguing the body as a similar and significant
medium for identity formation.
As an ancient practice, origins of tattoo tools were rooted in the natural world. Before the
introduction of electric tattoo tools, marking of the skin was achieved by hand-tapping with
instruments created from natural materials. Examining the premodern tattoo toolkit of the
Pacific, Maori tattoos known as ta moko, are marked using albatross bone chisels, accompanied
by a small pot of pigment usually containing a mixture of soot, oil or water (Te Awekotuku,
1997). In Northern Luzon of the Philippines, batek as it is known in the province of Kalinga, is
done through instruments made from carabao horn with four lemon thorns attached at the tip
(Salvador-Amores, 2002). The skin is repeatedly pierced or tapped and is quite a long, painful
process.
2
In the context of Western cultures, the mechanized tattoo tool facilitated widespread use
with its functionality explored for different modes such as for art and even science. While there
is little history examining tattoo practices in Europe or the U.S. from 1770 to 1860, development
of the electric tattoo machine by New York tattooist, Sam O’Reilly in 1891, based on the
Thomas Edison 1876 electric stencil pen device, notably transformed tattooing (Fisher, 2002).
O’Reilly’s invention improved the process, making it quicker and less painful, as well as
allowing greater detail for color and shading. Since the development of mechanized tattoo
technology, popularization of tattoos among the general public has transformed tattoo practice
into a commercialized industry with mass appeal, exemplified by tattoo conventions held at
international levels. Not only as tools to mark expressions of cultural or creative identity, tattoo
technology today has become adopted in fields of biotech and medicine. Recent advancements
explore potentials for “smart tattoos” that would function as body-compliant devices for health
monitoring such as measuring blood glucose for diabetes management (Meetoo et al., 2019). The
future of tattoo technology offers vast possibilities that while currently at its early stages, may
evolve the utility of the human skin and perhaps shift the realm of body modification into
something digital or highly mechanized.
Examining the demographics of tattooed individuals, early adopters in Western society
came from subcultures and socially deviant groups before becoming adopted by mainstream
public. Greeks first recognized tattoos as a denotation of “Otherness” when observing the
tattooed, “Barbarian” Thracians (Larsen et al., 2014). While also adopted by soldiers and sailors
who had traveled abroad, negative associations were further brought upon by its commonality
among stereotypically deviant groups such as convicts, bikers and gang members in the latenineteenth century. Today, tattoos transcend individuals of all gender, ages, race, and socio-
3
economic lines. Between 10 to 20 percent of Americans are estimated to have a tattoo and
continue to grow in number (Dillingh et al., 2020). Despite mainstream acceptance, tattoos
remain a stigma in many professions, making economic and social consequences a current
concern especially for reasons of employment. Tattoo stigma in the professional world can
inhibit individuals from receiving tattoos or may influence placement decisions so that their
tattoos are not easily visible. In this sense, individuals in flexible career fields or high social
status (i.e., celebrities) may be more likely to freely obtain tattoos without fear of repercussion.
Although traditionally associated with masculinity, tattooing has also been embraced largely by
women in modern times as a claim to their own bodies and identity.
Although tattoo customs of indigenous cultures have declined due to the impact of
colonization, many cultures have retained cultural knowledge to revive their practices. While
most cultures have stuck to traditional tattoo tools, some, especially amongst younger
generations, have adopted machine tools, combining modern and traditional practices. Returning
to traditional tattooing practices of the Pacific and the Philippines, to be tattooed is symbolic of
ancestral lineage, rites of passage, and often have spiritual connections for purposes of protection
and guidance (Utanga & Mangos, 2006). Additionally, ritual is an essential component, with
specific steps and ceremonial elements followed as signs of respect for ancestors, as well as
evoking collective memory and identity (Salvador-Amores, 2002). Motivations become not just
centered on the self but as a means of connection to cultural heritage and service to one’s
community. For western cultures, as examined from its circulation among “deviant” groups,
tattoos are symbolic of a personal story, indictive of creating an identity within a collective,
though minority, social group (Todd, 2018). However, the cultural switch from subculture to
mainstream have transformed modern motivations for tattoos, such as trendiness, rebellion, or
4
even desire as a commodity. Kosut (2006) conceptualizes tattoos as an “ironic fad”, as it is a
popular cultural trend that due to its permanent nature, cannot be easily discarded like other
trends that come and go. While each case is unique for the individual, meaning of a tattoo can
shift but will remain with them for life, unless resorting to tattoo removal. However, permanency
of a tattoo often adds to their allure and cultural significance (Kosut, 2006). Social practices of
tattooing have also expanded into art world, seeing the skin as canvas, counteracting the
dominate Western ideology of the body as “pure” and untouched (Kosut, 2000). Since machine
tattoo tools afford convenience, which also directly relates to its formation as a service industry,
many are able to simply walk into a tattoo shop and pay for a tattoo of their choice. This however
can lead to ethical questions in the decision of tattoo artists with clients who request racist or
offensive designs. With this perspective tattoo technology also becomes concerned with morale
and can additionally be extended to appropriation of cultural designs.
Tattooing technology is an avenue of self-presentation and identity formation that is
informed by cultural influences. Moua (2012) explains an aspect of culture as symbolic as
humans create meaning between symbols and what it represents. Though symbolic meanings
may also vary depending on different dimensions, such as identity, where values may differ from
a range of group (collectivist) and personal (individualist) needs. Rettburg (2014) explores selfpresentation through digital media, noting the importance of cultural filters alongside
technological filters. Filters are a central component to understanding algorithms as a means to
remove content and alter experiences within digital spaces. However, cultural filters such as
norms and expectations act as conventions that guide behavior in ways that go undetected.
Cultural filters can also be applied to tattoo, both through preference of the tool (hand-tapped
versus machine) as well as what designs are chosen. Representation of our lives or bodies
5
undergo adapting to, following or resisting against filters both cultural and technological
(Rettburg, 2014, p. 25). When looking at the early demographics of the western tattoo, selfpresentation in the form of tattoo were symbols of rebellion and identification against the statusquo. Tattooing meets at crossroads of identity and culture, where tattoos become statements of
one’s placement within a culture.
Moving forward with these notions of culture, tattooing is a form of non-verbal
communication that uses the physical body as a medium to link the individual with the outside
world. While online identity observes a sense of separating body from mind that allows for
flexibility in self-presentation, which Marwick (2005) notes can be interpreted as identity as
having a performative component, various identities too can be expressed through tattoo. The
tattoos of an individuals may not all represent a singular identity and may represent various
aspects of the person. The body can be treated as a kind of scrapbook or collection that tells a
distinct story or aspect of the self. Rettburg (2014) additionally sees digital self-presentation as
cumulative, in which a social media profile for example is continuously expanded through a
collection of posts that reflects a version of the person. The body can similarly function in this
way, exemplifying connections of self-presentation both in digital and physical realm. As users
online seek to differentiate themselves in a sea of other users and profiles, people who acquire
tattoos also seek to clarify themselves through personal identity and interests.
While the previous paragraph explored tattoo technology as achieving individual identity,
it also serves a medium to indicate and integrate the self as a member of social or cultural group.
Online spaces, which can operate around individualistic motivations, it can also be a means to
communicate with and serve communities. Steele (2016) demonstrated how blogs provided a
platform for African Americans as mode of discourse for modifying oral culture to meet the
6
current needs of the community, with bloggers drawn by common experiences to form narratives
and strategy to empower and create representations of self and community. Again, tattooing
shares similar functions when looking to online self-representation as a comparative frame.
Tattoos, such as seen through indigenous cultures, become not only a commitment in terms of its
permanence but also through meanings that express responsibility and service towards family,
village and greater community (Te Awekotuku, 1997). Additionally, Steele’s 2016 study reflects
how digital spaces can be reclaimed by or refined by a community, and in this similar sense,
tattoo can also embody larger notions whether of resilience, strength, or dignity, that despite
attached to the self, represent something larger than the self.
Tattoo technology before the existence of the computer and digital world, was an early
medium for self-presentation that today remains a popular means for connecting the self, body
and society. While digital self-representations can be eventually shutdown or logged off, self
through tattoo cannot. As a permanent and usually easily visible symbol, the tattoo carries with it
meaning given not only by the person, but by culture, society and community. Until every inch
of the body is covered in ink, the body can service as a means of forming identity as a claim to a
group or even rejection of it, as well as expressing multiple facets of a person’s identity. While
cultures and norms may shift, and also potentially shift perspectives of one’s identity, tattooing
reflects the complexity and richness of the human self and what answers it serves to the everpressing question of “Who am I?”.
7
Works Cited
Dillingh, R., Kooreman, P., & Potters, J. (2020). Tattoos, Lifestyle and the Labor Market.
Labour, 34(2), 191-214. https://doi.org/10.1111/labr.12167
Fisher, J. A. (2002). Tattooing the Body, Marking Culture. Body & Society, 8(4), 91-107.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X02008004005
Kosut, M. (2000). Tattoo Narratives: The intersection of the body, self-identity and society.
Visual Sociology, 15(1), 79-100. https://doi.org/10.1080/14725860008583817
Kosut, M. (2006). An Ironic Fad: The Commodification and Consumption of Tattoos. The
Journal of Popular Culture, 39(6), https://doi.org/1035-1048. 10.1111/j.15405931.2006.00333.x
Larsen, G., Patterson, M., & Markham, L. (2014). A Deviant Art: Tattoo-Related Stigma in an
Era of Commodification. Psychology and Marketing, 31(8), 670-681.
https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.20727
Marwick, A. (2005). Selling Your Self: Online Identity in the Age of a Commodified Internet.
University of Washington.
Meetoo, D., Wong, L., & Ochieng, B. (2019). Smart Tattoo: Technology for Monitoring Blood
Glucose in the Future. British Journal of Nursing, 28(2).
https://doi.org/10.12968/bjon.2019.28.2.110
Moua, M. (2012). Chapter 2: Understanding Culture. In Leading with Cultural Intelligence (pp.
30-68). Saylor Foundation.
Rettberg, J. W. (2014). Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and
Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves. Palgrave Macmillan.
10.1057/9781137476661
Salvador-Amores, A. I. V. (2002). Batek: Traditional Tattoos and Identities in Contemporary
Kalinga, North Luzon Philippines. Humanities Diliman, 3(1), 105-142.
Steele, C. K. (2016). The Digital Barbershop: Blogs and Online Oral Culture Within the African
American Community. Social Media + Society, 1-10.
https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305116683205
Stevenson, A. (2008, June 20). Probing Question: What is the history of tattooing?. Penn State
News. https://news.psu.edu/story/141345/2008/06/20/research/probing-question-whathistory-tattooing
Te Awekotuku, N. (1997). Ta Moko: Maori Tattoo. In R. Blackley, Goldie (pp. 109-114).
Auckland Art Gallery.
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Todd, K. (2018). Deeper than the Surface: Analyzing Tattoos in a Modernized World. Royal
Road, 2, 6-15.
Utanga, J., & Mangos, T. (2006). The Lost Connections: Tattoo Revival in the Cook Islands,
Fashion Theory, 10(3), 315-332. https://doi.org/10.2752/13627040677805094
Participating in the
Always-On Lifestyle
6
da na h b oyd
I love filling out surveys, but I’m always stumped when I’m asked
how many hours per day I spend online. I mean, what counts as online? I
try to answer this through subtraction. I start by subtracting the hours that I
sleep (~7.5 if I’m lucky). But then a little bird in the back of my brain wonders
whether or not sleeping with my iPhone next to my bed really counts. Or
maybe it counts when I don’t check it, but what about when I check Twitter in the middle of the night when I wake up from a dream? I subtract the
time spent in the shower (0.5) because technology and water are not (yet)
compatible. But that’s as far as I can usually get. I don’t always check Wikipedia during dinner, but when there’s a disagreement, the interwebz are always
there to save the day. And, I fully admit, I definitely surf the web while on the
toilet.
Y’see . . . I’m part of a cohort who is always-on. I consciously and loudly
proclaim offline time through the declaration of e-mail sabbaticals when all
content pushed my way is bounced rather than received. (There’s nothing
more satisfying than coming home from a vacation with an empty inbox and
a list of people so desperate to reach me that they actually called my mother.)
But this is not to say that I only have “a life” when I’m on digital sabbatical.
I spend plenty of time socializing face-to-face with people, watching movies, and walking through cities. And I even spend time doing things that
I’d prefer not to—grocery shopping, huffing and puffing on the treadmill,
and so on. All of these activities are not in and of themselves “online,” but
because of technology, the online is always just around the corner. I can look
up information, multitask by surfing the web, and backchannel with friends.
I’m not really online, in that my activities are not centered on the digital bits
of the Internet, but I’m not really offline either. I’m where those concepts
break down. It’s no longer about on or off really. It’s about living in a world
where being networked to people and information wherever and whenever
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you need it is just assumed. I may not be always-on the Internet as we think
of it colloquially, but I am always connected to the network. And that’s what
it means to be always-on.
There is an irony to all of this. My always-on-ness doesn’t mean that I’m
always-accessible-to-everyone. Just because my phone buzzes to tell me that
a new message has arrived does not mean that I bother to look at it. This is
not because I’m antiphone but because I’m procontext. Different social contexts mean different relationships to being always-on. They are not inherently defined by space but by a social construction of context in my own
head. Sometimes I’m interruptible by anyone (like when I’m bored out of my
mind at the DMV). But more often, I’m not interruptible because connection
often means context shift, and only certain context shifts are manageable.
So if I’m at dinner, I will look up a Wikipedia entry as a contribution to the
conversation without checking my text messages. All channels are accessible,
but it doesn’t mean I will access them.
I am not alone. Like many others around me, I am perpetually connected
to people and information through a series of devices and social media channels. This is often something that’s described in generational terms, with
“digital natives” being always-on and everyone else hobbling along trying to
keep up with the technology. But, while what technology is available to each
generation at key life stages keeps changing, being always-on isn’t so cleanly
generational. There are inequality issues that mean that plenty of youth simply don’t have access to the tools that I can afford. But economic capital is not
the only factor. Being always-on works best when the people around you are
always-on, and the networks of always-on-ers are defined more by values and
lifestyle than by generation. In essence, being always-on started as a subcultural practice, and while it is gaining momentum, it is by no means universal.
There are plenty of teens who have no interest in being perpetually connected
to information and people even if they can. And there are plenty of us who
are well beyond our teen years who are living and breathing digital bits for
fun. That said, many of the young are certainly more willing to explore this
lifestyle than are their techno-fretful parents. So while being young doesn’t
guarantee deep engagement with technology, it is certainly correlated.
What separates those who are part of the always-on lifestyle from those
who aren’t is not often the use of specific tools. It’s mostly a matter of
approach. Instant messaging is a tool used by many but often in different
ways and for different purposes. There are those who log in solely to communicate with others. And there are those who use it to convey presence and
state of mind. Needless to say, the latter is much more a part of the always72
| danah boyd
on ethos. Being always-on is not just about consumption and production
of content but also about creating an ecosystem in which people can stay
peripherally connected to one another through a variety of microdata. It’s
about creating networks and layering information on top. The goal of being
connected is not simply to exchange high-signal content all the time. We also
want all of the squishy, gooey content that keeps us connected as people. In
our world, phatic content like posting what you had for breakfast on Twitter
is AOK. Cuz it can enhance the social context. Of course, some people do go
too far. But that’s what teasing is meant for.
To an outsider, wanting to be always-on may seem pathological. All too
often, it’s labeled an addiction. The assumption is that we’re addicted to the
technology. The technology doesn’t matter. It’s all about the people and information. Humans are both curious and social critters. We want to understand
and interact. Technology introduces new possibilities for doing so, and that’s
where the passion comes in. We’re passionate about technology because
we’re passionate about people and information, and they go hand in hand.
And once you’re living in an always-on environment, you really notice what’s
missing when you’re not. There’s nothing I hate more than standing in a foreign country with my iPhone in hand, unable to access Wikipedia because
roaming on AT&T is so prohibitively expensive as to make the Internet inaccessible. Instead, I find myself making lists of all the things that I want to
look up when I can get online.
It’s not just about instant gratification either. Sure, I can look up who is
buried in the Pantheon later. But the reason that I want to know when I’m
standing before it in Italy is because I want to know about the object in front
of me whose signs are all in Italian. I want to translate those signs, ask questions about the architecture. And it’s 4 a.m., and the guard tells me it’s not his
job to provide history lessons. What I want is to bring people and information into context. It’s about enhancing the experience.
Of course, this doesn’t mean it can’t get overwhelming. Cuz it does. And
I’m not always good at managing the overload. My RSS-feed reader has
exploded, and there’s no way that I can keep up with the plethora of status
updates and Twitter messages posted by friends, colleagues, and intriguing
humans that I don’t know. E-mail feels like a chore, and I do everything possible to avoid having to log in to dozens of different sites to engage in conversations inside walled gardens. There’s more news than I can possibly read on
any given day.
So how do I cope? Realistically, I don’t. I’ve started accepting that there’s
no way that I can manage the onslaught of contact, wade through the mess,
Participating in the Always-On Lifestyle
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and find the hidden gems. I haven’t completely thrown my hands up though.
Instead, I’ve decided to take a laissez-faire approach to social media. I do my
best, and when that’s not good enough, I rely on people bitching loud and
clear to make me reprioritize. And then I assess whether or not I can address
their unhappiness. And if I can’t, I cringe and hope that it won’t be too costly.
And sometimes I simply declare bankruptcy and start over.
As social media becomes increasingly pervasive in everyday life, more
and more people will be overwhelmed by the information surrounding
them. And they will have to make choices. Networked technologies allow us
to extend our reach, to connect across space and time, to find people with
shared interests and gather en masse for social and political purposes. But
time and attention are scarce resources. Until we invent the sci-fi doohickey
that lets us freeze time, no amount of aggregating and reorganizing will let us
overcome the limitations presented by a scarcity of time and attention.
In the meantime, many of us are struggling to find balance. We create
artificial structures in an effort to get there. I take digital sabbaticals. Others
create technologies that restrict them so that they don’t have face hard decisions at points when they’re potentially vulnerable. For example, late-night
surfing from link to link to link can be so enjoyable that it’s easy to forget to
sleep. But biology isn’t very forgiving, so sometimes a time-out is necessary.
Many from the always-on crowd also try to embrace crazy strategies to
optimize time as much as humanly possible. Proponents of polyphasic sleep
argue that hacking your circadian rhythm can allow for more wake hours;
I just think sleeping in small chunks means more loopy people out in the
blogosphere. Of course, I fully admit that I’ve embraced the cult of GTD in
an effort to reduce unnecessary cognitive load by doing inventories of various things.
Hacking time, hacking biology, hacking cognition—these are all common
traits of people who’ve embraced an always-on lifestyle. Many of us love the
idea that we can build new synaptic structures through our use of networked
technologies. While many old-skool cyberpunks wanted to live in a virtual
reality, always-on folks are more interested in an augmented reality. We want
to be a part of the network.
There’s no formula for embracing always-on practices, and we must
each develop our own personal strategies for navigating a world with everincreasing information. There are definitely folks who fail to find balance,
but most of us find a comfortable way to fit these practices into everyday life
without consequence. Of course, the process of finding balance may appear
like we’re feeling our way through a maze while blindfolded. We’re all going
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| danah boyd
to bump into a lot of things along the way and have to reassess where we’re
going when we reach our own personal edges. But, in doing so, we will personalize the media rich environment to meet our needs and desires.
Social media skeptics often look at the output of those who are engaging with the newfangled services and shake their heads. “How can they be
so public?” some ask. Others reject digital performances by asking, “Who
wants to read what they want anyhow?” Publicness is one of the strange and
yet powerful aspects of this new world. Many who blog and tweet are not
writing for the world at large; they are writing for the small group who might
find it relevant and meaningful. And, realistically, the world at large is not
reading the details of their lives. Instead, they are taking advantage of the
affordances of these technologies to connect with others in a way that they
feel is appropriate.
Each technology has its affordances, and what’s powerful about certain
technology often stems from these affordances. Consider asynchronicity,
an affordance of many social media tools. Years ago, I interviewed an HIVpositive man who started blogging. When I asked him about his decision to
start, he told me that it helped him navigate social situations in a more comfortable manner. He did not use his real name on his blog, but his friends all
knew where to find the blog. On this site, he wrote about his ups and downs
with his illness, and his friends read this. He found that such a mediator
allowed him to negotiate social boundaries with friends in new ways. He no
longer had to gauge the appropriateness of the situation to suddenly declare
his T-cell count. Likewise, his friends didn’t have to overcome their uncertainty in social situations to ask about his health. He could report when he
felt comfortable doing so, and they could read when they were prepared to
know. This subtle shift in how he shared information with friends and how
friends consumed it eased all sorts of tensions. Technology doesn’t simply
break social conventions—it introduces new possibilities for them.
It’s also typically assumed that being always-on means facing severe personal or professional consequences. There is fear that participating in a public culture can damage one’s reputation or that constant surfing means the
loss of focus or that always having information at hand will result in a failure
to actually know things. But aren’t we living in a world where knowing how
to get information is more important than memorizing it? Aren’t we moving away from an industrial economy into an information one? Creativity
is shaped more by the ability to make new connections than to focus on a
single task. And why shouldn’t we all have the ability to be craft our identity
in a public culture? Personally, I’ve gained more professionally from being
Participating in the Always-On Lifestyle
|
75
public than I could have dreamed possible when I started blogging in 1997.
For example, l’il ol’ me had no idea that blogging controversial ideas backed
with data might get me an invitation to the White House.
Ironically, the publicness of social media also provides privacy in new
ways. Many of those who embrace the public aspects of social media find that
the more public they are, the more they can carve off privacy. When people
assume you share everything, they don’t ask you about what you don’t share.
There are also ways to embed privacy in public in ways that provide a unique
form of control over the setting. Certainly, people have always had private
conversations while sitting in public parks. And queer culture is rife with
stories of how gay and lesbian individuals signaled to one another in public
arenas through a series of jewelry, accessories, and body language. Likewise,
in-jokes are only meaningful to those who are in the know, whether they are
shared in a group or online. And there are all sorts of ways to say things out
loud that are only heard by a handful of people. These become tricks of the
trade, skills people learn as they begin fully engaging in an always-on public
culture.
Being always-on and living a public life through social media may complicate our lives in new ways, but participating can also enrich the tapestry
of life. Those of us who are living this way can be more connected to those
whom we love and move in sync with those who share our interests. The
key to this lifestyle is finding a balance, a rhythm that moves us in ways that
make us feel whole without ripping our sanity to shreds. I’ve lived my entire
adult life in a world of networked information and social media. At times,
I’m completely overwhelmed, but when I hit my stride, I feel like an ethereal dancer, energized by the connections and ideas that float by. And there’s
nothing like being connected and balanced to make me feel alive and in love
with the world at large.
76
| danah boyd
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I’m still here: back online after a year
without the internet
By Paul Miller on May 1, 2013 10:40 am
I was wrong.
One year ago I left the internet. I thought it was making me unproductive. I
thought it lacked meaning. I thought it was “corrupting my soul.”
It’s a been a year now since I “surfed the web” or “checked my email” or “liked” anything with a figurative rather
than literal thumbs up. I’ve managed to stay disconnected, just like I planned. I’m internet free.
And now I’m supposed to tell you how it solved all my problems. I’m supposed to be enlightened. I’m supposed
to be more “real,” now. More perfect.
But instead it’s 8PM and I just woke up. I slept all day, woke with eight voicemails on my phone from friends and
coworkers. I went to my coffee shop to consume dinner, the Knicks game, my two newspapers, and a copy of
The New Yorker. And now I’m watching Toy Story while I glance occasionally at the blinking cursor in this text
document, willing it to write itself, willing it to generate the epiphanies my life has failed to produce.
I didn’t want to meet this Paul at the tail end of my yearlong journey.
In early 2012 I was 26 years old and burnt out. I wanted a break from modern life — the
hamster wheel of an email inbox, the constant flood of WWW information which drowned out
my sanity. I wanted to escape.
I thought the internet might be an unnatural state for us humans, or at least for me. Maybe I
was too ADD to handle it, or too impulsive to restrain my usage. I’d used the internet
constantly since I was twelve, and as my livelihood since I was fourteen. I’d gone from
paperboy, to web designer, to technology writer in under a decade. I didn’t know myself apart
from a sense of ubiquitous connection and endless information. I wondered what else there
was to life. “Real life,” perhaps, was waiting for me on the other side of the web browser.
My plan was to quit my job, move home with my parents, read books, write books, and wallow
in my spare time. In one glorious gesture I’d outdo all quarter-life crises to come before me.
I’d find the real Paul, far away from all the noise, and become a better me.
But for some reason, The Verge wanted to pay me to
leave the internet. I could stay in New York and share my
findings with the world, beam missives about my internetfree life to the citizens of the internet I’d left behind,
sprinkle wisdom on them from my high tower.
My goal, as a technology writer, would be to discover
what the internet had done to me over the years. To
understand the internet by studying it “at a distance.” I
wouldn’t just become a better human, I would help us all
to become better humans. Once we understood the ways
in which the internet was corrupting us, we could finally
fight back.
MY GOAL WOULD
BE TO DISCOVER
WHAT THE
INTERNET HAD
DONE TO ME
OVER THE YEARS
At 11:59PM on April 30th, 2012, I unplugged my Ethernet cable, shut off my Wi-Fi, and
swapped my smartphone for a dumb one. It felt really good. I felt free.
A couple weeks later, I found myself among 60,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews, pouring into New
York’s Citi Field to learn from the world’s most respected rabbis about the dangers of the
internet. Naturally. Outside the stadium, I was spotted by a man brandishing one of my own
articles about leaving the internet. He was ecstatic to meet me. I had chosen to avoid the
internet for many of the same reasons his religion expressed caution about the modern world.
“It’s reprogramming our relationships, our emotions, and our sensitivity,” said one of the rabbis
at the rally. It destroys our patience. It turns kids into “click vegetables.”
My new friend outside the stadium encouraged me to make the most of my year, to “stop and
smell the flowers.”
This was going to be amazing.
I dreamed a dream
And everything started out great, let me tell you. I did stop and smell
the flowers. My life was full of serendipitous events: real life meetings,
frisbee, bike rides, and Greek literature. With no clear idea how I did
it, I wrote half my novel, and turned in an essay nearly every week to
The Verge. In one of the early months my boss expressed slight
frustration at how much I was writing, which has never happened
before and never happened since.
I lost 15 pounds without really trying. I bought some new clothes.
People kept telling me how good I looked, how happy I seemed. In
one session, my therapist literally patted himself on the back.
I was a little bored, a little lonely, but I found it a wonderful change of
pace. I wrote in August, “It’s the boredom and lack of stimulation that
drives me to do things I really care about, like writing and spending
time with others.” I was pretty sure I had it all figured out, and told
everyone as much.
As my head uncluttered, my attention span expanded. In my first
month or two, 10 pages of The Odyssey was a slog. Now I can read
100 pages in a sitting, or, if the prose is easy and I’m really enthralled,
a few hundred.
I learned to appreciate an idea that can’t be summed up in a blog
post, but instead needs a novel-length exposition. By pulling away
from the echo chamber of internet culture, I found my ideas
branching out in new directions. I felt different, and a little eccentric,
and I liked it.
Without the retreat of a smartphone, I was forced to come out of my
shell in difficult social situations. Without constant distraction, I found I
was more aware of others in the moment. I couldn’t have all my
interactions on Twitter anymore; I had to find them in real life. My
sister, who has dealt with the frustration of trying to talk to me while
I’m half listening, half computing for her entire life, loves the way I talk
to her now. She says I’m less detached emotionally, more concerned
with her well-being — less of a jerk, basically.
Additionally, and I don’t know what this has to do with anything, but I
cried during Les Miserables.
It seemed then, in those first few months, that my hypothesis was
right. The internet had held me back from my true self, the better
Paul. I had pulled the plug and found the light.
Back to reality
When I left the internet I expected my journal entries to be something
like, “I used a paper map today and it was hilarious!” or “Paper
books? What are these!?” or “Does anyone have an offline copy of
Wikipedia I can borrow?” That didn’t happen.
For the most part, the practical aspects of this year passed by with
little notice. I have no trouble navigating New York by feel, and I buy
paper maps to get around other places. It turns out paper books are
really great. I don’t comparison shop to buy plane tickets, I just call
Delta and take what they offer.
In fact, most things I was learning could be realized with or without an
internet connection — you don’t need to go on a yearlong internet
fast to realize your sister has feelings.
But one big change was snail mail. I got a PO Box this year, and I
can’t tell you how much of a joy it was to see the box stuffed with
letters from readers. It’s something tangible, and something hard to
simulate with an e-card.
In neatly spaced, precisely adorable lettering, one girl wrote on a
physical piece of paper: “Thank you for leaving the internet.” Not as
an insult, but as a compliment. That letter meant the world to me.
But then I felt bad, because I never wrote back.
And then, for some reason, even going to the post office sounded like
work. I began to dread the letters and almost resent them.
As it turned out, a dozen letters a week could prove to be as
overwhelming as a hundred emails a day. And that was the way it
went in most aspects of my life. A good book took motivation to read,
whether I had the internet as an alternative or not. Leaving the house
to hang out with people took just as much courage as it ever did.
By late 2012, I’d learned how to make a new style of wrong choices
off the internet. I abandoned my positive offline habits, and
discovered new offline vices. Instead of taking boredom and lack of
stimulation and turning them into learning and creativity, I turned
toward passive consumption and social retreat.
A year in, I don’t ride my bike so much. My frisbee gathers dust. Most
weeks I don’t go out with people even once. My favorite place is the
couch. I prop my feet up on the coffee table, play a video game, and
listen to an audiobook. I pick a mindless game, like Borderlands 2 or
Skate 3, and absently thumb the sticks through the game-world while
my mind rests on the audiobook, or maybe just on nothing.
People who need people
So the moral choices aren’t very different without the internet. The practical things like maps
and offline shopping aren’t hard to get used to. People are still glad to point you in the right
direction. But without the internet, it’s certainly harder to find people. It’s harder to make a
phone call than to send an email. It’s easier to text, or SnapChat, or FaceTime, than drop by
someone’s house. Not that these obstacles can’t be overcome. I did overcome them at first,
but it didn’t last.
It’s hard to say exactly what changed. I guess those first months felt so good because I felt
the absence of the pressures of the internet. My freedom felt tangible. But when I stopped
seeing my life in the context of “I don’t use the internet,” the offline existence became
mundane, and the worst sides of myself began to emerge.
I would stay at home for days at a time. My phone would die, and nobody could get ahold of
me. At some point my parents would get fed up with wondering if I was alive, and send my
sister over to my apartment to check on me. On the internet it was easy to assure people I
was alive and sane, easy to collaborate with my coworkers, easy to be a relevant part of
society.
So much ink has been spilled deriding the false concept of a “Facebook friend,” but I can tell
you that a “Facebook friend” is better than nothing.
My best long-distance friend, one I’d talked to weekly on the phone for years, moved to China
this year and I haven’t spoken to him since. My best New York friend simply faded into his
work, as I failed to keep up my end of our social plans.
I fell out of sync with the flow of life.
This March I went to, ironically, a conference in New York
called “Theorizing the Web.” It was full of post-grad types
presenting complicated papers about the definition of
reality and what feminism looks like in a post-digital age,
and things like that. At first I was a little smug, because I
felt like they were dealing with mere theories, theories that
assumed the internet was in everything, while I myself
was experiencing a life apart.
THERE’S A LOT OF
“REALITY” IN THE
VIRTUAL, AND A
LOT OF “VIRTUAL”
IN OUR REALITY
But then I spoke with Nathan Jurgenson, a ‘net theorist
who helped organize the conference. He pointed out that there’s a lot of “reality” in the virtual,
and a lot of “virtual” in our reality. When we use a phone or a computer we’re still flesh-andblood humans, occupying time and space. When we’re frolicking through a field somewhere,
our gadgets stowed far away, the internet still impacts our thinking: “Will I tweet about this
when I get back?”
My plan was to leave the internet and therefore find the “real” Paul and get in touch with the
“real” world, but the real Paul and the real world are already inextricably linked to the internet.
Not to say that my life wasn’t different without the internet, just that it wasn’t real life.
Family time
A couple weeks ago I was in Colorado to see my brother before he deployed to Qatar with the
Air Force. He has a new baby, a five-month-old chubster named Kacia, who I’d only seen in
photos mercifully snail mailed by my sister-in-law.
I got to spend one day with my brother, and the next morning I went with him to the airport. I
watched dumbfounded as he kissed his wife and kids goodbye. It didn’t seem fair that he
should have to go. He’s a hero to these kids, and I hated for them to lose him for six months.
My coworkers Jordan and Stephen met me in Colorado to embark on a road trip back to New
York. The idea was to wrap up my year with a little documentary, and spend the hours in the
car coming to terms with what had just happened and what might come next.
Before we left, I spent a little more time with the kids,
doing my best to be a help to my sister-in-law, doing my
best to be a super uncle. And then we had to go.
On the road, Jordan and Stephen asked me questions
about myself. “Do you think you’re too hard on yourself?”
Yes. “Was this year successful?” No. “What do you want to
do when you get back on the internet?” I want to do
things for other people.
I THOUGHT HARD
ABOUT WHETHER
I COULD
SUCCEED ONLINE
WHERE I’D FAILED
OFFLINE
We stopped in Huntington, West Virginia to meet a hero of
mine, Polygon’s Justin McElroy. I met with Nathan
Jurgenson in Washington DC. I thought hard about whether I could succeed online where I’d
failed offline. I asked for tips.
What I do know is that I can’t blame the internet, or any circumstance, for my problems. I have
many of the same priorities I had before I left the internet: family, friends, work, learning. And I
have no guarantee I’ll stick with them when I get back on the internet — I probably won’t, to
be honest. But at least I’ll know that it’s not the internet’s fault. I’ll know who’s responsible, and
who can fix it.
Late Tuesday night, the last night of the trip, we stopped across the river from NY to get “the
shot” from New Jersey of the Manhattan skyline. It was a cold, clear night, and I leaned
against the rickety riverside railing and tried to strike a casual pose for the camera. I was so
close to New York, so close to being done. I longed for the comfortable solitude of my
apartment, and yet dreaded the return to isolation.
In two weeks I’d be back on the internet. I felt like a failure. I felt like I was giving up once
again. But I knew the internet was where I belonged.
12:00AM, May 1st, 2013
I’d read enough blog posts and magazine articles and books about how the internet makes
us lonely, or stupid, or lonely and stupid, that I’d begun to believe them. I wanted to figure out
what the internet was “doing to me,” so I could fight back. But the internet isn’t an individual
pursuit, it’s something we do with each other. The internet is where people are.
My last afternoon in Colorado I sat down with my 5-yearold niece, Keziah, and tried to explain to her what the
internet is. She’d never heard of “the internet,” but she’s
huge on Skype with the grandparent set. I asked her if
she’d wondered why I never Skyped with her this year.
She had.
“I thought it was because you didn’t want to,” she said.
With tears in my eyes, I drew her a picture of what the
internet is. It was computers and phones and televisions,
with little lines connecting them. Those lines are the
internet. I showed her my computer, drew a line to it, and
erased that line.
THE INTERNET
ISN’T AN
INDIVIDUAL
PURSUIT, IT’S
SOMETHING WE
DO WITH EACH
OTHER
“I spent a year without using any internet,” I told her. “But now I’m coming back and I can
Skype with you again.”
When I return to the internet, I might not use it well. I might waste time, or get distracted, or
click on all the wrong links. I won’t have as much time to read or introspect or write the great
American sci-fi novel.
But at least I’ll be connected.
Video by Jordan Oplinger & Stephen Greenwood
Editing by Jordan Oplinger
Audio mixing by Brendan Murphy
Special thanks to Billy Disney, John Lagomarsino, Regina Dellea, Ross Miller, Ryan Manning, Sam Thonis, and Thomas Houston
Photography by Michael B. Shane
Art Direction by James Chae
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683205
research-article2016
SMSXXX10.1177/2056305116683205Social Media + SocietySteele
Article
The Digital Barbershop: Blogs and
Online Oral Culture Within the
African American Community
Social Media + Society
October-December 2016: 1–10
© The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2056305116683205
sms.sagepub.com
Catherine Knight Steele
Abstract
For African Americans, the legacy of oral communication within the community is being transferred to online spaces. Blogging
provides a platform with features that mirror many of the components of the Black barbershop. The barber and beauty shop
symbolize a space of retreat, wherein African Americans have formed alternate publics used to critique the dominant culture,
foster resistance, and strengthen African American institutions. Analysis of nine African American–authored blogs using a
method of critical technocultural discourse analysis demonstrates that each blog used traditional Black rhetorical strategies
while making modifications to contemporary goals. The strategies involve modifications made to traditional Black humor and
folktales. The writing style is highly performative, yet relies upon participant interaction. This reliance on orality is a necessary
force in the maintenance of cultural traditions that have long worked to assist in group definition and acts of resistance in
political power struggles. By utilizing modified song, narrative, and fables to articulate resistance and craft African American
identity, African American online oral culture persists as a strategy to house political discourse within the often hidden
enclave spaces of the digital barbershop.
Keywords
blogging, African American bloggers, Black oral culture, barbershop, rhetorical strategy
For the African American community, the Black barbershop
has been used to form and sustain counterpublics in a way
that broadens the concept of political discourse. The legacy
of Black oral culture demonstrates that political discourse of
African Americans occurs in spaces that have been deemed
apolitical by the dominant group. Oral cultural forms in
the everyday and mediated communication of the African
American community have shaped and modified racial identity for African Americans. While blogs provide features that
replicate the offline Black barbershop experience, a critical
examination of the use of blogs by African Americans to create an online space for political discourse is largely missing
from the current literature.
Given the legacy of Black oral culture in the physical
space of the barbershop and mediated spaces where African
Americans gather to form counterpublics, this study examines online blogging communities for their potential to do the
same. Past scholarship has referenced the idea of the barbershop to explain the “third space” that the Internet provides
for African Americans (Brock, 2009). Absent, though, is a
critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA) to understand the production of African American oral culture as utilized within blog sites and within the discourse present on
those sites. Although scholarship in multiple disciplines has
explored the oral culture of African Americans, blogs as a
medium have not been sufficiently studied as replicating physical and mediated counterpublics that foster political debate
and dialog for this community. The legacy of oral culture and
Black counterpublics suggests that themes of political consequence emerge wherever counterpublics form. Through the
process of CTDA, we can examine how the structure of blogs
mirrors features of the barbershop, the rhetorical strategies
employed on these sites, and why blogs fulfill a need within
the African American community to create alternate publics
by examining the political themes of discourse.
Twitter and other social media sites provide the means for
African Americans and other populations to utilize some features of oral culture to engage in a critique of the dominant
culture. However, the design and affordances of the platform
fall short of allowing for the creation of a separate sphere of
University of Maryland, USA
Corresponding Author:
Catherine Knight Steele, Department of Communication, University of
Maryland, 2130 Skinner Building, College Park, MD 20742-7635, USA.
Email: cksteele@umd.edu
Creative Commons Non Commercial CC-BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction
and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages
(https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
2
discourse that provides ownership (control and profit [social
or economic] for the proprietor), builds upon the high-content
culture of participants, and whose features best make use of
the rhetorical strategies of Black oral cultures. Blog sites,
unlike Twitter, provide a platform where the primary blogger
and a community of involved commenters can utilize narratives, storytelling, extended metaphors, and other features of
oral culture to preserve Black culture and challenge the dominant culture. The blog serves as a new barbershop, a means
of cultivating active participation and re-mixing the features
of oral culture present in shop talk.
Black Oral Culture as a Rhetorical
Strategy
Rethinking the online Black public sphere from a feminist
and afro-centrist perspective begins with an interrogation of
the role that orality plays in the unique experience of those of
African descent in the United States. The United States was
built and expanded with an emphasis on paper and literacy.
Literacy has heavily influenced the structure of the government, our relationship to religion, and our creation of hierarchical systems of power distribution and social organization.
Time-based media, such as speech, are limited by their
extension into time and favor stability, community, and tradition. Space-based media extend influence and facilitate rapid
change, development, and “progress” (Innis, 1950). In the
United States, the dominant group’s emphasis on spacebased media links our mode of communication to our quest
for dominance, order, and power. Literacy has been privileged in Western society for its ability to separate ideas from
the thinkers and create an “objectivity” that orality does not
(Innis, 1950). While literacy contributes greatly to contemporary society, orality adds symbolic complexity, individual
creativity, and complex audience relations (Finnegan, 1988).
Speaking provides the opportunity for reaction, whereas
writing offers delayed response (Sidran, 1971). In prioritizing the rational, literacy has moved the dominant US culture
away from an appreciation of emotionality and community.
While writing has seemingly made us more “civilized”
through the creation of the individual, the provision of continuity of time and space, and the uniformity of codes, and our
ability to be more expressive and communal is diminishing
greatly (McLuhan, 1962, 1964/1994).
Reliance on literacy, print, and now electronic communication have been instrumental in the maintenance of dominant US culture. Black culture was created and transformed
in a process that included slavery and the merging of practices, traditions, and modes of communication of various
Western African ethnic groups and colonial American
(European) traditions. The hybrid culture that formed in the
United States is strongly connected to African traditions of
orality. Orality has implications for knowledge and recall,
and possesses several salient features. In a primary oral culture, a person can know only as much as she can recall,
Social Media + Society
making mnemonics important cognitive and social tools and
proverbs emerge as a means to evaluate decisions. Oral cultures are not objective but empathic in their speech. The interiority of sound places man at the center of his universe
within a society of primary orality. These features separate
oral cultures from print-based cultures (Ong, 1988/2002).
The traditional conception of the bourgeois public sphere
centers knowledge within a literate society. Black counterpublics instead center knowledge and debate within the
realm of orality.
The age of electronic media widely signaled a shift to a
secondary orality for the dominant US culture (McLuhan,
1964/1994; Ong, 1988/2002). Patterns of interaction online
further a shift back to the oral (December, 1993; Ferris &
Wilder, 2006; Fowler, 1994; Harnad, 1991; Rheingold, 1993).
Features, like their additive, redundant, and polychromic
nature, signal that blogs and social network sites (SNSs)
demonstrate the adoption of secondary orality in the dominant culture of the United States. Given the continuing significance of orality among those of African descent, it is not
surprising that African Americans readily participate in social
networking and blogging (Brock, 2009, 2011; Esco, 2011;
Madden et al., 2013). Blog sites offer an interface, wherein
users can connect with one another. Blog posts and comments
hold political discourse, and blogging communities form
insular spaces separate from the dominant culture to interrogate issues of concern to marginalized communities.
Four primary elements of African American oral culture
in America exemplify the features of orality as described by
Ong. These include the sacred song, slave tales, the secular
song and humor, and African American folklore and folk
heroes (Levine, 1977).
Sacred Songs Hide Dissent
The sacred song, or spiritual, is indicative of how aspects of
life like religion, humor, and politics are intertwined in the
oral traditions of African Americans. The spiritual provided
the slave a way of expressing a sense of hope in a seemingly
hopeless situation and an articulation of the desire for freedom. During the period of chattel slavery, systematic attempts
to suppress the native religions of slaves led to an adoption
and re-appropriation of the Christian religion. While the laws
and social codes restricted enslaved Africans in their ability to
congregate, expression of Christian faith allowed for slaves to
utilize the motifs of the Old Testament to create the double
meanings of sacred songs used to guide collective revolt, signal rebellion, and voice dissent (Levine, 1977, p. 75).
Sacred songs provided a means to express out loud the
anguish and peril of slavery and the hope of freedom that
remained (Fisher, 1990; Thurman, 1975). Beyond the lyrics,
the music of the spiritual was refashioned as a cultural form
of expression that was unique to the African American experience (Southern, 1997). Africans who were living in enslavement re-appropriated Christianity, a tool of their oppressors,
3
Steele
in the pursuance of freedom. Since the dominant group was
not aware of the dual meanings of the song, dissent could be
voiced openly and without consequence.
Folktales and Cunning
The folktales of slaves, which still exist today in many forms,
enabled African Americans to craft a world where people of
their own race were centered. Re-centering the experience
via storytelling is a common facet of African Americans’ oral
communication. This world-building and centering function
of storytelling allows oral cultures to foreground their importance even as they are often decentered in the discourse of
more dominant literate cultures. Folklore is a communicative
process, performative in nature (Ben-Amos, 1989), and “is
constantly reflecting and refashioning the experience of the
community” (Akoma, 2007). Common themes in the folktales of oral cultures are important indicators of cultural
assumptions and values.
The trickster tale and the folktale showcase linguistic
prowess and verbal cunning in stories that are about both
content and performance. This dual purpose signals the
importance of face-to-face community interaction within an
oral culture. The introduction of writing, on the other hand,
signals an alienation of the spoken word (Havelock, 1963;
Ong, 1977/2012). When the need for recall and performance
dissipates, so too can the aesthetic pleasure of storytelling
and the cultural and philosophical thoughts embedded and
enacted in the forms of interaction of a given community
(Akoma, 2007).
Secular Song Critique and Parody
Post-slavery, diasporic Africans living in America embedded
themes of grievance and sexual relations within secular songs
and humor that could not otherwise be addressed in sacred
music. Humor allowed for a release of the aggression that
typically had to remain guarded in conditions of slavery and
Jim Crow segregation. An example of the combination of
humor and culturally condoned release of aggression, as well
as the importance placed upon verbal prowess, is the practice
of “signifyin.” In popular English vernacular, the term “signification” refers to the denotation of meaning through the use
of a sign or word. Within the African American community,
the term “signifying” generally refers to a verbal contest
where the most imaginative user of indirection, irony, and
insult wins (Lee, 1993). It is an elaborate, indirect form of
goading or insult, at times making use of profanity (Bell,
1987). Signifying is also defined as implying, goading, or
boasting by indirect verbal or gestural means (Abrahams,
1999). Scholars ascribe the origin of “signifyin” to the
poem, “The Signifying Monkey,” a story recounted in
music and comedy routines since the beginning of the 20th
century. According to Gates (1989), signifyin(g) “functions
as a metaphor for formal revision, or intertextuality, within
the Afro-American literary tradition” (p. xxii). In this context,
authors reuse motifs from previous works, altering them and
“signifying” upon them so as to create their own meanings.
Another subset of secular humor and cultural expression in
African American communities is an activity called “playing
the dozens,” or more simply “the dozens.” The key distinction
between “the dozens” and signfyin(g) is the directness of the
insult. “The dozens” is best described as a contest of personal
power—of wit, self-control, verbal ability, mental agility, and
mental toughness. In most cases, two parties exchange barbs
with increasing intensity (Leland, 2004). Signifyin(g) and the
dozens are also used to critique negative characteristics of the
community as a form of community self-disciplining. As
Levine (1977) explains, “the need to laugh at our enemies, our
situation, ourselves is a common one but exists more urgently
in those who exert the least power over their immediate environment” (p. 300).
Work Songs, Heroes, and the Maintenance of
Dignity
The work songs of African Americans were an instrument
used to co-opt forced labor, removing the mental power from
those in physical control. The songs acknowledge the power
the Whites held in a racialized system of separation and the
diminished status of African Americans in the 19th century
(Bay, 2000). The songs, sung during the labor process that
furthers this system of oppression, function as an act of community re-appropriation.
While used as a tool to recognize oppression, the songs
often reified systems of patriarchy, colorism, and racial hegemony, cementing the ideology of the oppressor in the minds
of the oppressed. African American heroes, who tended to be
meek and quietly manipulative in folklore, became more
powerful and confrontational of authority as African
Americans sought additional rights. Exaggerated tales of
African Americans fighting for their rights were important in
crafting dignity and strength for the community. All of these
aspects of African American oral tradition and orality, more
generally, continue to help to build a community that developed in opposition to the dominant US culture in values, systems of power, and communicative traditions.
The Black Barbershop as a Hush Harbor
The unique nature of Black hair care and the discourse that
surrounds the practice make hairstyling an “in-group activity” (Harris-Lacewell, 2004). Early Black barbers catered to
a White clientele by keeping personal identity hidden
(Bristol, 2009). In sharp contrast, the Black barbershop of
the later 20th century became an enclave within the African
American community. In these shops, Black working- and
middle-class male patrons received services for their hair
while engaging in the rituals of Black hair care, and everyday
talk is a place of retreat for African American clientele and
4
barbers. Outside the gaze of the dominant group, African
Americans can openly discuss things personal to the community with no need to hide their opinions and ideas for fear
of reprisal. The shop provides a place where no one is confused by African American hair, and no explanation needed
for one’s hair care needs. The need to explain or justify Black
hair or identity is absent. Beauty shop talk also builds upon
features of primary orality in its reliance upon empathic
communication over objective knowledge. Rather than the
debates of the barbershop, the beauty shop creates a safe
space for communal sharing. Black feminist writers explain
this differentiation as a privileging of personal ways of
knowing and writing, narrative, and dialog rather than
debate, validation of emotion, and personal accountability.
Black feminist writers insist that theory and systems of
knowledge that exist outside of what is normalized as scientific should be considered valuable as well (Lorde, 1984;
Thomas, 1998).
In the case of blogs, Black oral culture and shop talk may
provide African Americans with a unique ability to navigate
and manipulate technology in the creation of alternate publics. For those who used the rhetorical strategies of Black
oral culture in voicing dissent, re-centering the African experience, critiquing oppressive systems on the American continent, and maintaining dignity, everyday discourse is a
political strategy. Therefore, in the history of Black oral culture, the lines between art, politics, and technology become
blurred. While African American art, politics, and technology can be studied separately, understanding their interrelated nature in the African American experience provides a
more in-depth analysis of how everyday discourse online can
foster the creation of alternate public spheres. The literature
has thus far lacked an in-depth analysis of Black blogs outside of the realm of traditional political discourse. Analysis
of African American participation online requires a sociohistorical basis to better understand the rhetorical strategies
of the group and the goals and motivations of online participants in blogging communities. This frees the space to be
used by for other discursive purposes, including political
communication.
Mode of Analysis
CTDA works from the premise that populations other than
the dominant group do not fundamentally lack technological
capabilities, even though they have frequently been excluded
from the literature (Brock, 2009). While similar to critical
discourse analysis, Andre Brock’s CTDA adds the examination of “structural analysis of an artifact with a discourse
analysis of the cultural means through which users interpolate themselves within relations to the artifact” (p. 1087). As
a method, CTDA favors the subjective analysis of the
researcher guided by a conceptual framework in order to
yield a more holistic analysis of the interaction between
users, technology, culture, and practice. In this case, my
Social Media + Society
framework for analysis is built upon Levine’s explication of
Black oral culture. CTDA provides an analysis of not just the
content of the blog posts and comments but how the affordances of blogging contribute to content and discourse
(Sweeney & Brock, 2014).
The following analysis focuses on the rhetorical strategies
employed by bloggers and their communities. To better
understand how blogging accommodates or transforms facets of Black oral culture/rhetorical strategies, I conducted an
analysis of the posts and comments of nine blogs. I archived
posts over a period of 4 months yielding a total of 1,670 posts
and 36,271 comments for this study. While content analyses
of blogs traditionally rely on online search engines and directories for sampling frames, because of the interpretive nature
of designating a blog as a “black blog,” these tools are less
useful in this context. Drawing upon The Root, a Black
online magazine owned by The Washington Post and The
Black Weblog Awards, the purposive sample included the
following: Very Smart Brothas (VSBs) authored by Damon
Young and Panama Jackson (lifestyle/humor), A Belle in
Brooklyn authored by Demetria Lucas (lifestyle/relationships), Until I Get Married authored by Jozen Cummings
(relationships), Black Girl With Long Hair (BGLH) authored
by Leila Noelliste (lifestyle), Necole Bitchie authored by
Necole Bitchie (entertainment/media), Young Black and
Fabulous authored by Natasha Eubanks (entertainment),
Afrobella by Patrice Yursik (fashion), PostBourgie by Gene
Demby (news/opinion), and The Field Negro Blog by Wayne
Bennett (news/opinion/politics). Selection for inclusion in
the sample was as follows: Black/African American authored,
oriented toward Black/African American community, active
comments section, and no overt espousal of political agenda
by authors. Therefore, while I included blogs where politics
were discussed, I excluded those that had the word “politics”
in the title or the description penned by the founder on the
blog website.
The High Context of Black Blogs
Black blogs employ a high context for participation. Highcontext cultures are those in which less verbally explicit
communication is common. Such cultures also tend to use
less written/formal communication and instead rely upon
internalized understandings, long-term relationships, and
strong boundaries to guide effective communication. The
long-term relationships guarantee that those involved in
communication share meaning. The internalized understandings can often make it difficult for outsiders, especially those
from low-context cultures to participate. Low-context cultures are rule-oriented and task-centered. Such cultures,
which would include the dominant US culture, codify knowledge, making it public and external. High-context cultures
focus on personal face-to-face interaction. The tone, vocabulary employed, and context required for participation in the
blogs within this study demonstrate the parallels between
5
Steele
blogging and personal face-to-face dialog (Hall, 1976).
Unlike some other social media platforms used by African
Americans, blogs provide the space necessary for discourse
that does not rely solely on pre-established communities but
re-builds new communities over time.
One can see examples of the high context needed to participate in conversations on blogs like VSBs, PostBourgie,
and BGLH. Writers on each of these sites regularly employ
synecdoche specific to the blogging community. This
includes simple acronyms on VSBs and a more complex
categorization system for hair textures on Black Girl Long
Hair. While this means of categorizing natural hair textures
did not originate on the site, the bloggers never define the
terms for the reader. Style icons on the bloggers of BGLH
are identified by various categories referencing their respective hair textures. A post tagged 3C hair1 provoked a higher
than usual volume of comments, wherein readers debated
whether 3C was an appropriate label given the pictures provided. The high context required to participate in this discussion demonstrates how bloggers take advantage of the
features of the platform to create communities who share
insider knowledge.
Writers on sites like VSBs and PostBourgie display the
high context of the Black blogosphere by connecting with
readers with whom they share cultural touchstones. Black
pop culture references from the 1980s and 1990s linked readers to the present by reflecting upon a similar coming of age
movie or album that is shared by the community. In a
February 2014 post, Panama Jackson, blogging for VSBs
describes the “People he hates the most.” People who read
while walking are first on the list. He explains,
If you’re a woman you already can’t walk in a straight line when
you’re paying attention (yeah, I said it. Shots fired.) But now
you’re engrossed in some sh*t that has taken your full attention,
meanwhile I’m just trying to get to my final destination without
bumping into random motherf*ckers I see in the street, but
noooooooooooooooo . . . here you go, zig zagging like you
learned something about how not to get shot from watching
Ricky get shot in Boyz N The Hood.
Here Jackson references the shootout scene in the film Boyz
in The Hood, wherein a beloved character, Ricky, is shot and
killed. This interjection does not cause the audience to focus
in any long-lasting way on the plot of the film. Rather, as a
cultural touchstone, the film reference does the job of signifying upon women reading the post while tying the community together with a film reference widely known among
readers. Such cultural touchstones are predominantly used as
metaphors to describe the lived experience of the writers and
readers in the present. There is a double meaning for only
those who are a part of this community, both on and offline,
and fully appreciate the metaphor, narrative, or joke in question. The high context required for participation not only sets
a bar for understanding the content of the original post but
also affords readers the credibility needed to engage in
discussions.
Remixing Black Oral Culture
The four facets of oral culture created by Africans living in
America during chattel slavery and the antebellum South
were spirituals, folktales, secular song/humor, and slave tales
as detailed by Levine (1977). While rooted in the legacy of
enslavement, these components of Black oral culture have
had a long and important history in the preservation of Black
culture and Black cultural identity in America, and serve as a
way of analyzing the rhetorical work done by Black bloggers
and their communities in the online digital barbershop.
Substituting the Sacred
The spiritual is the creation of a people who restrained physically but not mentally. In the creation of the spiritual, Africans
surviving under enslavement in the Americas took the religion that was used to oppress them and created a tool of freedom. This was done figuratively through the embrace of
spiritual practices that adopted the ideas of social justice and
liberty from biblical texts. It was done literally through the
use of spirituals to guide collective revolt, signal rebellion,
and voice dissent through biblical metaphors. Spiritual metaphors kept inside meanings hidden from outsiders. Spirituals
have remained an important cultural tie for many in the
African American religious tradition. The tie that binds many
African Americans in the online blogging community is not
the traditional spiritual. Black bloggers who came of age during the 1980s and 1990s share the connection to the popular
culture of that time. Early hip hop, Black sitcoms, and Black
films hold the cultural weight of spirituals for this group of
Black bloggers and the blogging communities. Substitution
of the sacred occurs by re-appropriating tools of oppression,
including media stereotypes of African Americans and other
artifacts.
During this period of analysis, the hashtag #byefelicia
became popular on Twitter as well as on other social media
platforms. “Bye Felicia” is utilized at the end of a description
of a person no long worthy of consideration, usually because
their opinion or behavior is contradictory to that of the community of which they are a part. At the end of a February post
on VSBs titled “Under the Radar Significant Contributors to
Black History,” Panama Jackson quips about pop culture figures Cam’ron and Ray J as being important parts of Black
history. The post is comedic in nature explaining that Ray J,
is all of the most ratchet parts of black twitter combined. He’s
like Captain Planet if the five elements were Subtweets, Absurd
Stories, B!tchmade Behavior, Delusions of Grandeur, and
Wayyyyy too much free time on his hands. Brandy’s brother is
tired of being humble, and we should all thank him for that.
6
Using elements of the dozens in his description of multiple
pop culture figures, Jackson is mocking the way that certain
members of the Black community take Black history month
too seriously. He uses pop culture figures with little respect
in the community to prove this point. The picture that
accompanies the post, wherein actor Samuel Jackson’s character from Pulp Fiction is captioned in a meme saying, “Say
something about Black history. I dare you.” The meme
points us closer to the message of the post, which is never
directly stated.
The final way the author alludes to the double meaning is
in the conclusion of the post which reads, “Happy Black
History Month (Also, if you are offended and feel that we’re
trivializing Black history month . . . bye Felicia.).” The
expression comes from the classic film Friday which features actors Ice Cube and Chris Tucker spending a Friday at
home in south central LA. Friday was released in 1995. In
the film, Craig (Ice Cube) and his friend Smokey (Chris
Tucker) smoke marijuana, attempt to meet and hook up with
various women, and are eventually involved in an altercation
with a neighborhood thug. Felicia is a local drug-addicted
woman who regularly interacts with the pair and displays
many of the signatures of the stereotypical ‘crackhead’ in
many African American urban comedies. Craig and Smokey
regularly dismiss Felicia’s requests for cash, drugs, or other
favors with a simple phrase, “Bye Felicia.”
These scenes are not an integral part of the plot of the
film, rather they are a part of the mundane and normative
experiences communicated by the film signifying life in an
underserved African American inner-city community. This
reference by bloggers and the blogging community is an
example of substituting the sacred common in modern Black
oral culture online. “Bye Felicia” does several things for its
speakers. The expression creates an in-group space, wherein
cultural context is required for participation. This cultural
context is created both by viewing the film and by understanding the relative normality of a character like Felicia,
one who is a part of the community but not a productive
member of the community. Felicia, as the neighborhood
crackhead, is welcome until she becomes an annoyance or
disturbance to the overall maintenance of comfort and stability for the rest of the members of the community. A person
who holds positions in contrast with the blogger or who is
not worthy of attention is “Felicia.”
The phrase serves as a means to diminish contrarian positions without the direct attack that one might find within the
low-context dominant culture. Because protection of relationships is important in this space, “Bye Felicia” dismisses
someone from the current dialog but does not exclude from
the community. In this case, those who, in the opinion of the
blogger, hold Black history month to be sacrosanct are not
helpful and are doing relative harm to the complexity and
heterogeneity of Black culture. After the satirical post, telling those who are offended “Bye Felicia” allows readers to
take the assertions in the post as biting humor and lets
Social Media + Society
naysayers remain in the community but without the credibility to critique this position effectively.
Blogger Tales
Slave Tales centralized the importance of the African living
in an America that marginalized him. Through the creation of
tales, the cunning, intelligence, and expertise of the slave
were lauded, not as exceptional but as a norm. Slave tales
worked to preserve dignity for a community that faced
unending degradation. In the blogs VSBs and PostBourgie,
one sees the modern manifestation of these tales. Used for
the same purpose, bloggers routinely tell stories filled with
humor, moral lessons, and examples of the wit and cunning
of the central figure.
Panama Jackson and Damon of VSBs routinely tell stories filled with humor that demonstrates their verbal prowess
and the strength and dignity of African Americans faced with
the most undignified circumstances. Damon posts about his
experiences in his neighborhood and fashions the post as a
modern (slave) tale. In this blog tale, we follow him from
sun-up in his Brownstone with his fiancé, through breakfast
as he reflects upon the noisy neighbors and dilapidated buildings that surround his home. As he drops his fiancé off at
work and heads back home to write, he blogs:
My route back home takes me through the hood part of the
neighborhood. Sometimes there will be cops circling around. I do
not consider the police to be an antagonistic entity. But I do not
feel safe around them. I don’t necessarily feel unsafe either. I
guess the best word to describe how I feel is aware . . . But there
are also times when I notice them paying me more attention than
I’m comfortable with. I might even get followed for a block. And
then, at that point, I realize nothing matters. I’m a popular
published author and professional writer with a fiancee. A fiancee
with multiple degrees. We’re renting a brownstone with
hardwood floors throughout and 12 foot ceilings. We’re getting
married in July. We go to gallery crawls and board meetings. I
own t-shirts proclaiming my love for Bougie Black People. We
have four corkscrews, collected over time from the parties we
throw and attend. I have a morning routine. And a dog.
But, in that moment, I’m a Black man in a sketchy neighborhood
wearing a parka, sweats, and sneakers, and driving a Charger. To
them, I am a potential suspect. Or, even worse, a potential threat.
One awkward move or one overzealous officer could end
everything for me.
The bloggers of PostBourgie and VSBs speak from the position of the Black middle class, those who are painfully aware
of the legacy of oppression and discrimination African
Americans have faced in America. Yet, given their current
social and economic conditions, find themselves in a privileged position within the community. Much of this privilege
comes from access to education. Bloggers reference college
and the college experience as an unquestioned norm within
their community of readers.
7
Steele
During the period of study, a new story about a Black high
school student from New York’s acceptance to eight Ivy
League schools began making the rounds of various social
media sites, news sites, and in the TV news. Many individuals and publications heralded the young man’s accomplishments. None of the websites in this study linked to or
mentioned the story. They ignored this example of Black
male accomplishment, not because the achievement is
scorned by the bloggers, rather holding this young man up as
exceptional in the mainstream press works to discourage the
public from thinking of Black males as typically excellent.
By weaving conversations about education into the everyday
stories, bloggers re-center their experiences as normative.
There is no plea for Black males to go to college or reference
to questionable statistics about graduation or incarceration
rates. Discussions of college assume a familiarity with this
experience for the readers. Instead of proving a point to the
dominant group, their tales centralize the Black experience
and establish the central figures in the story as normal. They
are not coons or sambos, yet they are also not exceptional
credits to their race. In this way, the modern blog tale, like
the slave tale, reifies the African American experience as part
of the American experience. Their struggles, like their
accomplishments, are an ordinary part of being Black in
America. The tales situate the bloggers and other characters
in the tales as ordinary yet worthy of attention.
Humor and Wordplay
All of the blogs in the study rely on humor and verbal wordplay in different forms and to varying degrees. For VSBs,
verbal wordplay utilizing indirection and signifying are a
part of the brand. One example of the use of indirection in
signifying is the running themed post “Shit bougie black
people do.” In this post, the bloggers subtly reference Internet
memes such as “Shit girls say” and the many others that followed to signify upon a group to which they belong. Another
example of indirection directed within the community is the
running joke of signifying upon the Black Greek Organization
Delta Sigma Theta on the site, VSBs.
Blogger Maya Francis describes, in her 7 January 2014,
post, “On D. Wade, Gabby Union, And Making Sense Of
Non-Break ‘Breaks’ And Condomlessness,” addresses the
problems with irresponsible sex. She says, “One of my personal rules in life is ‘never make a mistake you can’t fix.’
This is why I’m not a Delta.” The single line that uses Delta
Sigma Theta, a Black Greek organization, as the butt of a
one-line joke signifies upon the women of the organization.
The organization is respected within the community; therefore, there isn’t any obvious harm done. Likewise, Damon
(The Champ) Young’s post published on 14 February 2014,
“When Your Worst Behavior And Best Behavior Is The Same
Damn Thing,” begins, “We’ve all heard the story before: Boy
spots Girl at 6th annual Delta ‘Chicken Wing Eating Contest
For The Mouth Gout Cure’ . . . ” This is the opening line of a
longer tale woven by the blogger that makes a joke at the
expense of the organization again. The joke works in this
instance because it diminishes the high esteem of the organization by pairing them with an African American stereotype
and a stereotype about uneducated African Americans.
Again, because neither of these stereotypes would typically
be assigned members of this group, the humor is not biting or
defaming. Rather the humor does the work of strengthening
group bonds. They can joke about the organization because
they respect it.
The 13 January 2014 post, “Ode to Deltas,” explains the
running joke signifying upon sorority. The author explains
that they joke about the Deltas because “they don’t take
themselves too seriously,” “make a major impact,” and “follow the blog more closely than others.” This explanation,
while complementing the Deltas, also subtly jabs at other
African American sororities for whom the implication is that
they do take themselves too seriously, do not make a major
impact, or would not follow their blog. Signifyin, while present on other social media platforms, can be used differently
by bloggers. Joking about the Deltas simultaneously makes
use of a part of Black culture and requires readers to engage
regularly on the site to follow the humor. Signifyin on the
Deltas is a demonstration of group solidarity through the use
of Black rhetorical strategy. This form of signifyin’, as
Florini (2014) explains, “often speaks to the shared experiences of Black Americans as raced subjects and can be a
resource for encoding and expressing experiential knowledge about Black identities” (p. 224).
Bloggers reserve directness of address in humor for those
who are detrimental to the Black community. Whether outsiders or members of the community, when the actions of an individual or group serve to oppress further, the bloggers engage
in name-calling and direct critique. We see this on The Young,
Black, and Fabulous (YBF) in the section titled Foolywang.
Foolywang refers to individuals or institutions that engage in
senseless acts of depravity, sexism, or racism. On 26 February
2014, the satirical newspaper The Onion was called out in the
Foolywang section for calling 9-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis a
c–t. Bloggers labeled J.R. Smith’s actions as “foolery” in the
“Foolywang” section of the site after he reportedly asked an
underage girl for sex. The blog Field Negro regularly castigates African Americans whose behavior causes harm to the
community or whose public image and discourse “embarrasses” African Americans. Secular Song traditionally served
the purpose of this self-policing that Foolywang or “House
Negro” does on the blogs The YBF and Field Negro.
Performance, Narrative and Humanizing Heroes
The performative aspect of telling folktales and recounting
the history of a community remains active in the Black
blogosphere. Demetria Lucas an author, life and relationship
coach, and co-star of a cable reality show is the proprietor of
A Belle in Brooklyn. A Belle in Brooklyn is a lifestyle and
8
relationship blog wherein Lucus interweaves personal anecdotes about her romantic relationships with relationship
advice and guidance. In both cases, we see the emergence of
the blogger as griot rather than as diary writer or journalist.
The blog is personal but not written for the self. The blogger
understands the parameters of journalism, yet the blog posts
exist as performance rather than prose. Too often, the lens
through which communication scholars view bloggers is
connected to expectations for journalists (Deuze, 2009;
Gillmor, 2010). Bloggers are marginalized as writers because
of their emphasis on the subjective experience. As
Papacharissi and Meraz (2012) explain, “A hobby for most,
blogging is motivated by goals and priorities that are subjective, aimed at connecting bloggers to their social sphere and
a variety of publics, and involving them in the process of
information production and consumption.” The insertion of
self into “reporting” disqualifies the blogger from the realm
of the professional. The attempt to compare blogging to standard practices of journalism obscures the creation of a new
category of writing that is personal and professional, simultaneously individual and communal. Within the African
American oral tradition, the insertion of self and personal
experience brings validity to the conversation rather than
weakness to one’s argument. Re-centering one’s experience,
or the experience of a sub-culture within the dominant society, replicates the practices of folktales and songs common in
the Black oral tradition.
Within an oral culture, the performance of narratives and
tales is as important as the material content. Folktales along
with secular songs were performed by a person equipped to
share messages of cautionary tales and critiques of the community along with powerful, confrontational heroes. Lucus’
blogging style commonly elucidates the folktale as well as
the secular song/humor. Posts like “You never held it while
he pees?” use a comical story of romantic encounters to bring
levity to an awkward conversation about relational intimacy.
Rather than an advice column about how to know or determine your level of intimacy, Lucas’s 18 February 2014, blog
post, functions like a secular humorous “song” of traditional
oral culture, eliminating the difficult path to navigating intimacy with a romantic partner.
Extended narratives differentiate the interface of blogs
from sites like Twitter. The Black Twitter community talks
about the television show Scandal regularly, but it does so for
1 hr each week and 140 characters at a time. This prevents a
facilitated dialog about the complexity of character development and the ability to formulate impassioned arguments
regarding the development of characters in relation to the
larger significance of their representation on prime-time television. The blog, insulated from the dominant culture, does
not need to protect main character Olivia Pope, producer
Shonda Rhimes, or the representation of Black women on
television. PostBougie’s weekly recap of Scandal features
open letters from two different bloggers giving their take on
the week’s drama. In a post on 7 March 2014, bloggers Stacia
Social Media + Society
and G.D. laude the White wife of the president as their favorite character rather than Olivia Pope (played by Kerry
Washington), one of the few Black female prime-time protagonists. G.D. blogs about Mellie’s take-control attitude and
explains: “This shit right here is why I’m Team Mellie.”
The PostBougie community understands the significance
of the show culturally and, therefore, can critique it using
extended narratives. They can use Olivia Pope and her relationship failures as cautionary tales and treat characters like
Rowan Pope, Olivia’s father, as heroes who stand up to the
President and hegemonic power. The blog post functions as
the performance of two storytellers responding to each other
with commenters and engaging in the call and response typical in Black oral culture.
Discussion
Black blogs provide a platform to replicate modes of discourse present in Black oral culture and serve as a medium
through which African Americans can modify facets of
Black oral culture to meet the community’s current needs.
As a marginalized population in the United States, the shop
talk and employment of recognizable rhetorical devices
preserve the culture and can potentially foster the discourse
needed to create an effectual counterpublic. Substituting
the sacred with popular culture reflects a shift within this
generation’s experience and their disconnect from the traditional Black church. While the Black church maintains its
cultural role, bloggers in this study were drawn together
more by their common experiences with music, television,
and film than by the sacred songs of the church. Yet, the
same re-appropriation occurs. As much of mainstream
American pop culture has devalued African Americans in
stereotypic representations, this community of bloggers has
re-appropriated mainstream disparaging images of African
Americans to demonstrate solidarity and resistance and to
urge uplift.
While the content of folktales changes, the bloggers still
utilize tales to reassert the dignity of African Americans in an
undignified system of racial stratification. Signifying and
dozen’s playing persist within this group of bloggers.
Because this generation of bloggers spends much of their
time communicating through short messages on other social
media platforms, humor like “Bye Felicia” becomes typical.
The platform of blogging, specifically, is not fully responsible for shaping the rhetorical strategy; rather, the communicative culture as determined by all of the technologies readily
available to the community impacts the discourse. The desire
to move beyond hero worship allows for nuanced exploration of prominent real and fictional African Americans
through extended narratives. Rather than a simple transference of the historical features of Black oral culture or the
rhetorical strategies, modern-day bloggers are making
important changes to these features that better navigate the
platform and the politics of the time.
9
Steele
Though dominant US culture and African American culture evolved over the same period and often in the same geographic spaces, the communicative features of the two are
often in direct opposition. The high context needed to participate in African American oral culture is in opposition to the
highly structured, public, and codified communication of the
dominant group. The preservation of oral communication is
evident even as African Americans embraced literacy.
African American oral rhetorical strategies are a part of a
cultural legacy rather than a cultural deficiency. Furthermore,
they serve as a strategy used to pass on history, empower,
subvert oppression, assert agency, and create representations
of self and community (Fulton, 2006).
According to Ong (1988/2002), writing separates ideas
from the thinker and acts to create a sort of “objectivity” that
orality cannot. The form of writing is significant in ordering
and privileging our understanding of the text (Ong,
1988/2002). The dynamic structure of blogs, where newer
posts appear at the top of the screen, challenges the traditional horizontal–vertical system for organized formal writing, instead of reflecting the dynamic character of spoken
communication. Many new online platforms allow users to
replicate features of oral culture, creating a more natural process of explanation and storytelling. On SNSs, blogs, and
other online media, there is a shift away from elite notions of
knowledge, definitive “correctness” in writing, and notions
of traditionally conceived privacy that reflect the community-building priorities of orality more than the hierarchical
priorities of literacy.
Examining the rhetoric of the metaphorical barbershop
demonstrates the ingenuity of African Americans as a marginalized population able to reimagine a medium that was
previously considered exclusionary. The barbershop reflects
the same ingenuity and reclamation of space. Previously,
Black barbers were forced to exclude Black men from their
shops, and Black beauticians were taught that they had to
accommodate White standards of beauty. The present-day
barbershop exists as a space of reprieve for Black men and a
means of economic advancement for Black entrepreneurs.
The reclamation of these spaces is made possible by the use
of Black oral culture to foster dissent, re-centralize the
importance of the African American experience, and preserve dignity in the face of oppression. Though bloggers in
the communities within this study modified many of the facets of Black oral culture, the goals of the original rhetorical
strategies remain intact.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Note
1.
3C refers to the curl pattern and texture of the hair. According
to Naturallycurly.com, 3C hair is Curly Coily Hair which is
usually very voluminous, with tight ringlets that look like corkscrews (http://www.naturallycurly.com/pages/hairtypes/type3).
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