For the Culture: Social Media and the Construction of Blackness Across Transatlantic Borders in the

This project offers the first transatlantic study of digital blackness. My key objective is to expand discussions of digital blackness to show the existence of a fluid racial identity that is collectively constructed as part of a shifting post-2000 political project. I will examine how digital blackness is constructed, communicated and policed across transatlantic borders. To do this I will digitally and manually analyse scraped Tweets, Hashtags, public Facebook interactions, and YouTube comments to test the existence of Black identity-framing devices that determine the lenses in which digital blackness operates. My PhD will be thematically structured around those framing devices, some of which emerged in my MA research on digital pop-culture and Black feminism. These include "#BlackLivesMatter", "Black Feminism", "Black Pride", "Historical memory", and "Signifyin'" (i.e., AfricanAmerican wordplay). My MA thesis focused almost exclusively on the US context but my PhD will build upon Florini's (2017) notion of racial performance in order to craft a transatlantic digital context for blackness and its fluidity.

To achieve my objectives I will use qualitative and quantitative modes of analysis including social network analysis and literary analysis, as well as geographical mapping and qualitative interviews. I have already begun the process of data mining and have Twitter datasets spanning from 2015. The data I will digitally analyse has been generated in response to key political controversies that went viral on social media such as #WOCAffirmation and Charlottesville but I will also closely examine content posted by Black cultural leaders, activists and online communities such as DeRay McKesson and Akala.

My work on the AHRC-funded networking project Geographies of Black Protest, supporting the development of digital platforms to assist Black activist organisations as they communicate and link up across the diaspora, has prepared me with relevant transferable skills.