Building beautiful bridges: Indigenous womxn artists using social networking sites to address violence

Includes bibliographical references.2022 Fall.Using Indigenous aesthetics, critical technocultural discourse analysis, and Indigenous storyworks, this study explores how Indigenous womxn's art practices challenge settler-colonizing visual and media representations of Indigenous peoples that feed violence against womxn, girls and two-spirits; and in the digital realm, how sharing their art-stories is testimony to the unique voices of Indigenous womxn's leadership. A critical technocultural discourse analysis of in-depth interviews and social networking site (SNS) posts reveals underlying settler-colonial discourses. Through their art-storytelling, artist-participants use technocultural discourses of generosity, collaboration/reciprocity, calling in/calling out, creating and respecting boundaries and fierceness to shift dominating discourses. In a real sense they are building bridges between on and offline realms, strengthening community networks, and bringing together past, present and future to prevent violence

Critical informatics: New methods and practices

While social informatics (SI) is uniquely positioned to examine the technical and organizational properties of information and communication technology (ICT) and associated user practices, it often ignores the cultural mediation of design, use, and meaning of ICTs. Critical informatics, more so than normative and analytic orientations to ICT, offers possibilities to foreground culture as a sensitizing context for studying information and technology in society. This paper articulates a new critical informatics approach: critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA) as an analysis employing critical cultural frameworks (e.g. critical race or feminist theory) to jointly interrogate culture and technology. CTDA (Brock ) is a bifurcated approach for studying Internet phenomena integrating interface analysis with user discourse analysis. This paper outlines CTDA, providing examples of how its methodological flexibility applies to examining varied ICT artifacts, such as twitter and search engine phenomena, while maintaining a critical perspective on design and use. CTDA is an important tool for critical informaticists that contributes to building understanding of technology as culture, grounded in user perspectives and real‐world practices.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111201/1/meet14505101032.pd

Black Feminist Thought, Interrupted: Dissecting the Voice of Black Feminists in the Blogosphere and their Engagement with Platform Affordances

ABSTRACT BLACK FEMINIST THOUGHT, INTERRUPTED DISSECTING THE VOICE OF BLACK FEMINISTS IN THE BLOGOSPHERE AND THEIR ENGAGEMENT WITH PLATFORM AFFORDANCES By Dawn G. Johnson, Ph.D A dissertation submitted to the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Media, Art, and Text Department in the College of Humanities and Sciences Virginia Commonwealth University, 2021 Dissertation Chair: Dr. Archana Pathak, Associate Professor, Dept. of Gender, Sexuality & Women\u27s Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University Black women that have long searched for spaces to be creative and have voice due to their constant exclusion from mainstream media. In response to this exclusion, black feminists actively formed spaces outside of traditional media by developing black feminist blogs designed to empower the black feminist community and further the advancement of Black Feminist Thought and liberatory theory. This research examined the problem of whether the blogosphere has lived up to its promise of allowing black feminist engagement and dissemination of information, or whether the online arena (platform) represented a microcosm of societal dominant power structures and furthered white oppression and marginalization of black women. Applying Andre’ Brock’s Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) as methodology, this research explored whether online platforms afford or constrain black feminist voice. Brock’s CTDA insisted on a multi-layered approach to theories of technology, one that captured diversity in culture and demographics and how these moments of diversity intersected with the technological hardware and code. Through examining a purposive sample of 30 blogs from three black feminist blog sites, Crunk Feminist Collective, For Harriet and The Feminist Wire, the results provided that the blog spaces provided a location for the empowerment of black womanhood and did not directly constrain black feminist voice. But rather, black feminist blog writers actively resisted white discourse and focused on self-love and the act of healing the black community, and thus the blog platforms served as a true space of refuge. Yet, voice was indirectly impacted, because black feminist bloggers resisted addressing white oppression, and thus represented a missed opportunity and an attempt to play it safe

Tailored for the gram: a technocultural analysis of Nigerian Igbo women fashion designers' self-presentation on Instagram

Includes bibliographical references.2022 Fall.Using African Technocultural Feminist Theory, this study uncovered the ways Nigerian Igbo women fashion designers use Instagram and its affordances to perform digital identities online as well as examined their negotiation of patriarchal ideologies within Igbo culture. The Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) of Instagram posts and interview data revealed Nigerian Igbo women fashion designers employed self-promotion and cultural digitization of Igbo-centric fashion in their self-presentation online. Instagram's affordance of photos allowed them post visually appealing pictures which showcased the intricacies of their designs as well as facilitated the designers' cultural digitalization of Igbo-centric fashion while creating space to challenge patriarchal structures within Igbo culture. The analysis also showed Nigerian Igbo women fashion designers value building and maintaining professional relationships with their clients as they embodied visual aesthetics, relatability, and authenticity in their self-presentation online. Implications, recommendations, and limitations were discussed

Recording the movement : the role of citizen-generated videos in perceptions of police and police use of deadly force

Since the shooting death of Michael Brown in 2014, there has been widespread mobilization of activist groups and individuals both online and on the ground, to address issues of police brutality, racial bias, and equity within the criminal justice system. The emergence of citizen-generated videos as well as the democratization of internet access has enabled marginalized groups often targeted by law enforcement to have a voice in new and meaningful ways. More specifically, citizen-generated videos of police brutality and the different avenues they are disseminated across have been able to challenge mainstream narratives of police-citizen encounters. Through a critical technocultural discourse analysis of comments surrounding the shooting death of Michael Brown, Philando Castile, and Dajerria Becton, I will code for racialized and gendered understandings of the cases and perceptions of police. Further, I utilize Jackson and Welles notion of counter-publics and Castells development of ‘mass self-communication’ to uncover what elements of technology contributed to self-efficacy and activism, which lead to these cases becoming national news stories. I argue that there is something uniquely impactful about the visceral nature of citizen-generated videos of police brutality, which has lead to a pervasive push for transparency within police departments and their interactions with the Black community. As a result, the public discourse surrounding police brutality has heightened, and the public's perceptions of law enforcement is shifting.Radio-Television-Fil

Kontestasi Pesan Politik dalam Kampanye Pilpres 2014 di Twitter: Dari Kultwit Hingga Twitwar

Selama masa kampanye pilpres tahun 2014, tercatat 95 juta kicauan terkait pemilu telah dikicaukan oleh pengguna Twitter di Indonesia. Salah satu penyebabnya adalah kontribusi dari kicauan akun Twitter pendukung kedua capres. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengidentifikasi bagaimana format kicauan yang diunggah oleh kedua pendukung capres. Dengan menggunakan metode kualitatif berupa Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) terhadap kicauan akun Twitter pendukung capres, penelitian ini menemukan bahwa secara umum, terdapat kesamaan format kicauan yang digunakan oleh kedua pendukung capres. Selain menggunakan kicauan tunggal (twit) ditemukan pula kicauan dengan format kultwit dan twitwar. Keberadaan kedua format tersebut sekaligus menunjukkan bagaimana budaya kolektivisme (guyub) masyarakat Indonesia mampu bertransformasi di ranah digital Twitter

Demands for Intellectual Labor from Black Women Thought Leaders on Twitter

When there is no structural, systemic, or legal recourse to address myriad issues that affect Black women and other women of color, a social media platform such as Twitter provides a space for therapeutic intimacy (Williams, 2001) and digital leisure (Spracklen, 2015). The therapeutic intimacy and digital leisure that Black women engage in assigns more weight to their social media interactions than has been suggested by others. Others have framed encounters with Black women on Twitter as creating a toxic online atmosphere (Goldberg, 2014) This article will look at how the forces of technology—social media in particular—is used to appraise Black women and other women of color by focusing on how they use their voices on Twitter. I use the concept of appraisal in the archival sense, i.e. Special Collections are built and managed through the gateway of appraisal. Specifically, this article will explore the frequent demands for the intellectual labor of Black women and other women of color on Twitter

Virtual YouTubers’ Self-Representation Between Extended and Divided Self

Virtual and Artificial YouTubers (VTubers) show us how the body becomes technologically embedded. They reveal arising complexities within the interface of digital and analog assemblies, bodies, and virtual environments. Thus, VTubers raise questions that are crucial to the core debate about personhood and the human subject in anthropology as well as critical posthumanism. By reading Feminist Anthropology and Critical Posthumanism dos-à-dos, the thesis engages with the three VTubers AI Angelica, CodeMiko, and Miquela Sousa. To answer the questions (1) how personhood unfolds in the VTubers’ self-representation(s), (2) how personhood is negotiated with the recipients, and (3) which aspects of the human subject (e.g., gender, race) are reproduced a methodological framework of Netnography and Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis is applied. The thesis reveals that VTubers’ show a form of personhood in which the reflective self appears and speaks apart from the ‘I.’ This division reflects practices of self-designation in order to navigate between the extended self and the divided self; the content creator and the avatar; between the platform and the VTuber. This way, the self manifests itself simultaneously in the form of overlaps and displacements. Within this form of relationality, the notion of the glitch is reviewed to consider the VTuber’s personhood in respect of the discussion between critical posthumanist and humanist perspectives

Perspective and Perception: How Reddit Trip Reports Convey and Offer Different Knowledges About Psychedelic Drugs

Psychedelics drugs are slowly gaining recognition for their potential medicinal value in therapeutic settings in Western science. However, there remains a great deal of hostility and hesitancy toward psychedelics, largely due to the psychedelics’ collective classification as Schedule I drugs in America, which resulted from a history of the drug class’ demonization. Nonetheless, several US states and cities having decriminalized psychedelic drugs in certain contexts, but the general population is relatively naïve to the potentialities psychedelics can offer. This thesis studies trip reports, which are firsthand accounts of individual psychedelic experiences, on Reddit to shed light on the different knowledges about psychedelics. Implementing a mixture of Brock’s (2012; 2018) Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis and a Foucauldian Discourse Analysis, this study takes a qualitative approach in analyzing trip reports to delve into the richness of the individual experience because psychedelics induce highly abstracted and unique sensations. In the findings, psychedelics are demonstrated to facilitate a myriad of self-revelatory effects, extraordinary perceptions of reality, and combinations of the two. Collectively, the trip reports serve as a challenge to mainstream views on psychedelics and offer detailed, highly individualized looks into the psychedelic experience and the knowledge surrounding it

Hair: How Naturals Are Using Social Media to Reshape the Narrative and Visual Rhetoric of Black Hair

Black women’s natural hair has been subject to both praise and scrutiny, though the latter is more common despite the steps taken towards inclusion and diversity. In the age of social media, members of the natural hair community have been able to voice and communicate ideas and issues that are specific to their discourse community. This study explores how the natural hair community uses social media, more specifically Instagram, to discuss the complex issues that surround natural hair including historicization, workplace bias, colorism, and social justice. Additionally, this study argues that natural hair is a form of visual rhetoric as well as a metaphor for rhetorical reappropriation both visually and textually. The concept “good hair” continues to be significant in natural hair discourse as it can be associated with numerous artifacts and ideas of what “good hair” means to Black women with natural hair. A theoretical approach was taken to investigate textual trends in user discourse as well as visual rhetoricy on one Instagram page using André Brock’s Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) as a model