Henna Zamurd-Butt is a Politics and Communications masters candidate at LSE, and an editor at digital journalism platform, Media Diversified. She was formerly a news editor at user-generated press agency, Newzulu @HennaBut

Zamurd-Butt, Henna

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2015-11-13How digital spaces can disrupt the media landscapeblogs.lse.ac.uk /polis/2015/11/13/how-digital-spaces-can-disrupt-the-media-landscape/Henna Zamurd-Butt is a Politics and Communications masters candidate at LSE, and an editor atdigital journalism platform, Media Diversified. She was formerly a news editor atuser-generated press agency, Newzulu  @HennaButt This space, this digital space was mine…everyone should feel entitled to their ownspace because it’s so important for growth…people who shit on the internet are thepeople who already feel comfortable…they already feel safe.– Kareem (@westindians) in Strolling episode 12This quote from an episode of director Cecile Emeke’s documentary film series, Strolling, chronicling discussionswith the Black/African diaspora, does a beautiful job of illustrating what the internet has achieved for many membersof ethnic minority communities living in the UK. Evidence of minoritised communities finding voice through the digitalworld is building; what is significantly different about the digital space? And can subversions of the status quo onlinetranslate to the offline media landscape?Still of Kareem in ‘Strolling’ episode 12 (c. Cecile Emeke)Emeke was joined at a Polis talk ‘Navigating Culture’ by writer and performance poet, Dean Atta. Both youngcreatives are now are enjoying success in the mainstream, however they built their initial audiences online.Often discussions about the kinds of issues that come up in Strolling, Emeke explains, are confined to academicelites.  She speaks of her experiences of Black cultural heritage in the past being limited to “institutions” i.e. throughgalleries or archives.1/3Cecile Emeke, Dr Myria Georgiou and Dean Atta at LSE (c. Ying Yang)She emphasises accessibility as a key strength of the internet for disseminating her work to those that wouldotherwise miss out.Of course accessibility works both ways and creative industries are notoriously difficult to enter if you hold lesssocial capital. Perhaps the internet holds less of these obstacles, as Atta put it, once the work is out there it can takeon a life of its own.Atta’s poem “I am nobody’s n*****r” serves as an example of how creative work can find an audience online. Thispowerful piece gained huge attention after it was written in 2012, and it can be argued that it was able to find itsaudience because of this accessibility, reaching individuals like Kareem who in the quote above describes the needto find his own space – one that often is not afforded to members of marginalised communities in the mainstreammedia.An animated video of the poem was also created without the poet’s knowledge, showing the collaborative,community aspects that come of allowing work to circulate online.The UK media landscape still suffers from a lack of diversity, which can lead to added pressures for those that dogain success. As Emeke now finds herself developing her comedy webseries Ackee & Saltfish for the BBC and Attahas had his poetry collection published, I’m not surprised to hear that they have felt nudges to push them into certaincreative directions which may connect strongly to stereotypes of BME heritages.2/3Still from ‘Ackee and Saltfish’ (c. Cecile Emeke)However, both Atta and Emeke are incredibly positive. Galvanised by online success that has rooted them in like-minded audiences who share the experiences of life that they depict in their work, neither poet nor filmmaker isprepared to compromise.Perhaps this is how digital media spaces can serve to disrupt, not just online, but offline as well.@HennaButtCecile Emeke & Dean Atta – Navigating ‘Culture’  from Polis Video on Vimeo.Copyright © 2014 London School of Economics and Political Science3/3

How digital spaces can disrupt the media landscape

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