Black Twitter
Black Twitter is an internet community largely consisting of the Black diaspora of users in the United States and other nations on X, focused on issues of interest to the black community. Feminista Jones described it in Salon as "a collective of active, primarily African-American Twitter users who have created a virtual community proving adept at bringing about a wide range of sociopolitical changes." A similar Black Twitter community arose in South Africa in the early 2010s.
User base
According to a 2013 report by the Pew Research Center, 28 percent of African Americans who had used the Internet also used X, compared to 20 percent of online white, non-Hispanic Americans. By 2018, this gap had shrunk, with 26 percent of all African American adults using Twitter, compared to 24 percent of white adults and 20 percent of Hispanic adults. In addition, in 2013, 11 percent of African-American Twitter users said they used Twitter at least once a day, compared to 3 percent of white users. BlackTwitter.com was launched as a news aggregator reflective of black culture in 2020.User and social media researcher André Brock dates the first published comments on Black Twitter usage to a 2008 piece by blogger Anil Dash, and a 2009 article by Chris Wilson in The Root describing the viral success of Twitter memes such as #YouKnowYoureBlackWhen and #YouKnowYoureFromQueens that were primarily aimed at Black Twitter users. Brock cites the first reference to a Black Twitter community—as "Late Night Black People Twitter" and "Black People Twitter"—in the November 2009 article "What Were Black People Talking About on Twitter Last Night?" by Choire Sicha, co-founder of current-affairs website The Awl. Sicha described it as "huge, organic and … seemingly seriously nocturnal"—in fact, active around the clock.
Kyra Gaunt, an early adopter who participated in Black Twitter, who also became a social media researcher, shared reactions to black users at the first 140 Characters Conference that took place on November 17, 2009, at the O2 Indigo in London. Her slide deck offered examples of racist reactions to the topic #ThatsAfrican that started trending in July 2008. She and other users claimed the trending topic was censored by the platform. She and other Black Twitter users began blogging and micro-blogging about Black Twitter identity. The blogging led to buzz-worthy media appearances about Twitter. Social media researcher Sarah Florini prefers to discuss the interactions among this community of users as an "enclave."
Reciprocity and community
An August 2010 article by Farhad Manjoo in Slate, "How Black People Use Twitter," brought the community to wider attention. Manjoo wrote that young black people appeared to use X in a particular way: "They form tighter clusters on the network—they follow one another more readily, they retweet each other more often, and more of their posts are @-replies—posts directed at other users." Manjoo cited Brendan Meeder of Carnegie Mellon University, who argued that the high level of reciprocity between the many users who initiate hashtags leads to a high-density, influential network.A 2014 dissertation by Meredith Clark explains that users on Black Twitter began to use hashtags as a way to attract members of society with similar ideals to a single conversation in order to interact with each other and feel as though they are engaged in a “safe space”. Clark characterizes the use of Black Twitter as critically important to the group, as the conversation helps “cement the hashtag as a cultural artifact recognizable in the minds of both Black Twitter participants and individuals with no knowledge of the initial discussion”. She stated that hashtags have transitioned from serving as a method of setting up a conversation between separate parties to an underlying reason behind how users outside Black Twitter learn about the thoughts and feelings of African Americans in the present world.
Manjoo's article in Slate drew criticism from American and Africana studies scholar Kimberly C. Ellis. She concluded that large parts of the article had generalized too much, and published a response to it titled "Why 'They' Don't Understand What Black People Do On Twitter." Pointing out the diversity of black people on Twitter, she said, "t's clear that not only Slate but the rest of mainstream America has no real idea who Black people are, no real clue about our humanity, in general . For us, Twitter is an electronic medium that allows enough flexibility for uninhibited and fabricated creativity while exhibiting more of the strengths of social media that allow us to build community. Actually, we talk to each other AND we broadcast a message to the world, hence the popularity of the Trending Topics and Twitter usage, yes?" Ellis said that the most appropriate response she had seen to the Slate article was that by Twitter user @InnyVinny, who made the point that "black people are not a monolith" and then presented a wide array of brown Twitter bird drawings on her blog site to express the diverse range of Black Twitter users; the #browntwitterbird hashtag immediately went viral, as users adopted or suggested new Twitter birds.
According to Shani O. Hilton writing in 2013, the defining characteristic of Black Twitter is that its members "a) are interested in issues of race in the news and pop culture and b) tweet A LOT." She adds that while the community includes thousands of black Twitter users, in fact, "not everyone within Black Twitter is black, and not every black person on Twitter is in Black Twitter". She also notes that the viral reach and focus of Black Twitter's hashtags have transformed it from a mere source of entertainment, and object of outside curiosity, to "a cultural force in its own right... Now, black folks on Twitter aren't just influencing the conversation online, they're creating it."
Apryl Williams and Doris Domoszlai similarly state, "There is no single identity or set of characteristics that define Black Twitter. Like all cultural groups, Black Twitter is dynamic, containing a variety of viewpoints and identities. We think of Black Twitter as a social construct created by a self-selecting community of users to describe aspects of black American society through their use of the Twitter platform. Not everyone on Black Twitter is black, and not everyone who is black is represented by Black Twitter."
Signifyin'
Feminista Jones has argued that Black Twitter's historical cultural roots are the spirituals, or work songs, sung by enslaved people in the United States, when finding a universal means of communication was essential to survival and grassroots organization.Several writers see Black Twitter interaction as a form of signifyin', wordplay involving tropes such as irony and hyperbole. André Brock states that the Black Tweeter is the signifier, while the hashtag is the signifier, sign and signified, "marking... the concept to be signified, the cultural context within which the tweet should be understood, and the 'call' awaiting a response." He writes: "Tweet-as-signifyin', then, can be understood as a discursive, public performance of Black identity."
Sarah Florini of UW-Madison also interprets Black Twitter within the context of signifyin'. She writes that race is normally "deeply tied to corporeal signifiers"; in the absence of the body, black users display their racial identities through wordplay and other languages that shows knowledge of black culture. Black Twitter has become an important platform for this performance.
Florini notes that the specific construction of Twitter contributes to African Americans' ability to signify on Black Twitter. She contends that "Twitter’s architecture creates participant structures that accommodate the crucial function of the audience during signifyin’". By seeing each other's replies and retweets, the user base can jointly partake in an extended dialogue where each person tries to participate in the signifyin’. In addition, Florini adds that "Twitter mimics another key aspect of how signifyin’ games are traditionally played—speed". Specifically, the retweets and replies are able to be sent so quickly that it replaces the need for the audience members to interact in person.
In addition the practices of signifying create a signal that one is entering a communicative collective space rather than functioning as an individual. Tweets become part of Black Twitter by responding to the calls in the tag. Hashtags embody a performance of blackness through the transmission of racial knowledge into wordplay. Sarah Florini in particular focuses on how an active self-identification of blackness rejects notions of a post-racial society by disrupting the narratives of a color-blind society. This rejection of a post-racial society gets tied into the collective practices of performance by turning narratives such as the Republican National Committee's declaration of Rosa Parks ending racism into a moment of critique and ridicule under the guise of a game. Moments, where the performance of blackness meets social critique, allow for the spaces of activism to be created. The Republican Party later rescinded its statement to acknowledge that racism was not over.
Manjoo referred to the hashtags the black community uses as "blacktags," citing Baratunde Thurston, then of The Onion, who argued that blacktags are a version of the dozens. Also an example of signifyin', this is a game popular with African Americans in which participants outdo each other by throwing insults back and forth. According to Thurston, the brevity of tweets and the instant feedback mean Twitter fits well into the African tradition of call and response.
Black Twitter humor
Humor as a form of social commentaryMany scholars have highlighted how Black Twitter offers a platform for users to share humorous, yet insightful messages.
More recently, Black Twitter spotlighted the "BBQing While Black", incident during which a white woman called police officers on a black family barbecuing in the park. Oakland police arrived; no one was arrested.
When speaking on CNN about her dissent towards former President Donald Trump, CNN commentator Angela Rye stated " will never claim Trump as her bigot president."