Alternative Voices, Alternative Spaces: Counterhegemonic Discourse in the Blogosphere

Abstract

In 21st-century Britain, racial inequality remains deeply embedded in the fabric of society (Institute for Public Policy Research, 2010) and the media is a key site for ongoing struggles against hegemony (Bailey et al., 2008; Cammaerts, 2008; Downing, 2001). Women and people of colour remain at the margins of the mainstream media that often perpetuate inequalities through misrepresentation or exclusion. Black women are frequently constructed through the dominant discourse of ‘the angry Black woman’ (Isokariari, 2013) and measured by European standards of beauty (Collins, 1990) that render them invisible. Black men continue to be associated with criminality and are rarely represented beyond the stereotype of sporting hero (Ferber, 2007). This chapter examines how blogs are used by African Caribbean people as an assertive strategy, tool of resistance against racial oppression, and resistance to misrepresentation and exclusion in the mainstream media. It reveals how the motivation and gratification of African Caribbean bloggers are driven by a complex set of factors linked to issues of race and representation that stem from feeling voiceless, invisible and marginalised within UK society. While hailed as a revolutionary, democratic space, the blogosphere maintains raced and gendered inequalities that exist offline and reproduces unequal power relations (Cammaerts, 2008; Kellner, 2000; Papacharissi, 2002; Schradie, 2012). However, as this chapter reveals, African Caribbeans still appropriate the blogosphere as a medium for self-representation to cultivate symbolic power through their own constructions of Black identity. While there is a growing body of research on the blogosphere, the use of blogs by people of colour in the UK is an underdeveloped area of inquiry. This chapter expands the current literature by highlighting how Black Britons engage with blogs in ways that differ from the White majority population.