Black women's digital media and marketplace experiences

Abstract

Drawing on Black feminist work and critical studies of the racist and sexist dynamics of media and the marketplace, this chapter focusses on Black women’s contemporary digital experiences and related forms of corporate commodification and co-optation. Specifically, this work attends to the intersecting nature of oppression—including anti-Black racism and sexism—and grapples with the communal and commodifying potentials of various digital spaces. The role of digital and social media in many people’s daily lives has been heightened due to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic since 2020. Accordingly, this work considers how such a time of crisis has exacerbated challenges that Black women face when participating in digital spaces and attempting to mitigate exposure to white supremacist, anti-Black, and misogynistic online abuse. This work also addresses how the galvanising visibility of Black Lives Matter (BLM) organising in Britain in 2020 has impacted varying degrees of online visibility that Black women negotiate—from invisibility to hypervisibility. Overall, this chapter explores how contemporary online media and marketplace environments are experienced by Black women. In turn, it highlights the underacknowledged importance of Black feminist contributions to critical understandings of media and marketplace landscapes and the racist and sexist underpinnings of capitalism and consumer culture.