Adventures in Black Twitter
In this ethnography I intend to take a close look at the people of color that frequent the social networking/ social media website known as Twitter. As with any other things people of color use Twitter different than their counter parts of other races, some would even argue that they use it more effectively. I wanted to study “Black Twitter” because it is community that I am actively involved in but am constantly learning more about. I am personally entrenched in the quarks, cliques, Twitter-ism of the Black twitter community. And since a study like this has never really been done before I hope to gain a number of unique perspectives on something I use daily.
Twitter is a place where people from all over the world and, all walks of life can connect online and communicate via 140 character status update. Users can also share photos, videos, blog post, news, and many other things on twitter. Since the website launch in 2006, and gain of over of over 200 million users, and 1.6 billion search queries per day[1]. Twitter is used by everyone from school teachers, politicians, celebrities, porn stars, companies, stores, heck even Oprah has a twitter. In this way, twitter has become viable resource globally for information. In fact I get most of my news and current events via twitter.
What really prompted me to do this study is an article I read online last year, “How Black People Use Twitter” by Farhad Manjoo[2]. In the article he speaks about hashtags such as #WordsThatLeadToTrouble, and many others, are almost always created by people of color, and trend on twitter very quickly and explosively, even globally. But the earliest retweeters of these topics tend to be people of color. Of course people of other races catch on to these trends and also retweet them explaining even further. Manjoo suggests that this gives Black Twitter’s users a very strong presence on twitter. Another article I read over this summer “Twitter Gets Even More Popular with Black Users. Why?” by Jeff Bercovici, (Forbes.com)[3]. Stated that 25% of all black people that use the internet use twitter. The article also theorized that, “black users report more interest in celebrities and entertainment news, and people with heightened interest in those areas are more likely to join Twitter”.
I have a myriad of questions I would like to ask my subjects. Most of which include, why they decided to use twitter in the first place, how long have they been using the website. What application or interface they use to tweet from. Who are some of their favorite people to follow, and why? Who are their favorite followers, what do they most often find themselves retweeting. What do they think black twitter is? What do they use twitter for. And how often do they use twitter.
The preponderance of my writing this project will be based on observations of tweets of people of color I already follow (I also intend to follow more of the “major players” in black twitter such as Oprah, and 50 Cent). Studying the sources and themes of trending hash tags both of people of color and other races, to get better grasp of what these really mean to the community of people of color on twitter by-at-large. Interviews from black people that use twitter and consider themselves apart of “Black Twitter”. And online focus groups of diverse people of color that use twitter.
I’m not sure of the limitations of this venture at moment but I am sure will hit a few road blocks along the way. All in all I hope to gain a clearer understand of what “Black Twitter” really is if anything. I also hope to find that the tweeting power that people color may have is factual and understand how it is being used. The “Black experience” is so varied the possibilities of what it translate to when imposed to 140 characters is exciting.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
[2] http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2010/08/how_black_people_use_twitter.html
[3] http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/06/01/twitter-gets-even-more-popular-with-black-users-why/
