I like to think that I did not step into the research for this project, but it rather crashed into me like a raging hot meteorite. I was already consumed in the world of the “Black Experience” for it is the only experience I have to draw on. Everything that I see and live is translated through my blackness for it is my filter for the world. In 2008 I found a way for me to translate and transcript my personal “Black experience” onto a 140 character or less status update. In the early days of twitter when I first joined in July 2008 there were a little over one million users (Arrington, 2008). And the site itself was a little over two years old. The black experience of the thousands of other African-American users at that time began to pour onto timelines around the world. And the “Black Experience” as varied and widespread as it is, began to seemingly tread together. By December 2008 twitter had over eight million users, and the plurality and randomness that is life translated itself onto the virtual landscape of Twitter.com. The so deemed “Black Twitter” is an online subculture of tweets and happenings by/of African-Americans on the social networking website Twitter.com. In this virtual space, the collection of jokes, news, gossip, political issues, and random banter on life, began to mirror the African-American and “Black” communities of the world. Timeline’s of these African-American and Black Twitter users can sometimes resemble gossip akin to that of the tradition of Black churches in American, or the elite cliques of inner city High Schools. Even the ideological and political discussions of the National Black Caucus. It’s a space where ideas, beliefs, interest, and concerns of the global Black community get exchanged. In my findings Black users of twitter tend to follow a major of other Black people. There are also those users who are not Black or African American who are also part of Black twitter, for myriad of reason but mainly because of a particular interest or connection to the black community. Sometimes that interest is in music, or fashion, or a Black blogger, or just an inner-self connection to the community. Although there is no “link” one could click to take you directly to “Black Twitter”. It is not hard to find, one could stumble upon an interesting hashtag a Black user created, or look through the timeline of an African-American user and find elements or topics of Black interest in connection to other Black users. Within “Black Twitter” there are many subgroups depending on that Black users interest or identity in “real life”. There are the Black Bloggers, The Black Celebrity Tweeters, the Black LGBT community, the Black hipsters, and Hip-Hop enthusiast, etc. And the beliefs, ideas, and interest of those users are reflected in the tweets of its sub-group members as well as the rest of “Black Twitter” at large.
What was happening under the surface however could be described as nothing short of amazing. In an interview I did with friend of mine (@TheXDExperience) he said to me,
“People respond with who or what they relate to the most…”
And respond and relate they did. In August 2010 Stale.com stated that “25% of all black people that use the internet regularly use Twitter.” That’s hundreds of millions of Black users. That’s a lot a Negros in one place. When there are that many people who are of a similar background, experience, or interest as you, in a designated area, whether virtual or physical, community forms.
I remember reading a book by James E. Blackwell in the 11th grade and he said this about African-American community and tradition,
“Much of what has survived originated in an African past. Survivals include family patterns and attitudes, songs, dance, religious practices, superstitions, ways of walking, verbal expressions, orientation toward recreation and pleasure, epicurean traditions, sex-related role expectations, music, given names for children, and traditional foods. Thus Blauner and others advanced the notion that an authentic black culture survived slavery and is to be found today largely in the urban ghettos of black America. That culture has its roots in the parallel institutions that evolved and crystallized social relationships among the members of the black community.” (BLACKWELL, 1985)
If I look at this quote, then I look at what I have found what “Black Twitter” to be, is something that is bound together by inside black jokes, and random funny, jokes in general, or gossip around the neighborhood or the world. We see that the traditions and commonalities of African-American communities somehow translate unto this constricted online setting. But then again, what truly defines us as a community? That thought initially seemed obscure to me, but the abstract in Blackwell’s book said this,
“The black community is defined in this book as a diversified set of interrelated structures and aggregates of people who are held together by the forces of racism. The need for theoretical perspectives for understanding black-white relations and for analyzing the nature of the black community is explained.”
In reading this I thought about what are common treads in the African-American community by-at-large? And what I found is no matter who we are at the core, we are all Black yet and still. And that means certain things in this world. I thought back to situation that a predominate Black celebrity and Black Twitter figure Solange Knowles had with the Miami Police in early August of this year which she tweeted about.
“The confrontation came to light once Knowles took to her Twitter account on Sunday night following making a failed attempt to escort a five-foot inflatable banana into South Beach hot spot, Club Cameo, which reportedly resulted in an officer threatening to deflate Knowles’ over-sized fruit. “I have literally had my last leg with discriminating police! Miami police department will be notified,” she wrote. “A police officer just pulled a weapon on me…. I have done NOTHING illegal, against the law, or anything of the sort.” Later adding, “I’m only tweeting this to raise awareness. I could have left quietly, but I am sick & tired of this scenario being played over & over again. It is time to do something about it. I am a mother raising a young black child in America. I’m going to die trying!”” (Huffington Post Black Voices, 2011).
The relationship with the African-American community and the police has historically has always been less than pleasant. And in this dawning age of social media and networking, when it takes one seconds to post an experience to a Twitter account it goes to show that no matter who you think you are the fact that one is Black doesn’t change. Nor does is it change how others will treat you because of that, or change the things you will inevitability experience in your life time. The realm of Black Twitter gives a space to express these things with others like you and different from you as well.
I decided to take on this research because Twitter is the website I find myself using most often but I never realized why until I realized I was a part of “Black 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 (Manjoo, 2010). In the article he speaks about hashtags such as “#WordsThatLeadToTrouble”, and many others he found were almost always created by people of color or African-Americans (I’m making this lexical exception for Black people that live outside of the United States), and trend on twitter very quickly and explosively, even globally. That is not to say that people who are not African-American do not use or create hashtags. But African Americans tend to use them more frequently, and on of a more diverse range of topics, these topics also tend to make the top trends on twitter as well. And more often than not 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 expanding them even further. When I speak of “topics” I am talking about local or global trending topics on twitter. On the lower right-hand side of home screen on the Twitter web interface, Twitter lists frequently appearing phrases, or hashtags from Twitter tweeted by users usually denoted with the number symbol “#”. To make something a” trending topic depends on the number of people tweeting at the same time on a topic and the hour of the day.” (Analyics Buzzgain.com , 2009) 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 (Bercovici, 2011), States 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”.
After that I did in fact notice that I followed a majority of African-American and Black users on Twitter and had the same distinction of followers. When seeking informants on this topic, I went straight for the “big boys” of twitter, the bloggers. I later found that most of the people I interview feel that the Black bloggers are the central artery of “Black Twitter”. I went to the bloggers because in my experience that is where most of the information and news I see on twitter comes from. The bloggers though not quite celebrities tend to have large follower numbers and engage with a diverse communities within their own audience. And throughout my research process certain Black bloggers and Black bloggers in generally kept coming up. Bloggers like Necole Bitchie (Nicolebitchie.com), Jia (Missjia.com), HelloBeautiful.com, YBF.com (Young Black and Fabulous) were all highly mentioned blogs. If Black Twitter is indeed High School these are the cool kids, and the crux of the “rumor mill”.
In gathering data, I used a variety of methods, simple but effective. I did live and saved observations of my own timeline, looking at the tweets of people I follow making notes and comments on what I did observe. I did follow some additional people for the purpose of getting a better sample for this research study. Some of those people where the “major players” of Black Twitter such as, Oprah, Lala Anthony, Miss Jia, and 50 cent. I also followed some popular black folk on Twitter such as, @LoveCrissle, and singer K. Michelle. I also decided to follow more straight men as part of my study, I a have large number of Black gay male followers and thought that having no straight male observations would alter my research. I could not always observe my timeline live so I would clip screen shot of tweets and analyze them later. This is the method I used most often when making field notes. It also gave me a way to save the raw data. I got the opportunity to conduct four interviews, three of these interviews where over the video call program Skype, one was over the phone. I did a phone conference focus group with two current African-American twitter users and one former user. I also had the opportunity to do “real-life” observations at the Mcdonald’s Mix Masters “Tweet-n-Meet”. One of the issues I faced with gathering data is that Black people all over the world use Twitter. And because of things like, slavery, and the African diaspora, colonization, and imperialism, where you live or where you are from can define what kind of Black person you are or more over what type of “Black experience” you therein receive. Even in America that can differ from state to state, city to city, and county to county. So slight overwhelmed, I had to figure out if I even could contextualize the Black experience as reflected through Twitter. I didn’t want to nor could I leave any one group of Black people out so I was very meticulous in observations, and careful not to over generalize. When talking about the United States specifically, I find that Black Twitter is regionalized. It has to do strongly with Black Hip-Hop regional followings, dating back to the “Soul Cities” of the 1960’s, and the “East Coast – West Coast rap rivalries” of the early 1990’s and the emergence of Southern rap in the late 1990’s. In relating with Black Twitter these regions have Black bloggers that follow the Black celebrities and personalities of that region and write about them on their blogs. And these bloggers have a following (audience) of the average Black Twitter user under them. These regions to the best of my deduction look something like this; you have the East Coast Twitter Kingdom which includes New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and the DMV (D.C., Maryland, Virginia) Area. The Miami Twitter Kingdom, which includes imports from the Caribbean, East Coast, and Southern regions. The Southern Twitter Kingdom, which includes, Atlanta, The Carolinas, Alabama, and Texas. The Mid-West Twitter Kingdom, which includes, Chicago, Colorado (Denver), St. Louis, and Ohio. And finally the West-Coast Twitter Kingdom which includes California, and Las Vegas. Now these Kingdoms are defined by the large number of African-Americans that live in or frequent them, and subsequently tweet from them or about them. This may also further the reason why Twitter in many capacities is so segregated.
In thinking about the things I’ve seen while collecting this research, and trying to find cultural themes in an online community, one constant reoccurring theme is African-American Twitters live tweet on television shows and entertainment a great deal more than their counter parts of other races. In every interview, observation, and focus group that I did during this study tweeting about shows like, Basketball Wives, or Real House Wives of Atlanta came up a great deal. This also includes the hashtags specific to these shows. These hashtags are usually created by the television network, and then comments are by twitter users watching or talking about the show. Often humorous comments made about the shows are often retweeted by other user and spread into trending topics.
Across the board with the trek through the tribes of “Black Twitter”, I discovered that African-American users interact with each other more freely. We talk, we share our lives, black bloggers are more often than not at the center of this sharing sort directing the topics of conversation. Bloggers, Black bloggers particularly have a great deal of influence over their respective audiences in the Black Twitter world. And with the innumerable topics that bloggers bring to the table from natural hair care for women of color, to gossip on Black entertainers, to Blacks in the world of politics there is an endless stream of pseudo directed discussion. Therefore it’s like bloggers are the popular kids at the side table in lunch room and everyone hangs around them hoping to grab the latest bit of gossip or the inside scoop on what’s going on in school. It goes to the point where major companies seek bloggers to help promote new products or events. Toward the end of November I got the chance to attend the McDonald’s Mix Masters and Tastemakers event in Time Square, New York. This was a sort of post-event where McDonald’s had contest winner of last year’s Mix Masters event (Mix Masters is contest where McDonald’s as customers vote online for the best local DJs from around the country the winner gets a cash prize and is sponsored by McDonald’s for the next year.) DJ the event they select local bloggers from the area which happened to be all of color with the exception of one to taste new burgers and tweet and Facebook post about the DJ, the event, and the food. They gave complementary gift bags, which where beige canvas bags with cassette tapes silk screened on the front of the bag, I guess to give it that retro hip-hop urban field. Corporations like McDonald’s use bloggers for a type of consumer direct marketing; because people generally trust the bloggers/blogs they read and use them as reliable resources of information. In events like this blogger are given free food, and drinks, free stuff I guess is to persuade the blogger to talk about the company in this case McDonald’s not just as a business venture but as friendly, humanist brand. And McDonald’s spared no expense; they had a Big Mac rap freestyle contest during the event were one of the blogger could have won a pair of Beats by Dre headphones which retail for over $149. Each gift bag had a McDonald’s gift worth $15, a T-Shirt, and hat. They also sponsored an after-party for all of the guest from the event at the swanky Tribeca night club “Greenhouse” which offered a full open bar for the guest. This event was directly targeted towards making gains in the urban market, therefore urban bloggers where invited to attend the event. Most of the urban bloggers happen to be African-American and their readership and audience more often than not follows suit. This is no coincidence, by history urban markets are hard to crack, and people go to who they can trust for information on products, brands, and food. Through Twitter and Sub-Community of Black Twitter people you follow though you may not know them in “real life” began to feel like your friends so you trust them and use them as resources, companies take advantage of that. Funny, interesting, young, well dressed, well informed, African-American bloggers are seemingly the best way to reach directly to your consumer without shoving ads down their throat, it’s like getting recommendation on a good restaurant from a close friend.
It was a strange experience observing my timeline for the purpose of study this put Twitter in a new light for me. Things that I normally think of as common place and don’t typically pay attention too began to stick out; I also gained new insight into the lives of certain people I follow. In the endless sea of Black tweets I finally began to see themes emerge, and the thing I noticed the most was that African-American tweeters, tweet about African-American celebrities a lot! Particularly musicians. Rappers, R&B, Singers, Mixtapes, and new albums tend to be the most reoccurring themes. Black Twitter is deeply connected to music; African-American music is deeply entrenched in African-American culture and American culture itself. We created the rhythm of a nation in large part, and those roots translate on to Black Twitter itself. One of my followers @Jux_Jeff who appears a lot in my observations talks about Rihanna constantly. His tweets are often retweet by his followers who are Rihanna lovers as well who as happen to be African-American, and cycle continues. I see that “soul” translates in large part on Black Twitter, the tweets are not really generic, that have some weight to them meaning I’ve noticed that African-American people counsel and consul each other a great deal more than their white counter parts. African-American people also see advice more than their white counterparts on twitter. It’s more than, “I’m doing this” or “I’m going here now” or “This is what I’m eating for breakfast”. There are entire visible support systems apparent in Black Twitter; African-American women especially use these support systems. Even for things like hair-care, Chris-Tia Donaldson founder of “ThankGodImNatural.Wordpress.com” (@TGINatural) has a following on over 12,000 on Twitter. Almost all of which are African-American women, these women seek tips or insight on going natural, or maintain natural hair (when I say natural I mean not permed or the use of extensions or hair weave). And she’s sort of built her own forum of sort for these women into her twitter page. But these women talk about more than just hair care, they talk about, men, politics, their everyday struggles as women of color, it’s like a support group almost. This is how Black people use Twitter. But I cannot talk about this without talking about another culture theme that I noticed, Black people love live tweeting during Television shows. I mentioned this earlier but it is something that was a huge part of my observations. In fact as I am typing this report there are Millions of African-American Twitter users live tweeting about “Braxton Family Values” which is a show on WeTV about singer Toni Braxton her family (See appendix 7). It made the number eight trending topic on twitter for the past hour. From what I can see all the people tweeting and retweet about the show are African-American. It’s like one Black family on a giant sofa extending a across America laugh, joking and commenting on the same TV show. The Black Twitter Experience is a bonding experience.
The focus group I held via conference call, with a few close friends of my who are Twitter users and my cousin who is a former twitter user they joined twitter when it first started. My cousin Teneille recounted that in early days of twitter when there were only about 6,000 users across the country. There was no Black Twitter in those days, she thought that Black Twitter arose from the “second wave of cool people to join twitter in 2008” the shock bloggers. That would spew news on celebrities directly on to twitter and this was a new experience and type of interaction to blog readers at large. They also sort of mused that in the early days of Twitter was sort of like “the wild wild west” you did know if you were talking to a real celebrity or the actual blogger of that site because in those day there was no such thing as a verified account. The group thought that Black Twitter started regionally, amongst Bedford-Stuyvesant, and East New York Brooklyn African-American Twitter Users. Then fanned out interstate with different blogger circles, and key people.
Lastly, from all the information I’ve gathered, people I’ve spoken too, places I have gone, and observations I have made I have realize that Black Twitter does indeed exist! It is virtual space where the Black community across the world is becoming an extended family. Through arbitrary statements, humorous outburst, watching television together, seeking and giving advice, and always having the inside scoop on a celebrity or the boy next door. I’ve learned that African-American people drive, and fuel social networking for its intended use and true purpose, creating an authentic resource community online. Seemingly we were able to do this quickly and quietly, due to our history of bonding in initially unorthodox ways. Theirs is a great deal more about what Black Twitters is and can do, my research barely even touches the nose of all the possibilities that is online community possess. I still feel as if there are questions I haven’t asked, and people I have yet to took to, and that is so much more than what it seems. I want to know what need in the community that this is filling since it is so widely use. Black Twitter is a resting place, where every Black person that was ever born can become family again by sharing our lives in the way that is so unique to us through this social media website. We staked out our own community within a community. But that’s what we have always done.
