Race and racism in Internet Studies: A review and critique
- 10 December 2012
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in New Media & Society
- Vol. 15 (5), 695-719
- https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444812462849
Abstract
Race and racism persist online in ways that are both new and unique to the Internet, alongside vestiges of centuries-old forms that reverberate significantly both offline and on. As we mark 15 years into the field of Internet studies, it becomes necessary to assess what the extant research tells us about race and racism. This paper provides an analysis of the literature on race and racism in Internet studies in the broad areas of (1) race and the structure of the Internet, (2) race and racism matters in what we do online, and (3) race, social control and Internet law. Then, drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives, including Hall’s spectacle of the Other and DuBois’s view of white culture, the paper offers an analysis and critique of the field, in particular the use of racial formation theory. Finally, the paper points to the need for a critical understanding of whiteness in Internet studies.Keywords
This publication has 75 references indexed in Scilit:
- Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and ScholarshipJournal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2007
- Anything but Racism: How Sociologists Limit the Significance of RacismPublished by Springer Science and Business Media LLC ,2007
- Far-right media on the internet: culture, discourse and powerNew Media & Society, 2006
- Diaspora, cyberspace and political imagination: the Eritrean diaspora onlineGlobal Networks, 2006
- White Supremacists, Oppositional Culture and the World Wide WebSocial Forces, 2005
- The internet rhetoric of the Ku Klux Klan: A case study in web site community building run amokCommunication Studies, 2004
- Aryans reading Adorno: cyber-culture and twenty-firstcentury racismEthnic and Racial Studies, 2002
- Anything but racism: how sociologists limit the significance of racismRace and Society, 2001
- The Contentious American Debate: The First Amendment and Internet-based Hate SpeechInternational Review of Law, Computers & Technology, 2000
- Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural InterpretationAmerican Sociological Review, 1997