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96-602: According to a 2013 report by the Pew Research Center , 28 percent of African Americans who had used the Internet, also used Twitter, compared to 20 percent of online white , non- Hispanic Americans . By 2018, this gap had shrunk, with 26 percent of all African American adults using Twitter , compared to 24 percent of white adults and 20 percent of Hispanic adults. In addition, in 2013, 11 percent of African-American Twitter users said they used Twitter at least once

192-892: A dialogic transmission system (many sources to many receivers) while traditional media operate under a monologic transmission model (one source to many receivers). For instance, a newspaper is delivered to many subscribers, and a radio station broadcasts the same programs to a city. Social media has been criticized for a range of negative impacts on children and teenagers, including exposure to inappropriate content, exploitation by adults, sleep problems, attention problems, feelings of exclusion, and various mental health maladies. Social media has also received criticism as worsening political polarization and undermining democracy . Major news outlets often have strong controls in place to avoid and fix false claims, but social media's unique qualities bring viral content with little to no oversight. "Algorithms that track user engagement to prioritize what

288-509: A post-racial society by disrupting the narratives of a color-blind society. This rejection of a post-racial society gets tied into the collective practices of performance by turning narratives such as the Republican National Committee 's declaration of Rosa Parks ending racism into a moment of critique and ridicule under the guise of a game. Moments, where the performance of blackness meets social critique, allow for

384-754: A social media researcher, shared reactions to black users at the first 140 Characters Conference (#140Conf) that took place on November 17, 2009, at the O2 Indigo in London . Her slide deck offered examples of racist reactions to the topic #ThatsAfrican that started trending in July 2008. She and other users claimed the trending topic was censored by the platform. She and other Black Twitter users began blogging and micro-blogging about Black Twitter identity. The blogging led to buzz-worthy media appearances about Twitter. Social media researcher Sarah Florini prefers to discuss

480-460: A "b", in a Twitter link to a story on President-elect Donald Trump 's plans to enlarge America's navy , thus unintentionally changing what was meant as a "bigger navy" into a " nigger navy". This is a notable example of an " atomic typo " where a typo is undetected by spell checkers because the typo happens to be a correctly spelled word. The tweet containing a racial slur gained more than 1,000 retweets before being deleted, almost one hour after it

576-453: A bit of a sting (see any hashtag related to Don Lemon )." Referring to the controversy over the Tubman video, she concluded, "1. Don't mess with Black Twitter because it will come for you. 2. If you're about to post a really offensive joke, take 10 minutes and really think about it. 3. There are some really funny and clever people out there on Twitter. And 4. See number 1." While Black Twitter

672-544: A bite out of a donut," "Yo momma sent her picture to the lonely hearts club, but they sent it back and said, 'We ain't that lonely! ' "). According to Thurston, the brevity of tweets and the instant feedback mean Twitter fits well into the African tradition of call and response . Humor as a form of social commentary Many scholars have highlighted how Black Twitter offers a platform for users to share humorous, yet insightful messages. More recently, Black Twitter spotlighted

768-639: A day, compared to 3 percent of white users. BlackTwitter.com was launched as a news aggregator reflective of black culture in 2020. User and social media researcher André Brock of the University of Iowa dates the first published comments on Black Twitter usage to a 2008 piece by blogger Anil Dash , and a 2009 article by Chris Wilson in The Root describing the viral success of Twitter memes such as #YouKnowYoureBlackWhen and #YouKnowYoureFromQueens that were primarily aimed at Black Twitter users. Brock cites

864-573: A digital [space] that enable[s] critical pedagogy , political organizing, and both symbolic and material forms of resistance to anti-Black state violence within the United States". It was also mentioned by former CEO Jack Dorsey that Black Twitter is "such a powerful force". Although Black Twitter is used to unite black people in the fight against white supremacy, it is also a space where Black women face disproportionate abuse. A study performed by Amnesty International shows that Black women are

960-644: A fraction of the cost of traditional marketing campaigns. Nonprofit organizations and activists may also attempt to spread content virally. Social media sites provide specific functionality to help users re-share content, such as X 's and Facebook 's "like" option. Bots are automated programs that operate on the internet . They automate many communication tasks. This has led to the creation of an industry of bot providers. Chatbots and social bots are programmed to mimic human interactions such as liking, commenting, and following. Bots have also been developed to facilitate social media marketing . Bots have led

1056-544: A joke it also embodied a critique of popular representations of black artists. The hashtag made in fun was used to offer a counter argument to the view the Beatles and other white popular music figures are more culturally relevant than their black counterparts. The #BlackLivesMatter hashtag was created in 2013 by activists Alicia Garza , Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi . They felt that African Americans received unequal treatment from law enforcement. Alicia Garza describes

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1152-472: A media studio for business users, after YouTube's Creator Studio. The discussion platform Reddit added an integrated image hoster replacing the external image sharing platform Imgur , and then an internal video hosting service, followed by image galleries (multiple images in a single post), known from Imgur. Imgur implemented video sharing. YouTube rolled out a Community feature, for sharing text-only posts and polls . According to Statista , it

1248-411: A mere source of entertainment, and object of outside curiosity, to "a cultural force in its own right ... Now, black folks on Twitter aren't just influencing the conversation online, they're creating it." Apryl Williams and Doris Domoszlai (2013) similarly state, "There is no single identity or set of characteristics that define Black Twitter. Like all cultural groups, Black Twitter is dynamic, containing

1344-460: A photo of himself speaking at his commencement at Tougaloo College with former President Bill Clinton laughing in the background and a second photo of himself holding a bottle of Hennessy and a microphone. Lawrence posed the question, "If They Gunned me down which photo would the media use?" The hashtag became the number one trending topic in the world overnight and was ultimately named the most influential hashtag of 2014 by Time magazine. This

1440-488: A positive relationship with social media, while emotional stability has a negative sloping relationship with social media. A 2015 study reported that people with a higher social comparison orientation appear to use social media more heavily than people with low social comparison orientation. Common Sense Media reported that children under age 13 in the United States use social networking services although many social media sites require users to be 13 or older. In 2017,

1536-484: A slice of the black American modes of thought. I want to be particular about that—it's just a slice of it. Unfortunately, it may be a slice that confirms what many people already think they know about black culture." Daniella Gibbs Leger, wrote in a 2013 HuffPost Black Voices article that "Black Twitter is a real thing. It is often hilarious (as with the Paula Deen recipes hashtag); sometimes that humor comes with

1632-491: A small share of the UT Austin student body. The hashtag #BeckyWithTheBadGrades also emerged to spotlight Fisher. The hashtag referred both to Fisher and to a lyric from Beyoncé 's song " Sorry ". Jonathan Pitts-Wiley, a former writer for The Root , cautioned in 2010 that Black Twitter was just a slice of contemporary African-American culture . "For people who aren't on the inside," he wrote, "it's sort of an inside look at

1728-440: A specific time. A human writes a post content and the bot posts it a specific time. In other cases, cyborgs spread fake news . Cyborgs may work as sock puppets , where one human pretends to be someone else, or operates multiple accounts, each pretending to be a person. A multitude of United States patents are related to social media, growing rapidly. As of 2020 , over 5000 social media patent applications had been published in

1824-464: A variety of viewpoints and identities. We think of Black Twitter as a social construct created by a self-selecting community of users to describe aspects of black American society through their use of the Twitter platform. Not everyone on Black Twitter is black, and not everyone who is black is represented by Black Twitter." Feminista Jones has argued that Black Twitter's historical cultural roots are

1920-487: A “safe space”. Clark characterizes the use of Black Twitter as critically important to the group, as the conversation helps “cement the hashtag as a cultural artifact recognizable in the minds of both Black Twitter participants and individuals with no knowledge of the initial discussion”. She stated that hashtags have transitioned from serving as a method of setting up a conversation between separate parties to an underlying reason behind how users outside Black Twitter learn about

2016-564: Is a nonprofit , tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization and a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder. For its studies focusing on demographics of religions in the world, the Pew Research Center has been jointly funded by the Templeton Foundation . The center's research includes the following topic areas: Social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate

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2112-771: Is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts and a Charter Member of the American Association of Public Opinion Research's Transparency Initiative. In 1990, the Times Mirror Company founded the Times Mirror Center for the People & the Press as a research project, tasked with conducting polls on politics and policy. Andrew Kohut became its director in 1993, and The Pew Charitable Trusts became its primary sponsor in 1996, when it

2208-622: Is an accepted version of this page The Pew Research Center (also simply known as Pew ) is a nonpartisan American think tank based in Washington, D.C. It provides information on social issues , public opinion , and demographic trends shaping the United States and the world. It also conducts public opinion polling , demographic research, random sample survey research, and panel based surveys , media content analysis , and other empirical social science research. The Pew Research Center states it does not take policy positions. It

2304-409: Is estimated that, in 2022, around 3.96 billion people were using social media globally. This number is up from 3.6 billion in 2020. The following is a list of the most popular social networking services based on the number of active users as of January 2024 per Statista . A 2009 study suggested that individual differences may help explain who uses social media: extraversion and openness have

2400-488: Is normally "deeply tied to corporeal signifiers"; in the absence of the body, black users display their racial identities through wordplay and other languages that shows knowledge of black culture. Black Twitter has become an important platform for this performance. Florini notes that the specific construction of Twitter contributes to African Americans' ability to signify on Black Twitter. She contends that "Twitter’s architecture creates participant structures that accommodate

2496-576: Is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication." In response to Twitter chatter and criticism, Barr was killed off in Roseanne via an opioid overdose . The show was renamed The Conners . Demonstrating the continued influence of Black Twitter, a 2019 SXSW Education panel, organized by Kennetta Piper, was selected to address the topic, "We Tried to Tell Y’all: Black Twitter as a Source!" Panelists included Meredith Clark , Feminista Jones , Mia Moody-Ramirez and L. Joy Williams. In 2022, Black Twitter

2592-404: Is now taught in elementary classrooms and in universities around the world. Lawrence, the creator, still lectures on #IfTheyGunnedMeDown and has since established his own media company, Black With No Chaser, to continue the mission of making sure that Black people control their narratives. The call and response aspects of a game where users work to outdo the other are exemplified in the creation of

2688-552: Is shown tend to favor content that spurs negative emotions like anger and outrage. Overall, most online misinformation originates from a small minority of “superspreaders,” but social media amplifies their reach and influence." The PLATO system was launched in 1960 at the University of Illinois and subsequently commercially marketed by Control Data Corporation . It offered early forms of social media features with innovations such as Notes, PLATO's message-forum application; TERM-talk, its instant-messaging feature; Talkomatic , perhaps

2784-513: Is the tweets made after rapper Tyga was pictured with the transgender porn actress Mia Isabella . Alicia Garza , one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, explained the importance of intersectionality and makes it one of the priorities in the movement. She wrote that many people find certain "charismatic black men" more appealing, which leaves "sisters, queers, trans , and disabled [black] folk [to] take up roles in

2880-426: Is used as a way to communicate within the black community, many people outside of said community and within do not understand the need to label it. In regards to this concern, Meredith Clark, a professor at the University of North Texas who studies black online communities, recalls one user's remarks, "Black Twitter is just Twitter". Additional criticism of Black Twitter is the lack of intersectionality . One example

2976-956: Is used to document memories, learn, and form friendships. They may be used to promote people, companies, products, and ideas. Social media can be used to consume, publish, or share news . Popular social media platforms with over 100 million registered users include Twitter , Facebook , WeChat , ShareChat , Instagram , Pinterest , QZone , Weibo , VK , Tumblr , Baidu Tieba , Threads and LinkedIn . Depending on interpretation, other popular platforms that are sometimes referred to as social media services include YouTube , Letterboxd , QQ , Quora , Telegram , WhatsApp , Signal , LINE , Snapchat , Viber , Reddit , Discord , and TikTok . Wikis are examples of collaborative content creation. Social media outlets differ from old media (e.g. newspapers , TV , and radio broadcasting ) in many ways, including quality, reach , frequency , usability, relevancy, and permanence. Social media outlets operate in

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3072-493: The United States Department of Homeland Security use social media data as influencing factors during the visa process, and monitor individuals after they have entered the country. CPB officers have also been documented performing searches of electronics and social media behavior at the border, searching both citizens and non-citizens without first obtaining a warrant. As social media gained momentum among

3168-601: The creation , sharing and aggregation of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongst virtual communities and networks . Common features include: The term social in regard to media suggests platforms enable communal activity. Social media can enhance and extend human networks. Users access social media through web-based apps or custom apps on mobile devices. These interactive platforms allow individuals, communities, and organizations to share, co-create, discuss, participate in, and modify user-generated or self-curated content. Social media

3264-559: The marketing industry into an analytical crisis, as bots make it difficult to differentiate between human interactions and bot interactions. Some bots violate platforms' terms of use , which can result in bans and campaigns to eliminate bots categorically. Bots may even pose as real people to avoid prohibitions. ' Cyborgs '—either bot-assisted humans or human-assisted bots —are used for both legitimate and illegitimate purposes, from spreading fake news to creating marketing buzz . A common use claimed to be legitimate includes posting at

3360-406: The murder of George Floyd and the protests that followed. The #HandsUpDontShoot hashtag was created after the police shooting of Michael Brown and the grand jury's decision to not indict Darren Wilson, the white Ferguson police officer that shot Brown, on November 24, 2015. Witnesses claimed that Brown had his hands up and was surrendering when Wilson fatally shot him. However, this information

3456-454: The network etiquette (or " netiquette ") described in a 1982 handbook on computing at MIT 's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory . ARPANET evolved into the Internet in the 1990s. Usenet , conceived by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1979 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University , was the first open social media app, established in 1980. A precursor of

3552-463: The spirituals , or work songs , sung by enslaved people in the United States , when finding a universal means of communication was essential to survival and grassroots organization. Several writers see Black Twitter interaction as a form of signifyin', wordplay involving tropes such as irony and hyperbole . André Brock states that the Black Tweeter is the signifier, while the hashtag is

3648-421: The " BBQing While Black", incident during which a white woman called police officers on a black family barbecuing in the park. Oakland police arrived; no one was arrested. When speaking on CNN about her dissent towards former President Donald Trump , CNN commentator Angela Rye stated "[she] will never claim Trump as her bigot president." In their 2018 book, Race, Gender & Image Repair Case Studies in

3744-516: The Caucasian screenwriter received nominations. The #SayHerName hashtag was created in February 2015 as part of a gender-inclusive racial justice movement. The movement campaigns for black women in the United States against anti-Black violence and police violence. Gender-specific ways black women are affected by police brutality and anti-Black violence are highlighted in this movement, including

3840-541: The Early 21st Century , Mia Moody-Ramirez and Hazel Cole explored how Black Twitter has been used to repair the image of individuals and corporations using William Benoit 's typology of image repair . The popularity of #NiggerNavy provides an example of how social media users used Twitter to call out social injustices. Black Twitter reacted in January 2017 when Yahoo Finance misspelled the word "bigger" with an "n" instead of

3936-478: The United States. Only slightly over 100 patents had been issued. As an instance of technological convergence , various social media platforms adapted functionality beyond their original scope, increasingly overlapping with each other. Examples are the social hub site Facebook launching an integrated video platform in May 2007, and Instagram , whose original scope was low-resolution photo sharing, introducing

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4032-435: The ability to share quarter-minute 640×640 pixel videos (later extended to a minute with increased resolution). Instagram later implemented stories (short videos self-destructing after 24 hours), a concept popularized by Snapchat , as well as IGTV , for seekable videos. Stories were then adopted by YouTube . X , whose original scope was text-based microblogging, later adopted photo sharing, then video sharing, then

4128-503: The advent of Web 2.0 . Social media started in the mid-1990s with the invention of platforms like GeoCities , Classmates.com , and SixDegrees.com . While instant messaging and chat clients existed at the time, SixDegrees was unique as it was the first online service designed for people to connect using their actual names instead of anonymously. It boasted features like profiles, friends lists, and school affiliations, making it "the very first social networking site". The platform's name

4224-506: The affirmative action case Fisher v. University of Texas . The suit, filed by one-time prospective student Abigail Fisher, alleged that she was denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin because she was white, and that other, less qualified candidates were admitted because of their race. The hashtag #StayMadAbby took off with hundreds of Black graduates tweeting photos of themselves clad in caps and gowns , as well as statistics pointedly noting that Black students only account for

4320-632: The availability of smartphones. As of 2023 as many as 4.76 billion people used social media some 59% of the global population. A 2015 review identified four features unique to social media services: In 2019, Merriam-Webster defined social media as "forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)." Social media encompasses an expanding suite of services: Some services offer more than one type of service. Mobile social media refers to

4416-888: The background." Kenichi Serino wrote in 2013 in The Christian Science Monitor that South Africa was experiencing a similar Black Twitter phenomenon, with black discourse on Twitter becoming increasingly influential. In a country that has 11 official languages, Black Twitter users regularly embedded words from isiZulu , isiXhosa , and Sesotho in their tweets. In August 2016 there were approximately 7.7 million South Africans on Twitter – by August 2017, this grew to about eight million users, with 63.8% of South Africans being online. But according to journalism lecturer Unathi Kondile, black people had taken to Twitter as "a free online platform where black voices can assert themselves and their views without editors or publishers deciding if their views matter." #FeesMustFall

4512-483: The blacktag #MigosSaid. Black Twitter engaged in a public display of using oral traditions to critique the hierarchy of pop culture. The movement stemmed from an initial tweet on June 22, 2014, when @Pipe_Tyson tweeted, " Migos best music group since the Beatles ." This sparked an online joke where users began to use the hashtag #MigosSaid to examine lyrics of the popular rap group. While the game could widely be seen as

4608-611: The celebrity chef, after she was accused of racism, reportedly resulting in the loss of millions of dollars' worth of business. A #paulasbestdishes hashtag game started by writer and humorist Tracy Clayton went viral. In August 2013, outrage on Black Twitter over a Harriet Tubman "sex parody" video Russell Simmons had posted on his Def Comedy Jam website persuaded him to remove the video; he apologized for his error in judgment. Another example of Black Twitter's influence occurred in May 2018 after Ambien maker Sanofi Aventis responded to Roseanne Barr , who blamed their sedative for

4704-435: The concerns of black feminists are pushed to the side. The hashtag and subsequent conversations have been part of Black Twitter culture. In Kendall's own words: "#SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen started in a moment of frustration. [...] When I launched the hashtag #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen, I thought it would largely be a discussion between people impacted by the latest bout of problematic behavior from mainstream white feminists . It

4800-602: The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and pediatric critical care." However others in the medical community were concerned about social media addiction, as it became an increasingly important context and therefore "source of social validation and reinforcement" and were unsure whether increased social media use was harmful. Governments may use social media to (for example): Social media has been used extensively in civil and criminal investigations . It has also been used to search for missing persons. Police departments often make use of official social media accounts to engage with

4896-427: The crucial function of the audience during signifyin’". By seeing each other's replies and retweets, the user base can jointly partake in an extended dialogue where each person tries to participate in the signifyin’. In addition, Florini adds that "Twitter mimics another key aspect of how signifyin’ games are traditionally played—speed". Specifically, the retweets and replies are able to be sent so quickly that it replaces

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4992-505: The defining characteristic of Black Twitter is that its members "a) are interested in issues of race in the news and pop culture and b) tweet A LOT." She adds that while the community includes thousands of black Twitter users, in fact, "not everyone within Black Twitter is black, and not every black person on Twitter is in Black Twitter". She also notes that the viral reach and focus of Black Twitter's hashtags have transformed it from

5088-559: The electronic bulletin board system (BBS), known as Community Memory , appeared by 1973. Mainstream BBSs arrived with the Computer Bulletin Board System in Chicago, which launched on February 16, 1978. Before long, most major US cities had more than one BBS, running on TRS-80 , Apple II , Atari 8-bit computers , IBM PC , Commodore 64 , Sinclair , and others. CompuServe , Prodigy , and AOL were three of

5184-425: The firm conducted a survey of parents of children from birth to age 8 and reported that 4% of children at this age used social media sites such as Instagram , Snapchat , or (now-defunct) Musical.ly "often" or "sometimes". Their 2019 survey surveyed Americans ages 8–16 and reported that about 31% of children ages 8–12 use social media. In that survey, teens aged 16–18 were asked when they started using social media.

5280-403: The first online chat room ; News Report, a crowdsourced online newspaper, and blog and Access Lists, enabling the owner of a note file or other application to limit access to a certain set of users, for example, only friends, classmates, or co-workers. ARPANET , which came online in 1969, had by the late 1970s enabled exchange of non-government/business ideas and communication, as evidenced by

5376-521: The first reference to a Black Twitter community—as "Late Night Black People Twitter" and "Black People Twitter"—in the November 2009 article "What Were Black People Talking About on Twitter Last Night?" by Choire Sicha , co-founder of current-affairs website The Awl . Sicha described it as "huge, organic and … seemingly seriously nocturnal"—in fact, active around the clock. Kyra Gaunt , an early adopter who participated in Black Twitter, who also became

5472-479: The general public to collect information regarding corona virus pandemics in various perspectives. During these days, people are forced to stay at home and the social media have connected and supported awareness and pandemic updates." Healthcare workers and systems became more aware of social media as a place people were getting health information: "During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media use has accelerated to

5568-500: The growing tweets following the BLM movement police brutality was one of the major themes that struck the black culture. Unsure as to the exact cause of Sandra Bland death the hashtag started as a result. In the tweets, people ask what you would want people to know about you if you died in police custody. The #ICantBreathe hashtag was created after the police killing of Eric Garner and the grand jury's decision to not indict Daniel Pantaleo,

5664-711: The hashtag #BlackBoyJoy first appeared as a "natural and necessary counterpart to the more established #BlackGirlMagic". The hashtag #BlackBoyJoy appeared following the 2016 Video Music Awards ceremony, after Chance the Rapper tweeted an image of himself on the red carpet using the hashtag. In 2015, #StayMadAbby surfaced on Black Twitter as Black students and college graduates rallied against Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia after he made comments about their supposed inability to graduate from universities he labeled "too fast". Scalia's comments came in 2015 during oral arguments for

5760-439: The hashtag as follows: "Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression." The #OscarsSoWhite hashtag was originally created in 2015 in response to the 87th Academy Awards ' lack of diversity amongst

5856-410: The hashtag on Twitter was a form of showing solidarity with those protesting, show opposition to the decision, and bring attention to police brutality. The #HandsUpDontShoot hashtag was immediately satirized with #PantsUpDontLoot when peaceful protests turned into riotous looting and firebombing that same evening. Black Twitter has also been used as a method of praise. According to Ayanna Harrison,

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5952-474: The hashtags #MichaelBrown, #Ferguson, and #HandsUpDontShoot, transformed Brown’s death from a local event to an international cause." Hands up, don't shoot is a slogan used by the Black Lives Matter movement and was used during protests after the ruling. The slogan was supported by members of the St. Louis Rams football team, who entered the field during a National Football League game holding their hands up. Using

6048-402: The high level of reciprocity between the many users who initiate hashtags (or "blacktags") leads to a high-density, influential network. A 2014 dissertation by Meredith Clark explains that users on Black Twitter began to use hashtags as a way to attract members of society with similar ideals to a single conversation in order to interact with each other and feel as though they are engaged in

6144-591: The interactions among this community of users as an "enclave." An August 2010 article by Farhad Manjoo in Slate , "How Black People Use Twitter," brought the community to wider attention. Manjoo wrote that young black people appeared to use Twitter in a particular way: "They form tighter clusters on the network—they follow one another more readily, they retweet each other more often, and more of their posts are @-replies—posts directed at other users." Manjoo cited Brendan Meeder of Carnegie Mellon University , who argued that

6240-637: The largest BBS companies and were the first to migrate to the Internet in the 1990s. Between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, BBSes numbered in the tens of thousands in North America alone. Message forums were the signature BBS phenomenon throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee integrated HTML hypertext software with the Internet, creating the World Wide Web . This breakthrough led to an explosion of blogs , list servers , and email services. Message forums migrated to

6336-669: The median age was 14, although 28% said they started to use it before reaching 13. Social media played a role in communication during the COVID-19 pandemic . In June 2020, a survey by Cartoon Network and the Cyberbullying Research Center surveyed Americans tweens (ages 9–12) and reported that the most popular application was YouTube (67%). (as age increased, tweens were more likely to have used social media apps and games.) Similarly, Common Sense Media's 2020 survey of Americans ages 13–18 reported that YouTube

6432-487: The most abused group on the platform. The study concludes that Black women are 84 percent more likely to be targeted than their white counterparts and that they, along with Latinx women, are faced with more abuse on the platform than any other demographic. Twitter’s acquisition by Elon Musk's has led to the Black community fear that blocked accounts used for harassment, abuse, misinformation and violence may be allowed back on

6528-495: The need for the audience members to interact in person. In addition the practices of signifying create a signal that one is entering a communicative collective space rather than functioning as an individual. Tweets become part of Black Twitter by responding to the calls in the tag. Hashtags embody a performance of blackness through the transmission of racial knowledge into wordplay. Sarah Florini in particular focuses on how an active self-identification of blackness rejects notions of

6624-540: The nominees in major categories. The hashtag was used again when the nominations were announced for the 88th Academy Awards the following year. April Reign , activist and former attorney, who is credited with starting the hashtag, tweeted, "It's actually worse than last year. Best Documentary and Best Original Screenplay. That's it. #OscarsSoWhite." In addition, she mentions that none of the African-American cast of Straight Outta Compton were recognized, while

6720-486: The platform due to Musk's differing viewpoints on free speech, stating that he will be "very reluctant to delete things". With Black women spending a lot of time on social media, their resistance to white supremacy and creating counter-narratives can be seen through hashtags developed like #BlackGirlMagic, #BlackGirlsMatter, etc. " Social media has become a crucial space for discussing, dismantling, and organizing against anti-Black racism for young Black women." Having been

6816-564: The point of becoming a ubiquitous part of modern healthcare systems." This also led to the spread of disinformation . On December 11, 2020, the CDC put out a "Call to Action: Managing the Infodemic ". Some healthcare organizations used hashtags as interventions and published articles on their Twitter data: "Promotion of the joint usage of #PedsICU and #COVID19 throughout the international pediatric critical care community in tweets relevant to

6912-408: The police officer that choked Garner to death, on December 3, 2014. " I can't breathe " were Garner's final words and can be heard in the video footage of the arrest that led to his death. The hashtag trended for days and gained attention beyond Twitter. Basketball players, including LeBron James , wore shirts with the words for warm ups on December 8, 2014. The hashtag saw resurgence in 2020, following

7008-641: The popularity of the Trending Topics and Twitter usage, yes?" Ellis said that the most appropriate response she had seen to the Slate article was that by Twitter user @InnyVinny, who made the point that "black people are not a monolith" and then presented a wide array of brown Twitter bird drawings on her blog site to express the diverse range of Black Twitter users; the #browntwitterbird hashtag immediately went viral, as users adopted or suggested new Twitter birds. According to Shani O. Hilton writing in 2013,

7104-491: The potential to spread virally , an analogy for the way viral infections spread contagiously from individual to individual. One user spreads a post across their network, which leads those users to follow suit. A post from a relatively unknown user can reach vast numbers of people within hours. Virality is not guaranteed; few posts make the transition. Viral marketing campaigns are particularly attractive to businesses because they can achieve widespread advertising coverage at

7200-464: The public, publicize police activity, and burnish law enforcement's image; conversely, video footage of citizen-documented police brutality and other misconduct has sometimes been posted to social media. In the United States, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement identifies and track individuals via social media, and has apprehended some people via social media-based sting operations. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (also known as CPB) and

7296-524: The racist tweet she posted, which resulted in the cancellation of her TV show, Roseanne . Barr explained that she was "ambien tweeting" when she compared former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to the "spawn" of " Muslim brotherhood & Planet of the Apes ." Sanofi responded: "People of all races, religions and nationalities work at Sanofi every day to improve the lives of people around the world. While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism

7392-409: The rest of mainstream America has no real idea who Black people are, no real clue about our humanity, in general [...]. For us, Twitter is an electronic medium that allows enough flexibility for uninhibited and fabricated creativity while exhibiting more of the strengths of social media that allow us to build community. [...] Actually, we talk to each other AND we broadcast a message to the world, hence

7488-411: The signifier, sign and signified, "marking ... the concept to be signified, the cultural context within which the tweet should be understood, and the 'call' awaiting a response." He writes: "Tweet-as-signifyin', then, can be understood as a discursive, public performance of Black identity." Sarah Florini of UW-Madison also interprets Black Twitter within the context of signifyin'. She writes that race

7584-507: The spaces of activism to be created. The Republican Party later rescinded its statement to acknowledge that racism was not over. Manjoo referred to the hashtags the black community uses as "blacktags," citing Baratunde Thurston , then of The Onion , who argued that blacktags are a version of the dozens . Also an example of signifyin', this is a game popular with African Americans in which participants outdo each other by throwing insults back and forth (" Yo momma so bowlegged, she look like

7680-418: The specific impact black queer women and black trans women encounter. The hashtag gained more popularity and the movement gained more momentum following Sandra Bland 's death in police custody in July 2015. This hashtag is commonly used with #BlackLivesMatter, reinforcing the intersectionality of the movement. #IfIDieInPoliceCustody is another hashtag that started trending after Sandra Bland's death . With

7776-453: The thoughts and feelings of African Americans in the present world. Manjoo's article in Slate drew criticism from American and Africana studies scholar Kimberly C. Ellis. She concluded that large parts of the article had generalized too much, and published a response to it titled "Why 'They' Don't Understand What Black People Do On Twitter." Pointing out the diversity of black people on Twitter, she said, "[I]t's clear that not only Slate but

7872-445: The topic of a 2012 SXSW Interactive panel led by Kimberly Ellis, Black Twitter came to wider public attention in July 2013, when it was credited with having stopped a book deal between a Seattle literary agent and one of the jurors in the trial of George Zimmerman . Zimmerman – who had only been arrested and charged after a large-scale social media campaign including petitions circulated on Twitter that attracted millions of signatures –

7968-457: The use of social media on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets . It is distinguished by its ubiquity, since users no longer have to be at a desk in order to participate on a computer . Mobile services can further make use of the user's immediate location to offer information, connections, or services relevant to that location. According to Andreas Kaplan , mobile social media activities fall among four types: Certain content has

8064-448: The web, and evolved into Internet forums , supported by cheaper access as well as the ability to handle far more people simultaneously. These early text-based systems expanded to include images and video in the 21st century, aided by digital cameras and camera phones . The evolution of online services progressed from serving as channels for networked communication to becoming interactive platforms for networked social interaction with

8160-697: The younger generations, governments began using it to improve their image, especially among the youth. In January 2021, Egyptian authorities were reported to be using Instagram influencers as part of its media ambassadors program. The program was designed to revamp Egypt 's image and to counter the bad press Egypt had received because of the country's human rights record. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates participated in similar programs. Similarly, Dubai has extensively relied on social media and influencers to promote tourism. However, Dubai laws have kept these influencers within limits to not offend

8256-486: Was a direct criticism of the way Black victims of police violence were portrayed in media, with the assassination of their characters as a result of the choices of images used to depict them. #IfTheyGunnedMeDown spread virally in the course of worldwide social media attention paid to the Ferguson crisis . The hashtag was posted several thousand times in the weeks following Lawrence's initial use of it. #IfTheyGunnedMeDown

8352-568: Was another prominent topic in 2017 on South African Twitter. Black women took to the social media platform to address numerous issues such as rape, patriarchy and domestic violence . Trending almost on a daily basis in South Africa is the #OperationDudula hashtag. The hashtag is used to rally people against immigration. According to journalist Pumza Fihlani, the movement behind the hashtag was founded by Nhlanhla "Lux" Dlamini , and became prominent in 2021. Pew Research Center This

8448-527: Was controversially acquitted that month of charges stemming from the February 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin , a black teenager in Florida. Black Twitter's swift response to the juror's proposed book, spearheaded by Twitter user Genie Lauren, who launched a change.org petition, resulted in coverage on CNN . The community was also involved in June 2013 in protesting to companies selling products by Paula Deen ,

8544-461: Was credited with prompting national media coverage of the killing of Shanquella Robinson , a young American woman who mysteriously died in Mexico . The #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen hashtag was created by black feminist blogger/author Mikki Kendall in response to the Twitter comments of male feminist Hugo Schwyzer , a critique of mainstream feminism as catering to the needs of white women, while

8640-468: Was deemed not credible in the face of conflicting testimonies and impacted the jury's decision. What made this particular shooting unique, was that Michael Brown's deceased body lied in the ground for four hours. Ferguson residents took to Black Twitter to share images of his body, share the story of Michael Brown being killed with his hands up, and ultimately the failure of the state to value his life. As Dr. Marc Lamont Hill puts it, "These efforts, anchored by

8736-446: Was inspired by the " six degrees of separation " concept, which suggests that every person on the planet is just six connections away from everyone else. In the early 2000s, social media platforms gained widespread popularity with the likes of Friendster and Myspace , followed by Facebook , YouTube , and Twitter . Research from 2015 reported that globally, users spent 22% of their online time on social networks, likely fueled by

8832-415: Was intended to be Twitter shorthand for how often feminists of color are told that the racism they feel they experience 'isn't a feminist issue'. The first few tweets reflect the deeply personal impact of such a long-running structural issue." After Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot unarmed resident Michael Brown , an attorney from Jackson, Mississippi named CJ Lawrence tweeted

8928-460: Was renamed the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. In 2004, the trust established the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. In 2013, Kohut stepped down as president and became founding director, and Alan Murray became the second president. In October 2014, Michael Dimock, a 14-year veteran of the Center at the time of his selection, was named president. The Pew Research Center

9024-634: Was shared. Yahoo Finance published an apology shortly after, saying it was a "mistake". It was too late. Black Twitter turned #NiggerNavy into a joke for many Twitter users. Black Twitter is an intersectional space, as Black people have intersecting identities that impact how they engage in spaces. As research shows that college-aged women use social media more than college-aged men, Black college-aged women also use social media more than Black-college aged men. Digital spaces like Twitter have been important spaces for students to resist white supremacy . Dr. Marc Lamont Hill has positioned that, Black Twitter. "Is

9120-414: Was the most popular (used by 86% of 13- to 18-year-olds). As children aged, they increasingly utilized social media services and often used YouTube to consume content. While adults were using social media before the COVID-19 pandemic , more started using it to stay socially connected and to get pandemic updates. "Social media have become popularly use to seek for medical information and have fascinated

9216-528: Was the most significant hashtag in South African Black Twitter. It started with a student-led protest movement that began in mid October 2015 in response to an increase in fees at South African universities. The protests also called for higher wages for low earning university staff who worked for private contractors such as cleaning services and campus security and for them to be employed directly by universities. The #MenAreTrash hashtag

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