“Thank You, Black Twitter”: State Violence, Digital Counterpublics, and Pedagogies of Resistance

2018/01/03 by Marc Hill · 200 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Black male #CONTEST #Computer science #Critical Race Theory in Education #Gender studies #Law #Music History and Culture #Political science #Politics #Resistance (ecology) #Social Media and Politics #Sociology #State (computer science)

paper · doi:10.1177/0042085917747124

published in Urban Education 53(2), 286-302 (SAGE Publishing)

openalex publication_date 2018/01/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/26

Abstract

In this article, I examine the role of Black Twitter as a “digital counterpublic” that enables critical pedagogy, political organizing, and both symbolic and material forms of resistance to anti-Black state violence within the United States. Focusing primarily on post-Ferguson events, I spotlight the ways that Black people have used Black Twitter and other digital counterpublics to engage in forms of pedagogy that reorganize relations of surveillance, reject rigid respectability politics, and contest the erasure of marginalized groups within the Black community.

Citations

• Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy
• Relocating the Deficit
• The Effect of Police Body-Worn Cameras on Use of Force and Citizens’ Complaints Against the Police: A Randomized Controlled Trial
• Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy

Cited by

• Same Same but Different? Gender, sex work, and respectability politics in the MyRedBook and Rentboy closures
• Black Twitter [wikipedia]

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