BCaT is Back

After a summer that never feels long enough – we’re back! Not only are we back but we’re excited to delve into another year of research, scholarship, and critical making that engages Black digital humanities. 

Once the spring semester came to a close, the ‘Black Digital Migration’ research team spent several weeks resting and recuperating. Throughout the summer, we met to scrape data, share insights about emerging rival platforms, and discuss updates and shifts in Twitter infrastructures and policies. These meetings were crucial for us to make sense of the frequent changes to the platform that presented challenges to both our research project and our personal usage. 

In the coming months please keep an eye out for a forthcoming article by BCaT’s postdoctoral fellow and collaborative project leader, Dr. Rianna Walcott: #RIP Twitter - The Conditions of Black Social Media Platform Migration. To be published with Just Tech SSRC, the article provides an exploratory look at the affordances and limitations of digital platforms, Black-led processes of adapting digital and physical spaces as a practice of claiming space and ownership, and other factors influencing Black users' engagement with social networking services.

The start of the fall semester meant that the BCaT Lab was open again and that the Black Digital Migration research team is moving into the next phase of the project. Outside of discussing our adjustments to Twitter changes by Elon Musk, we’ve spent time cleaning up data we collected over the summer in preparation for the development of data visualizations and publications. 

In September, the lab hosted its first BCaT Applies and BCaT Eats events of the semester. Participants of BCaT Applies were provided tips and guidance for updating their resumes and CVs for academic and professional opportunities. Shortly thereafter, BCaT Eats began with wonderful tacos and continued with a collective viewing of Netflix’s popular Black science fiction comedy mystery, They Cloned Tyrone. Thanks to everyone who attended the event. 
We’re excited to announce the BCaT Lab will be launching our podcast during the month of November. The podcast will discuss the Black Digital Migration research project, explore trends in Black popular culture, and engage with the work of leading scholars in the fields of digital studies. We will also be having our BCaT Winter Showcase on November 29, 2023 from 1pm–4pm at Skinner 3115. During this livestream event, we will present outputs from some of our collaborative projects and showcase the work of our fellows from the lab. These presentations will be repeated at the top of the hour. There will be refreshments and good vibes so please stop by.

By Tynesha McCullers