By Catherine Knight Steele (UMD) and Alisa Hardy (UMD)

Authors interrogate how Black networks online potentially produce a rhetorical commons and whether the theory and practice of ‘the commons’ adequately make space for the particular historical reality of Black America. To do so, we turn our attention to three social media platforms wherein Black digital praxis meets the possibility of the commons: TikTok, Twitter, and Black Planet considering the affordances of these digital platforms, Black digital praxes, and rhetorical traditions. We argue that contending with a long history of commodification, theft, and misuse on and offline fundamentally changes the utility of a potential Black digital commons.

By Catherine Knight Steele (UMD) and Alex Thomas (UMD)

The authors conduct a critical technocultural discourse analysis of TikTok content creators whose work blurs the lines between appropriation, cosplay, and drag arguing that the affordances of the app make this blurring both possible and profitable.