SXSW 2012

"Black Twitter" has captured the imagination of the online world. In 2010, a Pew Research Study highlighted trends demonstrating Twitter usage was disproportionately Black and female. Next, journalists for Slate, The Huffington Post, Time, etc., began to explore and analyze the world of "Black Twitter" and kept getting most of it wrong. The fascination continues; but explorations into "what Black people are doing on Twitter" tend to get it wrong, most of the time. Like the innovation of Hip Hop, Black Twitter shows that despite the seeming universality of technology, people and culture matter. This session will demonstrate the "Black Twitter" phenomenon's intelligence, humor, unique language production, emoticons, hashtags, corrective narratives, cultural critique, organizing and entrepreneurial success, enhanced by fictive kin relationships that stun, amaze and inspire the world. Learn from an American / Africana Studies scholar, artist and activist writing a book on "Black Twitter.”