CONFLUING NARRATIVES IN CYBERSPACE: THE DISCOURSES OF YOUTUBE'S BLACK WOMEN DIGITAL INFLUENCERS
Cultural Studies; YouTube; Black Women Influencers; Learning; Pedagogies.
The internet is in permanent connection with heterogeneous contexts and actors, contributing to the emergence and democratization of new spaces for speech, interaction and visibility. This is the terrain from which a phenomenon emerges that associated with new forms of participation and the growing reach of social networks: digital influencers. Among the possible manifestations of this agent, the “youtubers” stand out: content producers who work exclusively or primarily on the YouTube digital platform. This research aims to investigate the role of black digital influencers in the network, understanding their “educational” role in relation to issues of race and gender. In this scenario, the empowerment of black women is a movement that has acquired increasing relevance inside and outside cyberspace. For this reason, it is necessary to understand the interaction of black influencers with networks and the public, observing their limits and possibilities from a formative point of view. As a research problem, it is guided by the following question: “what learning about race and gender are made possible by the content transmitted by channels of black influencers on YouTube?”. The general objective is to investigate the content produced by black digital influencers, understanding how the network acts as a space for building identities and learning about issues related to race and gender.