Race, social media, and deviance

Abstract

This chapter is a review of the scholarly work on racist and deviant anti-racist behavior on social media platforms. Racists and anti-racists leverage the affordances of social media for deviant behavior. These affordances are anonymity and connectivity. Deviant behavior is explored along two dimensions. One dimension is the use of communication or rhetoric for deviant purposes. Racists use social media to visit symbolic violence, in the form of hate speech, on racial minorities. Meanwhile, anti-racists use social media rhetorically to develop counterdiscourses that explain social phenomena in non-racist ways. Racists use social media for political purposes to build extremist, far-right groups. Research suggests several ways that social media can be leveraged, but this chapter will focus on the propaganda component. Anti-racists, on the other hand, use social media to support social movements that agitate for racial justice. This chapter ends by identifying avenues for further research. Scholars need to expand their analyses outward from the platforms of Twitter and Facebook. Scholars must also expand their analyses outward from Black Twitter and the Black Lives Matter movement and explore the anti-racist activities of other racial minorities.