19 Facts About Black Twitter

Black Twitter is an internet community largely consisting of African-American users on the social network Twitter focused on issues of interest to the black community in the United States.

Kyra Gaunt, an early adopter who participated in Black Twitter who became a social media researcher, shared reactions to black users at the first 140 Characters Conference that took place on November 17,2009, at the O2 Indigo in London.

Furthermore, a 2014 dissertation by Meredith Clark, whom NPR in 2014 called "the go-to person about Black Twitter, studied the topic of African American practice of creating hashtags on Twitter by arguing that most people use them to “test their opinions with the assurance they are being shared within a space where fundamental values are still agreed upon".

Black Twitter explains that users on Black Twitter began to use hashtags as a way to attract members of society with similar ideals to a single conversation in order to interact with each other and feel as though they are engaged in a “safe space”.

Black Twitter argues that hashtags have transitioned from serving as a method of setting up conversation between separate parties to an underlying reason behind how users outside Black Twitter learn about the thoughts and feelings of African Americans in the present world.

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For us, Black Twitter is an electronic medium that allows enough flexibility for uninhibited and fabricated creativity while exhibiting more of the strengths of social media that allow us to build community.

Not everyone on Black Twitter is black, and not everyone who is black is represented by Black Twitter.

Black Twitter writes that race is normally "deeply tied to corporeal signifiers"; in the absence of the body, black users display their racial identities through wordplay and other language that shows knowledge of black culture.

Black Twitter has become an important platform for this performance.

Black Twitter contends that "Twitter's architecture creates participant structures that accommodate the crucial function of the audience during signifyin'".

Many scholars have highlighted how Black Twitter offers a platform for users to share humorous, yet insightful messages.

Dates and Moody-Ramirez noted Black Twitter became the amplifier for a "clap back" culture that was particularly prominent during an era of social unrest.

Black Twitter knows how to make sad situations into something humorous.

When highlighting Black Twitter, it is important to still acknowledge that it is an intersectional space as Black people have intersecting identities that impact how we engage in spaces and counterpublics.

Digital counterpublics like Black Twitter have been important spaces for students to resist white supremacy.

Zimmerman – who had only been arrested and charged after a large-scale social media campaign including petitions circulated on Twitter that attracted millions of signatures – was controversially acquitted that month of charges stemming from the February 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager in Florida.

Black Twitter engaged in a public display of using oral traditions to critique the hierarchy of pop culture.

Gender-specific ways black women are affected by police brutality and anti-Black Twitter violence are highlighted in this movement, including the specific impact black queer women and black trans women encounter.

Jonathan Pitts-Wiley, a former writer for The Root, cautioned in 2010 that Black Twitter was just a slice of contemporary African-American culture.