Black Digital Technologies Reading Group

Guide: Dr. Brooklyne Gipson
Duration: Starting July 5th | Wednesdays, 7-930pm PST | 6 Weeks
Format: Online
Cost: $500.00

This group will read and discuss emergent texts from Black scholars of Critical Race and Digital Studies. The goal is to acquire a deeper understanding of how critical perspectives on race, gender, and digital technology can help us better understand the current hyper-mediated moment we live in. Special attention will be paid to issues related to digital inequity, the spread of racialized misinformation/disinformation, emergent technologies (such as AI, large language modeling software, deep fakes, and facial recognition technology), as well as what’s at stake for Black people, indigenous people, and other people of color. We will conclude by reading Ruha Benjamin’s “Viral Justice” as an impetus for discussing interventions, the next steps, and the role of creativity and imagination in disrupting digital inequality.

As the facilitator for this discussion, Dr. Brooklyne Gipson will suggest readings. However, she will also meet with students before the class begins to discuss what’s covered in each reading and then co-create a syllabus that’s most relevant to the interests of the entire group.

Suggested readings include chapters from the following books:
Safiya Noble Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (2018)
Ruha Benjamin Race After Technology: The New Jim Code (2019)
Ruha Benjamin Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (2022)
Andre Brock Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures (2020)
Catherine Knight Steele Digital Black Feminism (2022)
Legacy Russell Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto (2020)
Raven Maragh Black Networked Resistance: Strategic Rearticulations in the Digital Age (forthcoming, 2023)
Cathy O’Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction (2016)

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Brooklyne Gipson is an assistant professor of Communication and Information Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Gipson is an interdisciplinary scholar whose areas of research include digital and social media environments, Black feminist digital/technology studies, and the intersection of race, gender, social media, and power. Her work examines how social media platforms facilitate civic engagement within Black communities. Her current research takes an intersectional approach to analyzing how anti-Black discourses manifest themselves in everyday discursive exchanges within Black social media spaces.