African Americans and mobile video: exploring Black cultural practice on Vine

This study explores Black cultural practice on the mobile video platform Vine, a six-second micro-video editing mobile application. The purpose of this research is to critically examine how African Americans embraced social video through Vine and how Black cultural practice is enacted within the political economy of the mobile video landscape. This dissertation employs the use of Qualitative Content Analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) as a means of systematic yet adaptive exploration of the cultural phenomena transpiring in Vine videos, and Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (Brock, 2018) to establish context and meanings of the descriptions that emerge through the content analysis. The analysis demonstrates Vine videos produced by Black users were important to Vine’s success. Videos fall into the following categories: everyday life, celebrity cameo, content remix, Black boy joy, comedy & jokes “the dozens”, music & dance, tech-speak, and socio-cultural commentary. Black content creators leveraged punchy storytelling to compel the world’s internet users to watch and adopt Vine. This practice is defined as Black digital efficacy in the study, the process by which technology is given direction, labor, and Black aesthetics to propel it forward.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Information Sciences

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2021

Author dc:creator

• Nance, Kinyetta

Contributors dc:contributor

• Noble, Safiya U
• Smith, Linda C
• Chan, Anita Say
• Magee, Rachel M

• African Americans
• Mobile
• Video
• Technology
• Vine
• Micro Video
• Digital Media
• Cultural Practice
• Distributed Blackness
• Black
• Social Media
• Black Twitter
• Tik Tok
• Clubhouse

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2021 Kinyetta Nance

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/110457

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/110457