Alternative Voices, Alternative Spaces: Counterhegemonic Discourse in the Blogosphere

Abstract

Abstract:In 21st-century Britain, racial inequality remains deeply embedded in the fabric of society (Institute for Public Policy Research, 2010), and people of colour remain at the margins of the mainstream media that often perpetuate inequalities through misrepresentation or exclusion. This chapter examines how blogs are used by African Caribbean people as a discursive medium through which raced and gendered identities are contested, reconfigured and enacted within the blogosphere. Hailed as a revolutionary, democratic space, the blogosphere also maintains raced and gendered inequalities found offline and reproduces unequal power relations (Cammaerts, 2008;Kellner, 2000;Papacharissi, 2002;Schradie, 2012). Despite such limitations, as this chapter highlights, the blogosphere is still appropriated as a medium for selfrepresentation to cultivate symbolic power through their own constructions of Black identity.2