André Brock
André Brock | |
---|---|
![]() Brock in 2017 | |
Born | André Brock Jr. |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Media studies |
Institutions | Georgia Tech |
Notable works | Distributed Blackness |
André Brock Jr. is an American scholar focusing on Black digital practices and online experiences, including Black Twitter. He is an associate professor of media studies at Georgia Tech.
Career
[edit]Brock earned a bachelor's degree from City College of New York, a Master's degree in English rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon University, and a Ph.D. in library and information science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.[1][2]
Brock was an assistant professor of information science at the University of Iowa from 2007–2013.[2][3] From 2013–2018 he taught as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan.[2] In 2018, he became an associate professor of media studies at Georgia Tech. In 2021, he founded the Project on Rhetoric of Equity, Access, Computation, and Humanities (PREACH) Lab at Georgia Tech with a grant from the University of Michigan.[4]
As a race and digital culture scholar,[5] Brock's research has focused particularly on African Americans' use of new media like Twitter.[6] He is an expert on Black Twitter, which has been a focus of his studies since 2012.[1][7] In an interview for Jason Parham's 2021 Wired series "A People's History of Black Twitter", Brock said of Black Twitter: "Many immigrant communities have a form of signifying. But for some reason, the way Black folk do it on Twitter has really taken off and has really become definitive of what internet culture is."[8] In 2024, he was one of the primary experts for the Hulu docuseries that grew out of the Wired series, titled Black Twitter: A People's History.[1]
Distributed Blackness
[edit]Brock is the author of Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures, published in 2020 by New York University Press. He uses a methodological approach proposed in his earlier work, called Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA), which he describes as a "holistic approach to analyzing technology as discourse, practice, and artifact".[9] He also draws on Jean-François Lyotard's libidinal economy to analyze Black technology use.[10] He argues that "Black folk have made the internet a 'Black space' whose contours have become visible through sociality and distributed digital practice while also decentering whiteness as the default internet identity." A main theme of the book is Black joy as it is expressed and experienced in digital spaces.[9]
Francesca Sobande reviewed Distributed Blackness for Convergence, describing it as "significant and detailed" and important to researchers focused on Black cybercultures and philosophy.[9] Kamilles Gentles-Peart gave the book a "recommended" review in Choice, writing that the book is "one corrective to Western pathologizing and to the misconception of Black subjectivity and agency in online spaces".[11] The book earned a starred review in Booklist.[12] Distributed Blackness earned the 2021 Harry Shaw and Katrina Hazzard-Donald Award for Outstanding Work in African-American Popular Culture Studies from the Popular Culture Association,[13] and the 2021 Nancy Baym Annual Book Award from the Association of Internet Researchers.[14]
Selected works and publications
[edit]Books
[edit]Selected academic works
[edit]- Brock, André; Kvasny, Lynette; Hales, Kayla (2010). "Cultural appropriations of technical capital: Black women, weblogs, and the digital divide". Information, Communication & Society. 13 (7): 1040–1059. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2010.498897. ISSN 1369-118X.
- Brock, André (2011). "'When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong': Resident Evil 5, Racial Representation, and Gamers". Games and Culture. 6 (5): 429–452. doi:10.1177/1555412011402676. ISSN 1555-4120.
- Brock, André (2012). "From the Blackhand Side: Twitter as a Cultural Conversation". Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. 56 (4): 529–549. doi:10.1080/08838151.2012.732147. ISSN 0883-8151.
- Brock, André (2018). "Critical technocultural discourse analysis". New Media & Society. 20 (3): 1012–1030. doi:10.1177/1461444816677532. ISSN 1461-4448.
References
[edit]- ^ a b c Penrice, Ronda Racha (May 14, 2024). "A Georgia Tech professor was featured in Hulu's Black Twitter: A People's History". Atlanta Magazine. Retrieved January 11, 2025.
- ^ a b c Brock, Andre. "André Brock curriculum vitae". André Brock. Retrieved January 11, 2025.
- ^ Guo, Jeff (October 22, 2015). "What people don't get about 'Black Twitter'". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 11, 2025.
- ^ "LMC's André Brock Receives Grant for Lab to Study 'Race, Difference, and Computation'". Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. Georgia Tech. April 28, 2021. Retrieved January 11, 2025.
- ^ Asmelash, Leah (May 30, 2020). "How Karen became a meme, and what real-life Karens think about it". CNN. Retrieved January 11, 2025.
- ^ Douglas, Susan J. (August 26, 2014). "#BlackTwitter and the Revolutionary Power of Horizontal Networks". In These Times. Retrieved January 11, 2025.
- ^ Dwoskin, Elizabeth (August 6, 2023). "Fleeing Elon Musk's X, the quest to re-create 'Black Twitter'". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 11, 2025.
- ^ Parham, Jason (July 15, 2021). "A People's History of Black Twitter, Part I". Wired.
- ^ a b c Sobande, Francesca (2021). "Book Review: Distributed blackness: African American cybercultures". Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. 27 (6): 1833–1835. doi:10.1177/13548565211042228. ISSN 1354-8565.
- ^ Suren, Nora (2021). "Review of Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures by André Brock, Jr. (New York University Press)". Lateral. 10 (2). doi:10.25158/L10.2.21. ISSN 2469-4053.
- ^ Gentles-Peart, Kamille (August 15, 2023). "Understanding Blackness Online: Race and Cyberculture". Choice. 61 (3).
- ^ Williams, Lesley (February 2020). "Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures". Booklist. 116 (11): 6.
- ^ "2021 Literary, Film and Electronic Award Winners" (PDF). Popular Culture Association. Retrieved January 11, 2025.
- ^ "Nancy Baym Annual Book Award". Association of Internet Researchers. Retrieved January 11, 2025.
- 21st-century African-American academics
- 21st-century African-American writers
- 21st-century American academics
- 21st-century American male writers
- 21st-century American writers
- Black studies scholars
- Black Twitter
- Carnegie Mellon University alumni
- City College of New York alumni
- Communication scholars
- Georgia Tech faculty
- Media studies writers
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni
- University of Iowa faculty
- University of Michigan faculty
- Living people