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Abstract

This study examines how travel influencers Jessica Nabongo and Oneika Raymond use Instagram in a process I call “digital culture bearing,” employing the platform to nurture wisdom about Africa. They combine images, captions, hashtags, and geotags to share information about nations within the African continent with principally Black populations. Employing critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA) to interpret how race, gender, global travel, and cultural knowledge promotion intersect within Instagram, the study analyzes the platform and practices of digital culture bearing, theorizing new ways of understanding how Black women situate themselves in Africa for their online networks. Ultimately, the study offers considerations of what it means to be a culture bearer in the twenty-first century digi-sphere and articulates new conceptualizations of Black internationalism within social networking sites.

Keywords

digital culture bearing Black women travel influencers Instagram

Introduction

On June 5, 2019, travel influencer Oneika Raymond posted a strong message to her Instagram account, @oneikatraveller. The admonition “STOP PICKING UP RANDOM AFRICAN CHILDREN AND POSTING THEM ON INSTAGRAM” began a poignant caption about Western (White) travelers, many of whom are within the travel industry or participate in voluntourism, posing with Black children—“the darker and dustier the child, the more striking the photo”—to reinforce neocolonial narratives of White saviorism in nations with predominantly Black citizens (OneikaTraveller, 2019a). The post reflects the account’s sociocultural milieu. Since beginning @oneikatraveller in 2012, Raymond has used Instagram to discuss anti-Blackness and the lack of cultural awareness in the travel industry; she has frequently narrated her experiences in Black African nations, often bemoaning the dearth of accurate storytelling in travel media. Raymond is not alone in her disdain, as many argue “the ‘Third World’ becomes constructed . . . as both needy yet receptive of aid . . . and also suitably differentiated as the ‘Other’” (Sin & He, 2019, p. 218). Aldrich (n.d.) states, “. . . the travel industry is sorely lacking dialogue, self-awareness, and critique. It is lacking in diversity, in inclusivity, and in fucks given.” Yet, it is not solely the travel industry perpetuating problematic narratives. When former US President Donald Trump made headlines in January 2018 for his “shithole countries” remarks about Haiti and African nations, late Haitian President Jovenel Moïse noted Trump’s statements directly impacted Haiti’s struggling tourism sector (Steinbuch, 2018). Shortly thereafter, travel influencer Jessica Nabongo posted on Instagram a photo of herself luxuriating in Haiti with the hashtag #catchmeinashithole (JessicaNabongo, 2018).

Beliefs about African nations—particularly those with chiefly Black citizenry—as “shitholes” or places with dusty impoverished children in need of rescue have historically pervaded mainstream media and the travel industry. Deploring these pitiful narratives, Hawk (1992) states since

Stanley was sent in search of Livingstone, Africa has been a wild adventure story and it continues to be perceived as such. The images and representations of Africa in the American mind, then, is worse than incomplete, it is inaccurate. (pp. 4–5)

However, the last decade has witnessed the rise of the Black Travel Movement (BTM), a community of travelers using online networks to discuss their travel experiences, including in Black African countries. The BTM consists of individuals, companies, and organizations that spent approximately US$60 billion and US$109.4 billion on travel in 2018 and 2019, respectively (Mandala Research, 2019; MMGY Global, 2020). As influencers within the BTM, Jessica Nabongo and Oneika Raymond have devoted much of their careers to sharing their varied travel around the African continent.

Pinho describes the processes Black tourists explore as they search for authentic African experiences. These tourists, mainly Black women, “conceive of their travels as a means of recovering a lost heritage that they deem crucial for the cultivation of a strong and dignified [B]lack identity in the United States” (Pinho, 2018, p. 144). Pinho (2018) shows how Black women embody the role of “culture bearers” or those who share their experiences—both physical and emotional—in their destinations and cultivate knowledge about them in their home communities (pp. 144–145). Many of these Black women travelers stated “variations of the phrase ‘we bring home the roots’ when explaining the significance of their travels . . .” (Pinho, 2018, p. 144) noting the importance of sharing what they learn with civic organizations, religious groups, family, and friends.

Social networking sites (SNSs) enable Black women like Nabongo and Raymond to showcase their Black African roots and routes. Gill (2020) notes the BTM is the first Black travel phenomenon to develop in our contemporary digi-sphere and Black women have been at the forefront of employing digital media platforms to craft stories about their geo and sociocultural places in the world (p. 399; Steele, 2017). Instagram is an apt space for Black women travelers to connect with and “bring home the roots” for their various networks; “Instagram is not only huge, it is also dynamic since, as with other prominent social media platforms, its architecture is always evolving to adapt to the latest market and cultural trends” (Caliandro & Graham, 2020, pp. 1–2). Because the platform allows a flexible flow with cultural trends, it can be utilized to represent the emotional and physical person and empower the curation of visual archives. Nabongo and Raymond use Instagram to spotlight their internationalism, especially their culture bearing in nations within Black Africa, offering portraits transcending stories where the “tourism industry has adopted a white male gaze perpetuating the acceptance and centering of whiteness through marketing promotional materials . . . press trips, and the influencer economy” (Benjamin & Dillette, 2021, p. 3). Nabongo, one of the first Black women to travel to all 195 UN recognized countries, and Raymond, who as a Travel Channel host has also appeared on and written for a wide range of broadcasts and publications from CNN to Condé Nast Traveler to Oprah Magazine, are digital culture bearers who overturn racist deductions of Black Africa with Instagram posts “that invite affective attunement, support affective investment, and propagate affectively charged expression . . .” (Papacharissi, 2016, p. 308).

This study examines how Nabongo and Raymond use Instagram for a process I call “digital culture bearing,” employing the SNS to nurture wisdom about Africa. Combining arresting imagery, thoughtful captions and hashtags, and precise geotags, the posts function as moments of mass mediated cultural reporting. As such, the influencers are digital culture bearers who use Instagram to elucidate Black African roots and routes. Thus, I analyzed Nabongo’s @jessicanabongo and Raymond’s @oneikatraveller Instagram posts from January 1 to December 31, 2019—1 year before COVID-19’s impact on travel—with one question: How do Nabongo and Raymond employ Instagram as digital culture bearers to communicate nuanced affective messages about Black African nations for their networked communities?

To explore this inquiry, I position Black women’s international movements as political, intellectual, artistic, and affective responses to Black women’s marginalization in travel history to underscore the intersectionality of the lack of inclusivity in travel. In addition, I situate SNS posts alongside travelogues in various media forms, positing them as potent texts for explicating Black women’s travel narratives. Finally, I articulate how Nabongo and Raymond are digital culture bearers who utilize Instagram to tell engrossing stories about Black Africa. Exploring the relationship between Instagram and practices of digital culture bearing, I theorize a new way of understanding how Black women situate themselves within Black Africa for their networks, offer definitions of what it means to be a digital culture bearer, and explore new conceptualizations of Black internationalist discourse within SNSs. I employ critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA), a “multimodal analytic technique” (Brock, 2018, p. 1012) to interpret how race, gender, global leisure travel, and cultural knowledge building intersect within Instagram. Ultimately, the influencers’ images of themselves, local people, landscapes, and cityscapes along with captions, hashtags, and geotags work within Instagram to construct travel routes for their praxes of “bringing home” Black African roots.

Black Women’s Digital Culture Bearing

Nabongo and Raymond’s accounts are part of a rich corpus of texts interpreting Black movements since before the beginnings of global Black enslavement. However, White supremacy has routinely obscured Black travel narratives. Recent renewed interest in the Negro Motorist Green Book, which New York City postal worker Victor Hugo Green published along with his wife Alma Duke Green from 1936 to 1966 as a guide for Black road-trippers in the United States, has illuminated domestic travel history (New York Public Library, n.d.). Also, much research exists on Black internationalism “as the political, intellectual, and artistic movement of Black people, many of whom were and are engaged in a collective struggle to topple white supremacy in its many forms” (Blain et al., 2019 p. 9). Travel stories about Mary McLeod Bethune, Maya Angelou, Lorraine Hansberry, Audley “Queen Mother” Moore, Nina Simone, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and so on, have created a powerful collection of Black women–centric travel artifacts.

Journalists have also contributed to a growing body of work exploring Black travel; while some touches upon the cultural implications of Black internationalism (Chideya, 2014; Pointdujour, 2014), many situate Black travel with presentist language, negating Black travel archives including stories of Black owned travel agencies like Henderson Travel Service (n.d.) founded by Black woman traveler, Freddye Henderson, who began trips for Black Americans to Africa in the 1950s. Though the travel industry has witnessed significant changes over the decades, “one thing has remained—the role of women as leaders in the Black travel industry as well as the dominance of Black women as travelers” (Gill, 2020, p. 405). Despite the BTM’s rise and academic research on Black internationalism, studies exploring travel among Black women is slight though not nonexistent. Research focalizing Black movements “often deemphasize the crucial role [B]lack women have played in the long history of internationalism” (Blain et al., 2019, p. 10).

For example, the Negro Motorist Green Book has elicited attention in recent years with the release of the 2018 Oscar winning White savior feature film Green Book and a fictional rendering of a Black travel guide in the 2020 HBO series Lovecraft Country. Yet, very little has been written about Alma Duke Green’s contributions. Discussions have centered her husband Victor despite Alma’s efforts with launching the book and her multi-year service as its editor; after Victor’s death in 1960, the Green Book continued publication for an additional 6 years. Martinez (2019) notes,

In the age in which Alma lived, African American women’s voices and experiences were suppressed by the double burden of racism and sexism. Alma’s role in the Green Book was never outlined or highlighted, establishing the tradition that it was trivial. (A Bit of History, para. 20)

Deemed insignificant as a Black woman, Alma’s erasure is a paradigm that continues.

Little is known about the late Regina Fraser and Patricia Johnson who hosted the PBS series Grannies on Safari (GOS) from 2006 to 2010, winning an Emmy in 2008 and a Telly in 2007 (GranniesOnSafari, n.d.; History of Black Travel Timeline, n.d.-a). Fraser and Johnson paved the way for Black women travel hosts like Raymond and Travel Channel host Kellee Edwards. Likewise, Woni Spotts’ travel history has been ignored in travel discourse. While Nabongo has been credited as the first Black woman to visit all 195 UN nations, recent reports note Spotts—who completed her documented journey (airline and other transportation records, US State Department documents, and passport stamps) in September 2018, 1 year prior to Nabongo—was indeed the first, a claim Nabongo denies (History of Black Travel Timeline, n.d.-b, para. 3). Much of Spotts’ travel took place during the 1970s and 1980s, before the era of SNSs, brand sponsorship, and mainstream attention (BlackTravelAlliance, 2022; Pointdujour, 2020, paras 4–6). GOS and Spotts are affecting representations of Black women’s diminishment and the power of websites and SNS accounts like the History of Black Travel and Black Travel Alliance to reposition them from the periphery to the foundation of Black travel history.

Therefore, I operationalize this study on three fronts. First, I situate Black women’s internationalism as political, intellectual, artistic, and affective responses to their intersectional marginalization in travel discourse. Second, I place SNS posts alongside news media, memoir, and scholarly literature, positioning them as legitimate texts for understanding how Black women portray their movements. Finally, I show how Nabongo and Raymond use Instagram to amplify Black Africa in their role as digital culture bearers providing digitally curated situational data that embraces their affective attunement to Africa.

I combine tenets of Black internationalism and culture bearing to define digital culture bearing for the first time here as the global political, intellectual, artistic, and affective movements of Black people, many of whom are engaged in a collective struggle to overthrow White supremacy in its many forms, designed to foster international cultural knowledge for their online networks. Digital culture bearing activities include

sharing cultural, historical, and social information about a place;

sharing images and/or videos illuminating people, environment, food, and so on;

affectively addressing ideologies about a place and/or addressing the power of travel to expand cultural knowledge;

including hashtags and geotags positioning the content within a platform-specific archive, thus incorporating posts within a larger content cadre about the location or issue.

I assert digital culture bearing can be applied to different marginalized communities and online activities tangentially about travel as disabled, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, (questioning), intersex, asexual, and (agender) (LGBTQIA+), and so on, individuals can participate in culture bearing, sharing information that may challenge ideas about mobility. Also, digital culture bearing can include other practices such as reposting/retweeting/sharing others’ content and responding to users’ comments. Yet, the four methods established here encompass the crux of how I conceptualize digital culture bearing; they provide a framework for analyzing the influencers’ Instagram world building.

Mapping Black African Routes and Roots

To interpret how @jessicanabongo and @oneikatraveller exemplify digital culture bearing, it is necessary to examine how Black African routes are situated. Gilroy (1993) argues the Black African Diaspora, or “Black Atlantic” is in continuous flux; hybridity and cultural renewal are the mechanisms of migration and the desire to return to one’s cultural roots/repossess the homeland is nil. Cultural connectivity is the heart of Nabongo and Raymond’s digital culture bearing; repossessing cultural roots is important as Nabongo is a first-generation Ugandan American and Raymond is a Black Jamaican Canadian living in New York. Their identities are a sign of progress and paradox, a binary they expose in itineraries around a Black Africa which defies neat definitions. Boyce Davies (2008) asserts Black Africa “can be seen as a kind of harvest of peoples, cultures, and knowledge” coming through Black people or “internationalization of African peoples created through centuries of migration” (p. xxxiii). I argue culture for people of Black African descent can be considered in terms of progress and degeneration, triumph and trauma, and cultural hybridity and rootedness. These binaries may seem to diminish Black Africa through insipid essentialism; yet, they are a point of reference for studying Nabongo and Raymond

Predominantly Black African nations are the locus of their digital culture bearing. Multiple generations have reterritorialized traditions to create distinct cultures maintained throughout the practices of enslavement, colonization, and neocolonization. This conceptualization comprises African countries not principally European or Middle Eastern influenced. While Nigeria or Cameroon is considered here, Morocco and Tunisia are not because Middle Eastern and European culture have mostly shaped their national identities and citizenries. This is in no way to undermine the Black cultural matrix in these nations. Instead, I focalize the influencers’ digital culture bearing for nations they deem culturally resonate.

Dillette (2021) suggests BTM influencers promote travel within Black Africa to “creat[e] a safe space for Diasporic Africans to explore the roots of their identity through travel” (p. 413). Cultural resonance is the core motivation; travelers visit a location to connect to a homeland, real or imagined (Ebron, 2002; Timothy & Teye, 2004). Black roots tourism is viewed as Pan-African or as solidarity between people of Black African descent. This neutralizes the sociocultural differences between Black identified people, yet Schramm (2010) notes Black Africa roots tourism “builds on the assumption of a shared heritage and as such combines a personal identity quest with collective political aspirations” (p. 21). The influencers’ digital culture bearing exemplifies Black cultural pilgrimage by proxy using Instagram for cultural mimesis, Pan-African representations “reasserting, reaffirming or perpetuating” Black African heritage (Timothy & Teye, 2004, p. 112).

Influencer and Researcher Positionality

To explain why I study Nabongo and Raymond, it is fitting to situate my identities. I am a middle-aged (mid-40s) Black queer disabled larger-bodied cisgender woman. I grew up in a working-class family in rural Virginia; I am a first-generation college graduate and the first in my family to earn a doctoral degree (2016). My first experiences with travel were on church bus trips for outlet shopping, out of state church services, and Black theater productions paid for on installment plans. My first international experience was Canada during a trip to Niagara Falls. I did not fly until age 23 and received a passport at 32. To date, I have visited 40 countries, mostly through a budget traveling friend’s guidance. My interest in travel research began in 2015 during a graduate cultural tourism class. At the time, I was investigating Black African immigrants using SNSs to acculturate to the United States. I thus came across Ugandan-American Nabongo as I also researched African “homecomings” for the course. Nabongo led me to Raymond.

I initially believed they were upper-class travelers before digging into their backgrounds.

As I viewed their Instagram content, I noticed a shift from their beginnings in 2012. Much of their early content appears to be selfies and group photos; by 2016, their visuals had changed. Gone were the light-hearted selfies, airline ticket stubs, and suitcase contents. Stylized portraits of themselves in colorful sophisticated clothing (even T-shirts, denim, and sneakers), perfect hair, and impeccable makeup (including beautiful red lipstick) against pronounced backdrops or luxury lodgings emerged possessing the look of professional travel photography. Whereas their experiences had previously appeared suited for aspiring (perhaps budget) travelers likely captured with mobile phones or small digital cameras, their high concept turn situate them in much the same way as the mainly White travelers in Condé Nast Traveler or Travel + Leisure. The message is unmistakable; Black folx travel too, countering the idea of travel as a pastime mainly for privileged White people. However, the images reveal little financial information. Raymond does include captions about how she travels on a budget and Nabongo mentions receiving accommodation comps and crowdsourcing her UN 195 journeys. They both left jobs to pursue full-time travel. Nabongo worked in corporate America and later nongovernmental organizations (NGOs; Asare, 2020). Raymond taught in secondary schools (OneikaRaymond, n.d.).

Thus, I noted their travel activism against recognizable travel photography aesthetics and seeming White-centric capitalist privilege. Raymond frequently spoke about racist experiences traveling with her White German husband. Nabongo’s 2018 tiff with the Four Seasons Resort-Nevis (whose management refused to comp her stay after asserting that her followers—Black people—were not in line with their luxury clientele) highlighted how brands dismiss Black travelers (Nabongo, 2018). The two actively discussed their desire to change the face of the travel industry and their SNS currency grew. Other Black women travelers’ influence has grown like Travel Noire founder Zim Flores, Nomadness Travel Tribe founder Evita Robinson, and ABC Travel Green Book creator Martinique Lewis, yet Nabongo and Raymond are most visible. Thus, I chose to study Nabongo and Raymond because of their follower bases—currently 206,000+ for @jessicanabongo and @oneikatraveller at 171,000+—and their focalizing Black Africa from a point of view missing in travel media at a greater frequency than the others possibly because of their immigrant roots.

Method

Between mid-2020 and early 2021, I viewed posts dating January 1 to December 31, 2019 having previously observed their activism after Trump’s 2018 “shithole countries” remarks (Arthur, 2021). I was curious if their African storytelling continued into 2019 as Nabongo completed her quest to visit the UN 195 and the Society of American Travel Writers named Raymond’s OneikaTheTraveler.com the 2018 Best Travel Blog. It did. Having read Pinho’s work, I began associating the influencers with culture bearing and started formulating the digital culture bearing theory. As such, I focused on posts in @jessicanabongo and @oneikatraveller feeds, excluding Reels (short videos designed to mimic TikTok introduced on August 5, 2020), IGTV videos, and Stories (content that disappears within 24 hr). A total pool of 477 posts with 296 in Nabongo’s account and 181 in Raymond’s materialized. Furthermore, I analyzed posts from Black Africa, leading to 134 posts with 111 in @jessicanabongo and 23 in @oneikatraveller representing 29 nations (Table 1).

Table 1.

Nations Represented in the Data Pool.

Account	Nations	Total nations/Total posts
@jessicanabongo	Ghana, Seychelles, Nigeria, Senegal, Kenya, Namibia, Cote D’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Liberia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Angola, Congo, Sudan, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Chad, Djibouti, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Malawi, South Sudan	27/111
@oneikatraveller	Ghana, Senegal, Uganda	3/23
Totals	29	29/134

In 2019, Nabongo visited multiple African nations during her quest for the UN 195; this explains the larger post count. As both are known for posting #latergrams (days, weeks, or months after travel) and reposting, the overall pool could include reposts and #latergrams. This is insignificant as this study is not about when they traveled but how they use Instagram to ideologically frame their journeys as culture bearing.

As such, CTDA is a potent resource for studying digital culture bearing. CTDA enables a judicious consideration of the “interactions between technology, cultural ideology, and technology practice” using a critical cultural framework—like digital culture bearing—exploring the signs, signifiers, and symbols within the sociocultural discourse of the examined group and those within the technological platform (Brock, 2018, p. 1013). CTDA is a “plug and play” (Brock, 2018, p. 1016) archetype for internet research if the theory employed reflects the cultural and social positions of those whose online behaviors are analyzed. CTDA supports evaluations of

SNS interfaces, design and features, and how subscribers use the technology to conceive and/or replicate original narratives;

users’ digital practices, or how they employ the platform to convey messages;

the ideologies users embody, reify, and/or refute.

CTDA allows analytical overlap; I regard features like caption(ing), hashtag(ging), geotag(ging), upload(ing), and so on, as technologies (nouns) and technology practices (verbs) stressing (in)conspicuous ideologies.

For instance, a January 2, 2019 post features Nabongo in traditional adornments of Namibia’s Himba women. She stands bare chested in headdress and skirt before a mud hut with tools scattered on the ground. The caption states,

In December 2017, some friends and I traveled to Namibia. While driving north, we stopped to purchase some goods from women of the Himba tribe. Using my driver as an interpreter, I asked if they would dress me in their traditional dress. They obliged and were excited and this was the result. Travel for me is about deep cultural dives and this was truly one of my favorite memories from this journey. #catchmeinnamibia. (JessicaNabongo, 2019a)

A repeat of a 2018 post Instagram removed for nudity, it is one example of Nabongo as a digital culture bearer. Her repost and proclamation about diving into culture a year after Trump allegedly stated Africans “would never go back to their ‘huts’” (Davis et al., 2018, para. 1) is powerful. Nabongo portrays the clothing and hut as desirable for herself, other travelers, and the Himba. Here, Instagram is a mechanism of resistance and cultural affirmation.

CTDA evaluation of the post would include (1) how Nabongo used Instagram’s affordances to conceive a message, (2) how she used them to convey the message, and (3) the ideologies condoned and/or countered in the message. Combining CTDA with digital culture bearing elucidates the theory’s four main processes. First, Nabongo shares sociocultural information about Namibia’s Himba people. Second, she uploaded an image foregrounding Himba dress, lodging, environment, and tools. Third, she discusses her response to the experience of the women dressing her, thus addressing travel’s ability to expand culture. Finally, Nabongo includes a geotag to place the post within an Instagram archive for Namibia, potentially raising its visibility. Intrinsically, the image, caption, Namibia geotag, and #catchmeinnamibia communicate the Himba people’s viability, condone the Himba lived experience, and counter ideologies about their lack of Western (White) modernity.

Hence, CTDA poses a balanced procedure for analyzing Instagram digital culture bearing. Therefore, I examined @jessicanabongo and @oneikatraveller with one question:

RQ1. How do Nabongo and Raymond employ Instagram as digital culture bearers to communicate nuanced affective messages about Black African nations for their networked communities?

I visualized theory and method as such (Figure 1):

Figure 1.

CTDA methodological overview.

Moving and still travel images not only signify places, cultures, and histories (Urry, 1995), but also the “politics of self-presentation” (Urry & Larsen, 2011, p. 213). Locations are synergistically connected to people as they reify their social identities (Yeh, 2009). This is true of Nabongo and Raymond, two Black women who boldly discuss racism’s impact on Black African storytelling. Their striking images have gained them many followers, likely because of their proximity to luxe photography in mainstream media. Consequently, I focused analysis on the images, captions, hashtags, and geotags they share as digital culture bearers.

CTDA analysis revealed 10 coding categories: (1) portraits, (2) landscape images, (3) cityscape images, (4) food/drink photos, (5) cultural history captions about the location, (6) captions bemoaning the location’s inaccurate representation, (7) captions discussing cultural issues/problems, (8) location hashtags, (9) cultural issues/problems hashtags, and (10) geotags. My goal was to determine how the influencers manipulate Instagram to generate travel routes elucidating their bringing home Black African roots. Upon close inspection, three types of still and moving images emerged: posed and in situ portraits of the influencers, landscapes, and cityscapes. Here, portraits (N = 86, @jessicanabongo—67, @oneikatraveller—19) feature the influencer posing for the camera or participating in local activities. Landscape and cityscape photos and videos include natural areas, streets, people, architecture, and/or monuments. They are combined here (N = 47, @jessicanabongo—42, @oneikatraveller—6) because their epistemological and ontological functions are the same. One food/drink post was not analyzed because it discussed Nabongo’s efforts to avoid weight gain.

Findings

Portraits, landscapes, and cityscapes content resists incorrect narratives about Black Africa, provides new stories through the influencers’ lenses, and becomes artifacts indicating relationships with a nations’ sociocultural worlds (Pink, 2001; Sin & He, 2019). A refined interpretation of their behaviors must reflect how Nabongo and Raymond stage their roots travel activism or their desire to break down location stereotypes. Their posts support digital connections between them, their content, and the locations, thereby bolstering Black Africa’s cultural muscle. This is the root of their digital culture bearing.

Influencer Portraits

A January 19, 2019 @oneikatraveller post features a photo of Raymond in Makola Market in Accra, Ghana. Raymond wears a blue romper with spaghetti straps and dark sunglasses and stands before a wall of patterned cloth. The caption begins with a quote from Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of independent Ghana, “I am not African because I was born in Africa but because Africa was born in me” (OneikaTraveller, 2019b, para. 1). Raymond asks her audience if Ghana is in their travel plans and explains why it should be. She states, “400 years after the first enslaved Africans arrived in the USA, the Ghanaian government has proclaimed 2019 the Year of Return and is inviting members of the diaspora to visit and reconnect with their roots” (OneikaTraveller, 2019b, para. 2).

Raymond employed Instagram’s affordances to upload an image of herself in Accra, the nation’s capital, using the Makola Market geotag. Clicking on the geotag reveals thousands of Makola Market posts. The Nkrumah quote communicates pride in Black African heritage; the caption condones this pride and encourages Black African descendants to visit Ghana. Hence, Raymond crafts (affordances), conveys (practice), and condones a message (ideology) about Ghana and its allure as a travel destination. The portrait and caption depict a popular market and discuss the potential knowledge building of a Black African homecoming, thus exemplifying the power of digital culture bearing. The post’s elements—the geotag, image, and caption—are digital culture bearing tools enabling an empowering message for the influencer and her audiences. Because Raymond encourages Black potential travelers—and those who have already visited—to see Ghana, the travelers could use their own experiences to participate in digital culture bearing. Therefore, the post invites users to forge routes to bring home the roots for their own online communities.

Essentially, the portrait is not a simplistic Instagram humble brag. Raymond’s journey is a reclamation of her imagined Black African home, a part of her unapologetically repossessing roots stripped from multiple generations of Black African descendants around the world. Yet, even as this post and a March 6, 2019 post with Raymond posed before a wall bearing a painting of the Ghanaian flag (OneikaTraveller, 2019d) deliver key socio-historical information, they offer nothing about her journey there, accommodations, and the resources she employed to navigate Ghana. Instead, she encourages audiences to visit her blog for Ghana tips. Her blog suggestions discuss the price of flights and a visa, call accommodations “pricey,” and reveal her group paid US$100 per day for a private driver (OneikaTheTraveller, n.d.-b). Still, it does not offer a total cost statement for the entire trip, a point that may leave some believing they cannot afford the journey.

Nevertheless, her Ghana Instagram posts make Raymond a digital culture bearer. Her storytelling is rooted in her desire to educate her networks and rallies them to travel there, enthusiastically saying in the March 6th post, “ . . . Ghana welcomes you with open arms” (OneikaTraveller, 2019d, para. 1). Yet, this and the January 19th post articulate an ideology beneath Raymond’s digital culture bearing zeal; Ghana travel is reserved for people possessing the cultural, social, and financial capital to plan and pay for the trip. In this regard, the posts are palimpsests divulging Black progress and paradox. Black travelers are exploring the world in sizable numbers, but there are some left out of or behind the BTM. Accordingly, Raymond’s position as a BTM digital culture bearer is solidified; her sojourns expose how far Black travelers have come and how far we have to go.

Landscapes and Cityscapes

Similarly, in an April 6, 2019 @jessicanabongo post from Bangui, Central African Republic (CAR), Nabongo emphasizes the importance of bringing home accurate information to combat stereotypes. Nabongo uploaded five Bangui cityscape photos, two including herself, as Instagram allows up to 10 photos and/or 1-min videos in a post. One photo depicts a woman with a baby strapped to her back appearing to cross a street. Another shows locals riding atop a transport truck, while pedestrians walk nearby, and a third shows a woman walking a street with a bucket on her head. The two photos with Nabongo portray her walking a residential street and her riding a motorcycle taxi with a local. The post’s photos are striking for a few reasons. First, they do not proclaim Bangui as a place of despondency. Second, no huts, no wildlife, and no depictions of what could be considered violent such as armed civilians and soldiers—images associated with Africa—are included. Finally, each image is presented as natural; Nabongo’s “intersection of gazes” (Crang, 1997, p. 361) as Ugandan-American is focused on in situ moments countering ideologies about Black Africa in general and the CAR specifically.

The caption states she has “heard so many terrible things about CAR from people who’ve been (none of them African ) but I couldn’t see the same thing as I explored” (JessicaNabongo, 2019b, para. 1). She explains the importance of African descendants “telling OUR stories because we cannot sit back and let others control the narrative” (JessicaNabongo, 2019b, para. 2). Rounding out the caption with a discussion of stereotypes and political motivations for labeling nations US Department of State Level 4 “Do Not Travel,” Nabongo admonishes as “ridiculous” the “writing off entire countries,” (JessicaNabongo, 2019b, para. 5). Thus, the caption, images, geotag, and hashtag enable affective attunement through cultural information describing CAR as a possible travel destination.

Focusing on travel’s interactional power, a February 28, 2019 @oneikatraveller post is structured around locals Raymond met during Uganda travel. She begins with the Richard Mullin quote, “The only man I envy is the man who has not been to Africa—for he has so much to look forward to” (OneikaTraveller, 2019c, para. 1). Describing her interactions with different Ugandans; she notes,

Don’t get me wrong—the scenery and wildlife were thrilling. But the continent is so much more than its physical beauty. My tour brought me through homes, markets, governmental buildings, and national parks, which in turn gave me access to people.

They were from all walks of life: small business owners, guides, parents, students, and officials. One of the things I love about traveling this way is seeing how people live and taking the time to learn about what they value; to discover what brings them joy and discuss the things they fear. (OneikaTraveller, 2019c, para. 3)

The caption effectively accompanies the post’s five images. The first is a portrait of an elderly woman standing with Raymond in what appears to be a wood thatched home. The woman is smiling brightly wearing blue and yellow African print dress, beads, and head wrap; Raymond stands behind the elder with her hands on the woman’s shoulders. Subsequent photos show a younger woman in the forest, a man inside a hut holding a human skull, a woman weaving while another holds a baby, and an official holding up a tree branch.

Simply put, the post can be examined for how and what is conceived, conveyed, condoned, and countered in relation to digital culture bearing. Raymond shares snapshots of life in Bigodi, Kyenjojo, Uganda and underscores the importance of engaging with locals. The caption, geotag, and hashtag, #shareblackstories, bolster knowledge and share cultural, historical, and social information about the Ugandans she met while affectively addressing why Africa should not be considered a safari and scenery tourist trap. Not only does the post address a Uganda visit’s cultural possibilities, it also includes a specific geotag and #shareblackstories placing Raymond’s content within platform archives about Uganda and Black storytelling. Thus, the post situates Raymond as a digital culture bearer.

Unlike Raymond who routinely encourages audiences to travel, Nabongo does not encourage visiting CAR. In fact, a second post from Bangui on April 7 renders additional photos of vendors selling baguettes and coffee, a barbershop, people at work, Nabongo at a taxi stand, and Nabongo posing with locals under an umbrella. She states, “My goal for this journey is to bring you images of the countries I visit and offer a different narrative” (JessicaNabongo, 2019d, para. 4). Nabongo positions herself as a digital culture bearer and arbiter of CAR knowledge. Her clothes and demeanor make her stand out from the locals. Close analysis of both posts shows her change from black studded boots to bright orange sneakers emphasizing her separateness.

Though she ends the second post with “Total spent $769.85” (JessicaNabongo, 2019d), there is no breakdown of transportation, lodging, food, visa, or other incidental costs. CAR appears to be inexpensive; however, it is potentially deceptive as Nabongo does not reveal how she arrived in CAR (Plane? Train? Automobile?) or how long she stayed. Neither does she state how she paid for the journey. At this point in 2019, Nabongo was wrapping up her UN 195 quest and was arguably nation bouncing for passport stamps and Instagram photo ops. Thus, her presence in CAR is too a sign of progress and paradox; as a Black Ugandan-American, she is a child of Africa and a privileged Westerner. Nabongo can claim Pan-African Black cultural connection and rootedness, but her US citizenship makes her a resourced outsider. Unequivocally, her storytelling and digital culture bearing is keen and purposeful. Focusing on people and everyday life, she relays knowledge challenging xenophobic and White-centric ideas about CAR as a war zone. In addition, she insists upon Black African people—mostly herself—telling their own stories. In this regard, Nabongo takes on the role of a digital culture bearer working to change perceptions about the continent while seemingly believing some in her network are unlikely to #catchherincentralafricanrepublic and themselves become digital culture bearers.

Conclusion

The words “This journey isn’t for you, it’s for us” a quote from Dabia Keita begins the caption for a @jessicanabongo post describing the last day of her Bamako, Mali trip (JessicaNabongo, 2019c, para. 1). She says when a local photographer shared her story with friends, the people were confused; she explains,

. . . I told them because when many people think of Africans and [B]lack people in general they think of poverty, violence and migrants and I want to change that image, by showing a [B]lack person who is traveling as a tourist and also by sharing the stories of the countries that I visit and showing them in a way that the world is not used to seeing. (JessicaNabongo, 2019c, para. 2)

She says when Keita said the words beginning the caption, she began to cry. Two images and a video of Nabongo with Keita and four others in Bamako’s marketplace along with the caption describing Mali’s emotional and intellectual impact and #catchmeinmali are the essence of digital culture bearing. By outlining her experiences and discussing travel’s power to combat stereotypes, Nabongo pulls her Instagram network into her world. She ends with the words “THIS IS OUR JOURNEY” (JessicaNabongo, 2019c), acknowledging her travel is not just about flexing for the ‘Gram; it is digital culture bearing designed to show the freedom possible through learning and sharing Black cultural roots.

Papacharissi (2015) notes people have always endeavored to exert semantic agency “by trying to determine how their personal narrative connects to normative and evolving narratives for understanding the world—that is, social experiences in the making” (p. 136). Cultural journeys for Nabongo and Raymond are personal, political, and social; digital culture bearing orients them in a world of their own making, one seeking to communicate personal influence on the technologies and technology practices illuminating their world building. Ultimately, these and other Black women travelers are “claiming their place in the world without apology by expanding the contours and geography of freedom movements through their creative use of visual and digital media” (Gill, 2020, p. 400). However, these movements are not without flaws.

As mentioned, Nabongo and Raymond enjoy financial and passport privilege and access to resources enabling them to travel relatively unencumbered, access the internet, and post on SNSs. While their Instagram posts have an activist lens built to overturn the supremacy within the White travel gaze, they do not address the White-centric capitalist frame enabling their movements and preventing or limiting travel for those without similar resources. Nabongo does not frequently discuss her travel finances, though she does own and operate the boutique travel firm The Nabongo List (formerly Jet Black) for which she has received complimentary services. Recently, she launched a luxury line of fashion and home décor called The Catch while penning a memoir titled The Catch Me If You Can scheduled for a June 2022 release. Undoubtedly, Nabongo has established herself as a luxury brand, an identity beyond many in her audience.

While Raymond’s blog includes a post titled “How I Afford My Bucket List Trips,” she exposes an unconsciousness of her privilege—and possibly chastising—within the post. She states,

Here’s my big ‘secret’: while I’m not rich, I tend to allocate the money I do have to trips and experiences. This means that instead of spending money on the latest smartphone or a designer purse, I save it for bucket list adventures abroad . . . (OneikaTheTraveller, n.d.-a, para. 10)

Despite stating she is not rich, she points to behaviors her finances enable—purchasing smartphones and designer handbooks which can cost thousands of dollars. She dissociates herself from those who buy these items instead of airline tickets and lodgings, thereby placing social value on her willingness to “sacrifice” for travel.

The influencers’ privilege is evident; they are often immaculately dressed, groomed, and staged in acute difference from locals. Onlookers might view the posts as Instagram flexing, even if the influencers do not see them as such. Nabongo and Raymond may appear to be relatable, but their presence in Black African locations can emphasize their advantages and heighten their outsider/Western-centrism. Also, both appear to travel with able bodies and age, thin, and hetero-privilege. Neither routinely talks about the physical ability required for frequent travel, nor do they discuss how they may be perceived as young, thin, and hetero. Raymond’s White German husband often accompanies her; her marriage may shield her from the harm LGBTQIA+ individuals may experience during travel, especially in Africa which possesses many nations with stark anti-LGBTQIA+ laws.

One striking example of how age, global history, and digital social presence impacts the influencers’ thinking exists in Nabongo’s dispute of Woni Spotts’ claim to be the first Black woman to visit the UN 195. Nabongo said,

I read some of her interviews and it has become clear that Ms. Spotts has not visited every country in the world . . . she has not visited the current list of UN member countries, recently noting on Twitter that she visited the USSR and Yugoslavia, but not the independent countries as they stand today. (Diskin, 2019, para. 2)

Nabongo couches Spotts’ travel in presentist terms, eliding (or dismissing?) the older woman’s 1970s–1980s era travel around and through countries and regions with different borders today, a time before Instagram. Spotts stated,

I was personally shocked that people actually believed Black women traveling began on Instagram, ignoring the Black woman that traveled before them . . . I never viewed travel as a race to win a title or make history. I wanted acknowledgment, not fame. I felt the need to fight for authentic travelers on and off of social media. There are travelers on social media sharing their sense of curiosity and appreciating global beauty being smothered by a group promoting staged photos and speeding through countries in search of more likes. I refuse to be bullied out of my accomplishments. (Pointdujour, 2020, para. 7)

Chelsea Peterson-Salahuddin (2022) argues as scholars continue exploring how marginalized people—including older folx—participate in “public and counterpublic spheres, centering the intersectional nature of communities is critical when examining the potentiality of these spaces to redress social inequity” (p. 12). To explore how Nabongo and Raymond may compound narratives of socioeconomic inequities, reproduce White-centric travel aesthetics, or qualify ableism, ageism, and heteronormativity would be fecund topics for other studies.

Furthermore, as this study focuses on the two as digital culture bearers, it does not consider audiences’ responses to their content through comments, interactions with the influencers, and conversations between consumers. Another study could explore the influencers’ potential emotional and intellectual impact on their audiences. Though problematic troublesome complexities do exist, Nabongo and Raymond are using Instagram to assert their presence in the global travel-sphere, employing the platform to assert themselves as Black African roots tourists and storytellers. As digital culture bearers, they have created precise methods of representing themselves and Black African nations in digi-cultural and sociocultural structures. By capitalizing on Instagram’s affordances, they flout White supremacist systems that routinely negate Black presence—particularly Black women’s presence—in international travel discourse. Within an increasingly technocultural society, they show how Instagram is a mechanism for injecting a Black cultural frame into travel media that allows them to “bring home the roots” for their myriad audiences.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Tori Omega Arthur

Author Biography

Tori Omega Arthur (PhD, Bowling Green State University) is an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Media Communication at Colorado State University, Fort Collins. Her/Their research utilizes critical cultural and social science theories to explore the intersections of social media, race, gender, disability, sexuality, (im)migration, and cultural tourism; the formations of digital diasporas; and, digital representations of the transnational (im)mobilities of Black people, particularly disabled people, LGBTQIA+ folx, and women.

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