Black Twitter as “Master” Social Architects: Maintaining Online Community Boundaries Through the Production of Time and Place

Abstract

This study explores how Black Twitter, an online community of Black users, creates a place for itself online and how the historical positioning of Black populations worldwide informs the users’ placemaking practices. Using an online ethnography and Brock’s Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis, I analyzed how Black Twitter users communicate to create a sense of place on the platform. Findings indicate that Black users experience time on social media in layered ways, such that they blend historical and contemporary cultural experiences to connect with one another and defend against outsiders. Extending previous work that examines Black Twitter as a cultural formation, this study explores two dimensions: (1) how Black users’ temporal practices challenge notions of digital behavior that reduce user agency and (2) how users perform boundary work by using the platform to defend themselves from outside influences. For example, #YourSlipisShowing enabled Black users to call attention to accounts posing as Black users, effectively turning a platform feature into a defense method. In addition, Black users often call on their collective memory to identify community members through shared cultural experiences and emotional connection. In some ways, Twitter supports the process of collective memory (re)production and engagement through platform features, such as retweets and non-chronological timelines. These observations offer additional frameworks for analyzing community maintenance and agency within hostile digital spaces.

“Master” Social Architects: Black Twitter Users’ Production of Time and Place Online

Black people have often been positioned as “placeless” (McKittrick, 2006), as their experience of displacement, oppression, and marginalization guides Black geographies, places where Black people occupy, to be viewed as both a site of oppression and resistance (McKittrick, 2013). Despite historical and contemporary systems of oppression, such as enslavement, segregation, and gentrification, that attempt to render Black people without a stable “place” or “home,” Black people have continuously engaged in creative placemaking practices that reinforce their sense of belonging and collective identity (Brock, 2020; La Brie, 1973; Steele, 2017; Suggs, 1983; Wolseley, 1990).

Black placemaking is not about an “undifferentiated blackness,” but rather about the act of, “asserting black people’s presence,” as they come to interact and connect in space (Hunter et al., 2016, p. 39). The intersections of the Black experience cross gender, class, citizenship and the like, making room for unity and difference. Writer Gwendolyn Brooks (1980) reflects on this unifying of the Black experience as she writes:

Blackness

is a title,

is a preoccupation,

is a commitment Blacks

are to comprehend—

and in which you are to perceive your Glory.

. . .

The word Black has geographic power,

pulls everybody in:

Blacks here—

Blacks there—

Blacks wherever they may be. (Primer for Blacks)

Much of Black online culture emerges from this type of geography—the idea that Black geography occurs globally in a multitude of shifting and culturally perceivable ways.

The intersection of Black populations and digital culture has undergone extensive investigation, especially as it relates to online and offline political movement, collective action, fandom, and entertainment (Bonilla & Rosa, 2015; Brock, 2012; Chatman, 2017; Williams & Gonlin, 2017). From these studies, scholars demonstrate how online spaces can offer Black, and other under-resourced, communities a place to engage with those of like identities and offer social and informational support. Specifically, many of these studies have taken up Twitter (currently known as X²), as their site of study of Black activity, like in response to highly visible movements like Black Lives Matter and the noted desire of Black users to make a positive difference in the Black community via instrumental use of social media (Hui et al., 2023; Lee-Won et al., 2018; McLeod et al., 2024).

In the process of studying Black Twitter, scholars have come to describe it as a community of networked social relations. Florini (2014) deliberately states, “Just as there is no ‘Black America’ or single ‘Black culture’, there is no ‘Black Twitter.’ What does exist are millions of Black users on Twitter networking, connecting, and engaging with others” (p. 225). Yet, instances of Twitter users utilizing concrete, place-based language to describe their experiences online already exist. For example, Weiwei, artist and political provocateur, states, “Twitter is my city, my favorite city” (Landreth & Weiwei, 2012). This sentiment is echoed by a Black Twitter user when they mention, “Twitter is big. Like, really big. And segregated like shit. We joke about Black Twitter and the online community aspect, but trust me, it’s ‘neighborhoods’ on this app yeen [you have] never seen” (Coldchain Jr. 2019). Furthermore, there seemed to be some contradiction when considering the social and political organizing power attributed to Black communities online (Freelon et al., 2018) and the lack of “digital skills” possessed by Black populations. This suggests that there is a theoretical distance between the site as experienced by its users and those seeking to study the phenomena that occur there. Therefore, this research project aims to understand: (1) How do Black Twitter users create and maintain a sense of “place” in a digital environment? (2) What role does temporal orientation play in their boundary work? and (3) How do these practices reflect historical and cultural strategies of Black resilience?

Literature Review

Black Geographies and Digital Placemaking

McKittrick (2013) asserts that the plantation stands as a racial formation capable of traversing time and space, that “remarks upon, legacies of normalized racial violence” (McKittrick, 2011, p. 950) and originated at the start of enslavement. To pursue a “New” World, those of the Old World (Europeans) first had to mark everywhere else as uninhabited or as the “lands of no one” (2013, p. 6). In this casting, Black people became a placeless people of uninhabited land—a school of thought that carried on in American geography. McKittrick sees the plantation manifest in the places of the prison, the impoverished, or anywhere that Black people reside globally. The history of the plantation, and the plantation economy, rests on a world that relied on and continues to rely on Black subjugation to remain afloat (McKittrick, 2013, p. 3). This embeddedness allowed the plantation a “built in capacity to maintain itself” (McKittrick, 2013, p. 5) and, as such, Black populations to continually respond to the echoes of its presence—both offline and online.

The importance of Black Twitter as a “place” may be especially important for members of the Black American and Black diasporic communities. This is due in part to the fact that online spaces reflect offline place memories such that places of exclusion offline shape online memory building and mapping (Brock, 2020). That is, offline discrimination informs what Black Twitter users converse about online, the conversations that reoccur, and the people that they find themselves among (Brock, 2020). Place, then, is understood in relation to some social identity (e.g. ethnicity, class, gender; Paasi, 2002). Accordingly, many Black populations across the transatlantic diaspora who face global anti-Black attitudes (Beaman, 2020) and who are often considered “placeless” (McKittrick, 2006) enter online domains and congregate in shared spaces that embrace Blackness (Hawkins, 2023). Emotional attachment to these communities contributes to their perception as “home” online, highlighting the capability of digital environments to hold rich and meaningful human social interactions (Wellman & Gulia, 1999).

Black Twitter as a Cultural Formation

Black Twitter, first named in 2009, is a smaller subset of the Twitterverse itself. The origins of the label have been attributed to an article archived in Medium (Sicha, 2009) where the author, a cis White man, asks, “What Were Black People Talking About on Twitter Last Night?” and then proceeds to explain how they, an outside viewer, had come to value the comical and creative way that Black users were utilizing Twitter differently than White users (Brock, 2012; Brock et al., 2010). Fast forward a decade, and Nielsen (2018) has reported that 28% of Twitter users identify as Black American and around 20% of Black people in America identify as Black Twitter users (~9.3 million users at the time of reporting). During this time, Black Twitter, a vibrant and influential online community attached to the large-scale political movement Black Lives Matter (BLM), has endured many internal and external disputes, including “Diaspora Wars” (Browdy & Milu, 2022; Moore, 2023), major changes to the Twitter platform (Murthy, 2024), infiltration by white supremacist users (Anglin, 2016), and more. More recently, its history and impact have started to be highlighted in the docuseries, Black Twitter: A People’s History, which has attempted to underscore the relevance and resilience of Black Twitter within internet history and political history (Vognar, 2024).

Over time, it has become apparent that Black Twitter acts as a home for a people that are often rendered placeless (McKittrick, 2006). This community’s ability to sustain itself over time despite conflict and the inherent fluidity of online spaces (Postill & Pink, 2012) provide a meaningful lens for studying community endurance. While similar practices may occur in other identity-based communities (e.g. Indigenous Twitter; Duarte, 2017), Black Twitter’s longevity and scale offer a distinct lens for analyzing temporal and placemaking practices. The ongoing presence of Black internet users demonstrates a mastery of social networking on online platforms (Brock, 2018). Studies have shown that African Americans are particularly active online, with their engagement in social networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram outpacing other demographic groups (Correa et al., 2010; Jones et al., 2009; Lenhart, 2009). The content contributions of African Americans online reflect the richness of Black oral culture in both content and form (Brock, 2009; Florini, 2014; Steele, 2016). This richness finds an ideal context in Western society, where the rise of electronic media has led to a shift toward second orality (Ong, 1988), which allows groups with strong oral cultures, like Black communities, to thrive within and capitalize on the social realm of digital technologies (Steele, 2016). This is because social interaction online echoes oral communication (Ferris & Wilder, 2006; Harnad, 1991; Rheingold, 1993). Black people have carved out a space within digital platforms where collective memory is supported by this strong oral tradition. This has enabled them to amplify their voices and perspectives (Maragh, 2018; Steele, 2017), thriving on social media platforms like Twitter, which involve constant cycling and recycling of information (Phillips, 2015). By exploring the dynamics of Black Twitter, and the components that make it thrive, valuable insight may be gained into how community forms, maintains, and evolves over time. Scholarship on Black Twitter has emphasized its cultural production (Florini, 2019) and political mobilization (Freelon et al., 2018), yet less attention has been paid to how its temporal and placemaking practices generate community among turbulent environments. By applying Black geographies (McKittrick, 2013) to Twitter’s affordances, this study bridges digital studies and critical race theory to show how communities hack the platform in time (e.g. non-linear memory) and space (e.g. hashtag boundaries).

Boundary Work in Black Online Communities

The study of boundary work, often studied in organizational communication, can be critical to understanding social identity and communities (Lamont & Molnár, 2002). Boundaries can include those created by physical structures (e.g. buildings, walls), but boundaries can also be established through the presentation of, and adherence to, community norms that effectively demarcate in-group members from out-group members (Hernes, 2004). In each of these definitions, boundaries are characterized as a process, where boundaries are constantly in creation, which fits well within the context of online communities where boundaries are in constant flux, yet they are consistent enough to be considered stable (Postill & Pink, 2012).

In digital spaces, boundary work aids communities in asserting dominance over their shared space, allowing them to define their identity (Florini, 2014, 2019), protect their cultural space (Brock, 2020), and regulate social norms among themselves. Within the literature, boundary work is considered a crucial mechanism by which insiders and outsiders are delineated (Gal, 2019; Miller & Mundey, 2014). Specifically, groups monitor linguistic patterns, regulate behaviors, and gatekeep culture to maintain their community boundaries. For example, Black Twitter users engage in boundary work when they utilize shared humor and vernacular that requires knowledge of shared cultural experiences (Brock, 2020; Florini, 2014, 2019). These boundary-making practices are not exclusive to Black Twitter; for instance, LGBTQ+ communities on Tumblr utilize linguistic practices to create informal online social structures (e.g., trans-identified communities; Dame, 2016). However, these practices mirror the practices undertaken by historical Black communities to preserve their community boundaries and bolster Black identity (Suggs, 1983) and therefore underscore its significance as a site for studying race and digital space. Moreover, while research explores how platforms organize temporality for corporate interests (Bucher, 2020; Jacobsen, 2024), Black Twitter’s practices illuminate how users may reanimate time for their own protective sake. Jacobsen’s (2024) concept of “right-time” memories, where platforms like Facebook optimize engagement through personalized memory resurfacing, contrasts with Black Twitter’s recursive, community-driven temporality. For instance, the hashtag #Juneteenth does not trend annually solely from corporate machinations; it is resurrected by users to maintain historical continuity despite threats of platform erasure (McKittrick, 2013). Unlike the right-time memories Jacobsen (2024) describes, where platforms dictate when the past resurfaces, Black Twitter’s temporal practices (e.g. #YourSlipIsShowing) reflect a self-determined temporality, where users orchestrate “ruptural time” (Benjamin, 1940/1999) through platform features. The tension between corporate and community interests emphasizes the need to understand temporality, not just as a platform logic, but as a contested arena where Black users negotiate visibility, place, and memory.

Theoretical Framework

Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis and Black Geographies

Black geographies note how sites of subjugation are often simultaneously sites of resistance, as both acts of resilience and placemaking near inevitably occur alongside oppression (McKittrick, 2006). Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) provides a useful frame for studying the formation and maintenance of Black community and place online, as it uses a cultural-critical reasoning to understand the “interactions between technology, cultural ideology, and technology practice” (Brock, 2018). By viewing technology as more than a tool, we can understand how Black Twitter emerges out of a particular racialized geography imbued with elements of power and control where community dynamics play out. Within this study, I utilize CTDA to analyze Black Twitter as a digital geography where the Black community engages in placemaking practices informed by their historical positioning within “plantation logics” (McKittrick, 2013) of control, surveillance, and inequity that, in some ways, reoccur on the Twitter platform. Twitter, like many online spaces, operates with a degree of control, surveillance, and digital inequity—reflecting plantation logics and plantation futures (i.e. the re-occurrence of the plantation dynamic over time). Yet, Black Twitter exists as a robust community, invoking cultural memory and maintaining communal spaces, to claim their time and space online.

Method

Digital Ethnography

Data Collection

Data collection for this study occurred during 2019 and focused on public tweets from Black Twitter users captured as they crossed my personal timeline. I was curious how Black Twitter users articulated their sense of place—paying particular attention to the language they employed to construct the place. This study of Black Twitter falls under “netnography,” defined by Kozinets (2010) as the investigation and collection of information from online forums to discern user meaning/needs (p. 3), coupled with digital ethnography, as I utilized participant observation, actively engaging in the events or conversations unfolding on my Twitter timeline from day to day (Miller & Horst, 2012). These interactions include commenting, retweeting, liking, quote tweeting, direct messaging, and screenshotting—all standard methods of interaction offered by the Twitter interface. For all tweets that I considered using in my analysis, I consulted users to seek approval to utilize the user’s particular tweet, explain how it fit into my analysis, and discuss whether the selected tweet aligned with my interpretation. Many of these conversations were ongoing during the process of data collection.

Over the course of my fieldwork, I collected 2260 tweets that appeared on my timeline. Tweets within this sample include those that center around events (e.g. cultural events like the Black American holiday Juneteenth), benign daily conversations, and culturally relevant hashtags. The data were inclusive of individual tweets, tweet threads, retweets, multimedia content (e.g. images), and direct messages, to capture a holistic view of community behaviors, as is dictated within the principles of digital anthropology (Miller & Horst, 2012). In the interest of this holistic view, I also engaged in a degree of archival work, as directed in response to conversation with Black Twitter users, especially as tweets or hashtags that pre-dated 2019 would be re-emerged on the timeline (either via retweets or discussion). I sought to uncover rich contextual information and provide multiple sources of evidence to explain the communicative behaviors that occurred on the timeline during my fieldwork. Tweets included during this data collection included those that appear to identify as Black Twitter users through their profile picture; however, the exemplar tweets included in this analysis are only those from self-identified Black Twitter users.

Researcher Positionality

At the time of initial data collection, I was a Black Twitter user and continued as such during the secondary data analysis (CTDA) completed in 2023. While my deliberate study of the phenomenon began in May 2019, I did not have to gain access to the space, as I have regularly operated within Black Twitter for many years. At the time of data collection, my personal Twitter timeline intersected with many Black Twitter communities, including HBCU (Historically Black College and University) Twitter, Howard (University) Twitter, Caribbean Twitter, Blac(k)ademic Twitter, Nigerian Twitter, LGBTQ+ Twitter, and Activist Twitter. The constitution of my Twitter timeline bears on the observations I make of the space, as entire areas of Black Twitter exist that I do not come, or at least sparingly come, into contact with. Following Pink (2008), I understand that my positionality as an avid Black Twitter user influences how my ethnographic work is emplaced. Pink asserts that ethnography itself acts as a form of placemaking as the ethnographer decides the narrative of the space and interacts within the place.

Data Analysis

CTDA

The analysis provided here is grounded in Brock’s (2018) CTDA in the interest of moving away from “generalities of the internet” and engaging with the everyday discourse that occurs on the platform. This method calls for a multi-part analysis that considers a population’s historical context and analyzes the interface of a platform alongside the discourse that occurs there. The analysis included three stages: (1) identification of culturally significant practices (e.g. calls to historical memory), (2) examination of technological affordances and how affordances were leveraged to maintain community boundaries, and (3) close reading of discursive practices that constructed place and time orientation.

Coding and Categorization

Coding occurred both inductively and deductively. During the first round of coding, I analyzed each tweet and allowed themes related to the research questions to emerge, such as practices of temporal resistance and methods of community protection. I searched for meaning in the responses, following the emergent themes approach and using constant comparison (Charmaz, 2006). In the secondary cycle coding (Tracy, 2013), I finalized emergent themes and analyzed them alongside predefined categories informed by CTDA and Black geographies, including boundary work, temporal practices, and digital placemaking. For each finding, I selected exemplary tweets to illustrate the finding (Steuber & Solomon, 2008).

Results

Historical Positioning

In keeping with CTDA, I position the analysis of Black Twitter users, and their discourse, within their historical context. Black populations worldwide have experienced rampant oppression, subjugation, and anti-blackness (Gabriel, 2017) that inform their consciousness and affect the way Black individuals move in the world both historically and currently (McKittrick, 2006, 2011, 2013). When commenting on the body memory that one carries with them, even when there is a supposed “progress” away from racial violence (Gabriel, 2017), author James Baldwin states, “There is that one place [in the north] you cannot go, which means you enter every door on edge” (Baldwin, 1960). The reality for Baldwin was the same whether traveling in the United States’ racially fraught South or the abolitionist North; he always had to be aware of his raced body. Black geographies echoes this idea, as the experience and production of racial violence produces similar racial environments over time (e.g. the reproduction of the plantation; McKittrick, 2013) that require consistent tactics to navigate and live within those racial places. In the remaining sections, I detail some of the tactics that Black users have undertaken to transform the platform affordances into tools that reinforce their collective and community identity and strengthen community boundaries through calling on collective memory and Black placemaking practices.

Temporal Orientation in Tweets

There seems to be a certain elusive reality to attempts to track or place a definitive label on time. One can “take time” as if time were an object, “run out of time” as if time were something to be held, and even “waste time” as if it were a cherished resource. Anderson (1983) addressed the irregularity of time by focusing on its common structure rather than prioritizing these different manifestations. Just as Anderson recognizes the construction of virtual spatial formations as imagined communities ¹ in early eras of traditional media, he also recognized a homogenization of time. When conceptualizing time in imagined communities, he draws from Benjamin (1940/1999) and elaborates that an age of “homogeneous, empty” time now exists in this era of connectedness brought on by print journalism (1983, p. 25). In homogeneous, empty time, days become weeks, which become years, which become decades—the calendar and the clock act as the measure of time (Anderson, 1983, pp. 24–25). To some extent, in the age of social media, this homogeneous time is still occurring, as events can be experienced in a way that feels simultaneously experienced by other users. Yet, suggesting that the time is empty does not bode well when one considers time through a lens of experience. The way that time is experienced and how generational memory almost imprints time on the body and mind cannot be disregarded. Anderson’s observations of time and its simultaneity offer a partial frame for understanding the experience of time on Twitter, but it is in Walter Benjamin (1940/1999) from whom Anderson’s conclusions source that we see a finished framing of Black Twitter and its temporality.

The Black Angels of History and the Rubble

In Benjamin’s (1940/1999) work, he interpreted the painting Angelus Novus (Figure 1) as a representation of history and temporality.

Figure 1.

Monoprint by Paul Klee (1920); Examined by Benjamin (1940/1999). In the public domain.

As Benjamin examined Angelus Novus, he notes the contemplative look on the being’s face and viewed the creature as the “angel of history” looking among the rubble piled at its feet. This rubble consists of past events, all haphazardly cast atop one another (Benjamin, 1940/1999, p. 249). This damaged and smashed history cast before the angel, and the angel’s desire to repair the time and make it whole once more, fall under what Benjamin calls “messianic” or ruptural time (Benjamin, 1940/1999, p. 254). Ruptural time is marked by its immediacy and revolutionary qualities. These moments of immediacy and a desire to “fix” time can disrupt the flow of a linear, homogeneous, empty time. I would suggest that the Black body and the Black mind occupy the same space as this angel of history but do not necessarily need to be in an actual revolutionary moment to take on this role. The piling of rubble at the feet speaks to that layering of Black present and past almost atop one another as ancestral memory bleeds into present existence.

Evidence of generational memory having the ability to “last through time” presents itself when Black Americans reflect on the idea of a “post-race” United States. Gabriel (2017) states that Black America could never indulge in the post-race fantasy because, as Gabriel’s friend puts it, “We know too much” (p. 509). For this reason, I provided historical positioning before delving into the remaining analysis because developing an idea of Black Twitter as it has come to be experienced “in place” within time and space must offer this positioning. Black Americans are keenly aware of the racialized spaces they come to exist in and how these spaces are governed by outside forces (Gabriel, 2017; McKittrick, 2006).

This concept of time(s) coexisting in the Black body and the Black mind underpins and informs the Black experience. With the transition to Twitter and online socialities, this temporal undercurrent remains. The conversations occurring on Black Twitter are situated in this subjective temporality. In its construction, Twitter systems allow for and encourage a fantastical displacement of lived experience and time. The site acts as an archive while simultaneously playing host to (re)production. The site itself has a foothold both in the present and past. Although the language of the platform suggests linearity—the content of one’s Twitter falls on a “timeline”—this does not account for the mixture of past and present happenings, in this space. The “progression” of time within this platform emulates the chaotic rubble of history and present outlined by Benjamin. However, Twitter’s imposed linearity can contribute to a user’s belief that time occurs simultaneously and naturally progresses.

Simultaneous Time on Black Twitter

The premiere of When They See Us, a television miniseries re-enacting the stories of the men involved in the Central Park jogger case of 1989, drew several responses from Black Twitter users. This case, and the miniseries, center around the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of five New York boys (now men)—Korey Wise, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, and Raymond Santana. Labeled by the media of the time as the “wilding” “Central Park Five, ² ” the series displays the numerous systemic failures and racial inequalities the victims experience as they pass through the criminal justice system. The immediate response from Black Twitter users after viewing was steeped in emotion. The following tweets demonstrate this:

Watching “when they see us: is very difficult to watch being black . . . it makes you son angry—@kel_orangesoda ³ (Kel, 2019)

still haven’t watched part 4 of when they see us because i’m scared that i haven’t mentally prepared myself well enough. this series has been so emotionally taxing for me . . .—@rireflects (riri, 2019)

In my eyes, this was a legit horror. I couldn’t watch it, but I forced myself to and I had to watch it.—@TINYINKX (Tina, 2019)

The tweets show how the viewing experience of When They See Us affected users. The sharing of experience on the timeline creates a resonating chamber of intense emotion—horror, sadness, anger—that allows users the space to process their emotions. As these voices bind around one another, they escalate. When considering this potential for escalation coupled with the assumed linearity of the Twitter system, regarding these viewings and reactions as simultaneous becomes plausible.

Twitter user @QRingless aired his frustration about Black Twitter users not integrating their viewing of When They See Us into their intellectual thought, but his grievances are based on the concept of simultaneous time. Weeks after the When They See Us debut, a “scandal” revealed itself to the social media eye when a girl was recorded licking the ice cream out of its container and then placing the container back into the grocery store freezer. Several Black Twitter users called for her imprisonment—going so far as to write think pieces on violating the Food and Drug Administration laws surrounding food tampering. @QRingless questioned the integrity of these users that they could call for someone’s imprisonment after viewing the scenes depicting prison conditions in When They See Us. He tweets about this on multiple occasions, but in the following thread we see him in conversation with another Black Twitter user (@Delenciana) who feels the same:

Original Tweet:

I question just how effective our art is if people still can’t connect the dots. Like is When They See Us being literal enough to people to realize that prison is hell and humans shouldn’t be subjected to that?

↓

Threaded reply:

Right! It’s like folks can understand the theories, but refuse to enact the practices. But we also gotta acknowledge that being anti-white supremacy is just the hip thing to be. Ppl not REALLY about it. Our actions show that.

These responses are entirely valid in their criticisms of people who they believe have not understood the severity of prison and the necessity in its abolition. Yet, the statements hinge on the assumption of simultaneous viewing and, to an extent, elide the asynchronous aspect of the experiences on the site. The experience itself, the aforementioned resonance, and perceived simultaneity are not the only temporal arrangements seen on Black Twitter. Less so about the structures, and more so about the actual behaviors we are seeing displayed online, time and memory are being intricately intertwined and produced in this space.

Black Collective Memory and Commitment to Time

Returning to When They See Us and those initial reactions, @TINYINK mentioned how she “had” to watch this series. This necessity appears in other users’ reactions as well. @SigmaCalx mentioned the impact and the fury that viewing this series caused, so much so that he had to pause before finishing part one in the series. Yet, finish he did (Howard, 2019). Several users document their break in viewing while also noting their dedication to finishing the series, myself included. This connection between volatile emotion and persistent action reveals a commitment to these memories, these traumas, and this history—even if the trauma rebounds onto oneself. These Black Twitter users manifest the angel of history in a way that changes the angel’s position. Rather than standing over the rubble and contemplating, these users are actively standing within the chaos, and the experience of it all, sifting through the pieces and sharing this complicated process online. We see this living in, and dedication to, public remembrance/memory at play in other instances as well.

What to the Negro is the 4th of July? When engaging with ancestry and sites of memory, Black Twitter users demonstrate the presence of historical time and events in the Black consciousness. In these demonstrations, they are seen engaging with the history and allowing it to inform their current practices. Black Americans do not fail to see the irony in the 4th of July (Independence Day). This day, which signaled the freedom of the American nation from the British, did not signal freedom for all. As @Diasporide notes, “There is no historical event that an African could possibly be celebrating on #FourthofJuly: It’s like a hostage celebrating the anniversary of their kidnapper’s divorce” (Carr, 2019). While Carr seems to carry this ancestral memory heavily, there are others who manage to find celebration in the forms of liberation they can experience in the present. The following tweet is such an example:

Dear Extra Woke Black Folk:

Listen, we know that Independence Day isn’t for US and we aren’t celebrating it. We’re celebrating that we get a day or two off from work (SOME with PAY), Eat BBQ, Get drunk, and blow shit up.

RE-LAX

Get a Plate . Take a Shot . Light a sparkler .

@CopeForWhooo acknowledges while the ownership of Independence Day does not extend to Black people, there is still cause to celebrate rest, good food, and quality fun. @toxic_lure draws a clear line of separation in the celebrations of Black people and White people when they state, “White people celebrate Independence Day. Black people celebrate the 4th of July. There’s a difference” (Alger, 2019). This separation speaks to who Independence Day belongs to as well as who claims it. Many of these users are informed of their ancestral history and allow this time to guide their current actions and outlook to varying degrees. This moment in time does not rest in the past for any of them and their preoccupation with it is on display here. The separation that both @CopeForWhooo and @toxic_lure make between Independence Day and the Fourth is essential in understanding tweets that appeared under a month prior during Juneteenth.

Living Beyond the White Gaze

Juneteenth is the name given to the non-federal holiday that marks the announcement of the abolition of slavery that occurred on June 19, 1865—2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. On June 19th, @rachelledani proclaimed, “Happy Juneteenth! The only Independence Day that matters .” This day resonates with and represents Black people in a way that the Fourth of July does not and in a way that does not have to be articulated because of the living memory attached to the day. We see them celebrate Juneteenth not just as an Independence Day but as a time that extends beyond the moment in which it occurs. As @SilasTree123 wrote,

#Juneteenth does not simply recognize the happenings of a moment in history. Today we acknowledge centuries of collective struggle, we reaffirm our commitment to self-determination, and we celebrate our survivor spirit! Let our work continue! (The3rd, 2019)

Following Anderson’s line of thought, Juneteenth—a single day in history—would only be comprised of 24 hr rather than the centuries it contains. These users are keenly aware of the way these moments gather atop one another and compile to create a Black experience and Black perspective. What they may be less aware of is how Twitter’s system is doing the same. As I stated earlier, tweets have an ability to reverberate throughout the site, constantly producing the users and influencing their production. Twitter, and its instant archiving, affords Black users an extension of the mind and memory in a near-infinite space. They are keenly aware of the way these moments gather atop one another and compile to create the Black experience and the Black perspective. As these memories move onto this site, they can be circled back to, (re)experienced, and expanded upon. In so doing, a space is created that allows for boundless collective memory and community, celebration, and a shared experience of time.

Boundary Work as Digital Sovereignty

“God bless BLACK twitter ”—@CocoFiree (siara k, 2019)

“Honestly thee best thing on the internet!! I was gon leave all forms of social media but I can’t because Black Twitter! ”—@VinciLaVie (Vincent, 2019)

Black Twitter users often recognize their place online and the community built within the Twitterverse and strive to protect and maintain it. The enthusiasm from the two users quoted above stems from a trend in summer 2019 where Marvel Cinematic Universe actor Chris Evans’s hands become adorned (via photoshop) with acrylics, and Black hairstyles (e.g. Bantu knots, box braids, faux locs) sit atop his head. Evans (@chrisevans) had finally responded on Twitter to the collection of memes created with his image stating, “this gave me a genuine belly laugh” (Evans, 2019). Even playful moments, such as Black Twitter’s memes of Chris Evans, reinforce cultural boundaries as outside engagement with the jokes encouraged users to celebrate not just the humor but their ability to define, and defend, a communal place (e.g. @CocoFiree: “God bless BLACK twitter”). Black Twitter users’ recognition of the place moves beyond moments of celebration like these—especially as they come to interact with less welcoming areas of Twitter.

@xChiTime passed over into such a section of Twitter, previously unknown to her, when she stumbled into “racist political yt [read: White]” Twitter (Chi, 2019a). In this place, she had discovered exactly how segregated the internet, and the experience of it, can be. While she traditionally has a blast on Twitter (Black Howard Twitter in particular) with her friends, stumbling on Racist Political White Twitter showed her that the happenings in that community deviated from those she was accustomed to seeing (Chi, 2019b). Such happenings in this political place included violent aspirations to murder Kamala Harris and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In this moment, we can see the protective space that Black Twitter (and all its manifestations) occupies. This is not to suggest that every area of Black Twitter is safe nor to suggest that the place itself is impermeable. Outside users stumble onto Black Twitter both with and without intention. @Sweet_Fixation found their way to a part of Black Twitter after following four links. Before arriving at Black Twitter, they passed through Gamer/Nerd Twitter, Crypto currency Twitter, and Grad Student Twitter—although porn Twitter was their point of origin (Jordan, 2019). This chaotic mobility often occurs on social media platforms as boundaries are both protected and porous—mimicking Black historical placemaking, where Black places might be safe but not closed (Hunter et al., 2016). This sort of haphazard stumbling around is happenstance. However, certain individuals have sought to directly invade Black Twitter, both historically and currently.

Erecting Community Boundaries Through Hashtags: #YourSlipisShowing

The Privilege Wars of 2013, eventually bleeding into mid-2014, was a Black propaganda campaign focused on infiltrating and embarrassing online social justice communities. The Privilege Wars, better known as Operation: Lollipop, manifested on Twitter with the creation of an estimated 200 fake accounts. These accounts mimicked the appearance of feminist accounts of women of color and existed to amplify derision and division in the general social justice and directly feminist communities on Twitter. Shafiqah Hudson (@sassycrass), self-identified Black feminist, first noticed the strange accounts when #EndFathersDay began and the fake accounts tweeted in faux African American Vernacular English (AAVE or Black English). To identify and mark these fake accounts, a wave of Black feminists started the hashtag #YourSlipisShowing. “Slip” acts as a direct connotation of one’s underslip showing—something meant to be concealed and hide one’s true nature but instead on direct display (Hampton, 2019). Hudson occupies this place in Black Feminist Twitter, and it’s interesting to note that she extends this metaphor of the “neighborhood” mentioned earlier. When thinking about the infiltration of Black Feminist Twitter and how to respond to these imposters, she states, “No one is going to come into my house and start breaking shit” (Hampton, 2019). The way that these users speak about this community or this neighborhood of Black Twitter and the way Hudson doubles down on the idea by claiming Black Feminist Twitter as her home suggest that these users have made a place here. Entrenched in their language are ideas that this online community is a reality and that it is so to such an extent that they would aim to protect it.

While the immediate threat of #EndFathersDay was effectively quashed, these infiltration tactics remain in play and thus #YourSlipisShowing continues in its anti-infiltration efforts. I came across the following account (Figure 2) during my netnography after @dopegirlfresh tagged the account with #YourSlipisShowing (strapp, 2019).

Figure 2.

Fake Black Twitter user @showlauwnda’s Twitter account (now suspended).

The responses to this account were both critical and humorous in their construction. Two users noted the unfamiliar AAVE being used on this fake account. @AysiaCB writes, “It’s fascinating how they have never been able to get AAVE right. That really speaks to how amazing Black ppl (read: people) are. We can spot it every single time the language is used incorrectly.” Many users respond to @AysiaCB by spotting the humor in the situation and some even go on to imitate the near caricature-like features of the account:

Hello fellow negroes!—@stephenxvc (Charles, 2019)

I, too, enjoy chitterlings and collard greens.—@ufuckingregular (magical negro, 2019)

praise da LAUWED took me OUT. who comes up with this terrible fiction?—@Jaz_M_een (JMH, 2019)

This online community is relating to one another over a shared culture. Their responses are informed by their knowledge of Black people—a knowledge acquired through experience. Employing humor and common experience to respond to racist attacks on Black Twitter is not unprecedented. Furthermore, this community is moving outside of the technical platform affordances of the hashtag system. While they are using the hashtag to remark and call attention to these invaders, they are also allowing the hashtag to act as a tool of defense and attack. This harkens back to Miller (2012) and Costa (2018) and the idea that what a platform “can do” depends on the users who are utilizing that platform.

Erecting Community Boundaries Through Hashtags: #BlackTwitterVerifications

On December 9, 2016, the founder of the neo-Nazi white supremacist message board The Daily Stormer, Andrew Anglin, launched a Twitter campaign which sought to force a catastrophic collapse of the Twitter system by “becom[ing] niggers” (Anglin, 2016). Anglin chose this tactic because he noted that Black users comprised a majority of users. To cause chaos among Black Twitter would cause chaos across the site itself. Anglin’s primary method of attack centered around sowing suspicion and discord throughout the Black Twitter community via the manipulation and implantation of fake Black user accounts. Anglin outlines multiple parts of this attack on The Daily Stormer including advice on how to create a fake Black account, how to convincingly engage with Black Twitter users, and how to “play” in multiplayer mode. This mode involved coordinated attacks against Black accounts where the fake accounts would collaborate to turn users against each other by orchestrating arguments. Anglin organized to the point of supplying “Black” names (i.e. D’Arnell, Shanika), believable profile pictures, and lessons on Black English.

Despite the extensive planning, this targeted attack did not proceed as Anglin intended. Rather than chaos and discord, Anglin’s infiltration spawned days of humorous tweets centered around the Black Twitter experience or Black life in general. Black Twitter user @iHateDanae created #BlackTwitterVerificationQuestions after coming across Anglin’s Daily Stormer post. @iHateDanae saw this act as a way to, “[take] ownership of the Twitter experience we have created” (Finley, 2016). In many ways, these verification questions acted as not just a barrier to entry but also as an identifier of the Black experience(s). The following Twitter poll demonstrates this:

If you start crying, what is ya mom gonna give you? #BlackTwitterVerificationQuestions

A hug 4%

Allowance 1%

Something to cry about 95%

4,302 votes

In the poll above, we see that 4302 users voted and that of those users, 95% responded with the same answer. This consistency in response suggests a likeness between Black Twitter users (or at the very least a likeness in their upbringing).

This multitude of Black experiences makes ever apparent Postill and Pink’s (2012) event of place mentioned in the literature, as the ever-shifting reality of place is present in the making and remaking of borders defined by these Black experiences. Whether these borders be illusory or not, Black Twitter users regard them as real enough to defend them. These borders created through social interaction and experience remain steady even while they shift. In the practice of Black placemaking, it’s evident that even while entering and engaging in places that may be directly hostile, or rendered hostile, the responses to that hostility center around carving out a place regardless and owning that place. When creating #BlackTwitterVerificationQuestions, @iHateDanae mentioned her motivation stemmed from a desire to take ownership of the place created by Black Twitter (Finley, 2016). Returning to the historical positioning of Black populations, we see Black Americans existing within these “racist geographies” (Hawthorne, 2019, p. 7). The placemaking that has occurred in the midst of racist practices on the ground transitions into this online space and speaks to the same resilience.

Making Place Anywhere and Everywhere

This act of making place, even in the most personally hazardous environment, does not always register with those outside of the Black American community. A Twitter user, Black, but not American, mentioned that, “African Americans would rather live in everyday danger than go back home . . . why?” (Mazwai, 2019). This sentiment of the “place-less” or “homeless” African American has been long echoed in the discipline of geography where, “. . . Black people were seen as lacking geography (due to the upheaval of the trans-Atlantic slave trade); or as victims of geography (due to ongoing practices of displacement and spatial segregation)” (Hawthorne, 2019, p. 4). The responses to this tweet largely questioned the possibility and the necessity of “going home” when a home has already been made by Black Americans. In the collection of responses, conversations about ancestry and states of already being emplaced emerged. As @UnwaveringYvette retorted, “We are home. Next question?” (Yvette, 2019a). User @mellyearth began with the same statement but then followed with a mention of their historical placement on U.S. land, as they noted, “We are home. that’s a part of the conversation y’all leave out. I’m 6 generations deep on the same land” (melly, 2019). This spirit of remembering and respecting ancestry on U.S. soil is lasting. In the tweet below, we see @UnwaveringYvette engaging with another user and ultimately questioning how Black Americans could possibly disregard the legacy and the history of their ancestors in the United States.

Original tweet:

Here in Africa we live with our ancestors. We have access to their wisdom. Tey don’t recognize you because Black Americans don’t recognize them. Come home and learn who you really are my sister.—PMadTing

↓

Threaded reply:

“And what of our ancestors here?”—@UnwaveringYvette

This practice of acknowledging ancestors and making place wherever they may be, and doing so unflinchingly, is ever present in this online space as Black people proclaim their unity loudly and lively. Malik El-Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X, once noted that there would come a time when Black Americans could be unified with one another to the point where an attack against one of them would be an attack against them all (X, 1963) and the beginnings of that appear to be occurring in this online space.

Discussion

This study explored how Black Twitter users generate place and reify their identity online through a historically informed orientation to time and intentional boundary work that (1) protects against outside infiltrators and (2) sets cultural boundaries on the basis of memory. The purpose of this study was to develop a better understanding of how Black online spaces operate as essential community hubs and sites of cultural production. The secondary CTDA reveals that Black Twitter appears to be particularly skilled at placemaking in digital spaces, both in creating a place for cultural conversation and maintaining that place. In their community maintenance practices, we see Black Twitter users demonstrate a level of digital skill as they utilize the platform affordances to act in their cultural defense and assert their presence.

Utilizing Temporal Affordances

As Black Twitter users engage in collective remembrance practices and redefine historical events, they activate the platforms’ temporal affordances that allow them to both act and experience cultural events simultaneously while utilizing temporal layering in the digital archive. For example, as Twitter users recontextualize the 4th of July as a day of rest, they are engaging in a cultural conversation in real time that, perceivably, is affecting the actions of others offline. Furthermore, by utilizing the hashtag hyperlinking system for #Juneteenth, Black Twitter users are creating the possibility for those tweets to re-emerge yearly as the hashtag continues to be utilized. Through these actions, Black Twitter users preserve their culture’s collective memory and foster ongoing dialogue. While Black geographies (McKittrick, 2006, 2013) and CTDA (Brock, 2018) heavily inform this study, these findings also resonate with phenomenological accounts of embodied space (Ahmed, 2006), where time and place are oriented by the objects, people, and places available where we reside. Furthermore, future research might further explore how Black Twitter’s temporal layering reflects what Al-Saji (2013) calls “racialized” time—where past and present collide to define the structures of lived experience.

Black Placemaking Online

Black Twitter users claim their “place” in the online environment by congregating around cultural conversations and flagging those who do not have the cultural awareness to take part in their cultural activities. By paying attention to the linguistic practices of users, Black Twitter has enabled itself to effectively locate infiltrators and oust them, engaging in intentional cultural labor. Furthermore, they utilize Twitter’s functionality, hash tagging, to complete these community maintenance behaviors and, in so doing, tap into an aspect of Twitter’s system associated with virality. Through this particular use, then, they may enable false accounts to be widely viewed and recognized, even if that account never becomes suspended. The actions of these users counter two common narratives: (1) Black users are digitally unskilled and (2) online populations are passive media consumers (Sun et al., 2014). Black Twitter users’ strategic use of hashtags suggests some level of technical and communal expertise as they expose intruders and sustain collective memory. Furthermore, their recursive engagement with historical events (e.g. Juneteenth) transforms the platform into an active site of collective meaning-making and placemaking, regardless of how the platform may otherwise structure the “right time” for memories.

From these initial findings, future research could analyze a more expansive set of tweets from multiple Black Twitter user networks to produce a more detailed description of Black Twitter users’ behavioral patterns. As mentioned previously, the Twitter account utilized for this digital ethnography primarily situated itself within a United States context; yet, the oppression of Black population is global. As such, a more multi-national corpus of tweets should be collected and analyzed to locate Pan-African protective and identity-reinforcing practices.

Conclusion

Black Twitter, and their placemaking practices, demonstrate how oppression and resistance can show up simultaneously, as they generate place on a social platform that, inevitably, has some systemic constraint. Drawing from Postill and Pink (2012), the boundaries of online communities may always be indistinct, but this does not make them any less in place. Black Twitter users utilized platform affordances to create and sustain place and may continue to do so in the face of technological evolution, as this population is familiar with navigating community in the face of turbulence. As stated earlier, when so many echoes of the Black past appear in the Black present, time and the progression of time should not simply be considered linearly nor as “empty.” Rather, an analysis of how time varies—through the lens of experience—must be undertaken. This study’s exploration into the multiplicity of time and its manifestations is in the interest of constructing an idea of how Black Twitter has come to be positioned in time and thus positioned in place. The abstract concept of space, and whatever may come to fill it, in this case time and memory and all the actions produced from those, generates the place known as Black Twitter. While this site is public, that does not make Black Twitter publicly accessible. Through digital placemaking, temporal orientation, and boundary work, Black Twitter users reclaim digital plantation logics for cultural expression and community resilience. This study began by asking how Black Twitter users construct place and time in digital environments and redefine boundary work as a form of “digital sovereignty” against platform colonialism (Noble, 2018). The contributions of this work invite scholars to examine how users repurpose platform temporality (e.g. recursive hashtags) and recognize the place of resistance-as-infrastructure in design priorities (e.g. protecting community labor). Practically, this should guide platforms in recognizing Black Twitter’s cultural archiving as a feature, not a bug, of algorithmic systems that ought to be encouraged, as it may contribute to community, and therefore user, longevity in an otherwise turbulent environment. These findings highlight the significance of Black digital practices as agentic practices, offering critical insights into how race, technology, and place intersect in the digital age.