#TweetingWhileBlack. What is that? Smokey Fontaine published Newsone.com infographic on the topic in 2011 because the phenomenon of “Black Twitter” was all the rage in the media. He gave a play by play that started in 2007 when Dana Boyd, a Berkeley researcher, noticed the racial and socioeconomic divide in social networks such as Facebook and Myspace. In 2009 a blogger tweeted because White Americans Twitter users were in an uproar like “OMG! Black People,” because African Americans were dominating and determining the trending topics and hashtags in Twitter. Pew Research Center conducted the first study of African Americans’ “over-indexing” in Twitter and reported that “26 percent of Black Americans online use Twitter, versus 19 percent of White Americans.” Fontaine details a thorough history of how the term “Black Twitter” was coined and the ever increasing gawker mentality of mainstream media’s fascination with African Americans’ Twitter use.
When Twitter began curating trending topic in 2011, which became obvious when Troy Davis hashtags disappeared from trending topics and Black Twitter noticed the “censorship” and called Twitter out on it –Black Twitter’s first use of its collective voice to act on a grievance and get results happened and it’s been on ever since. Black Twitter has repeatedly acted on its clout to shut down situations detrimental to the African American. Remember the Paula Deen fiasco? Shani O. Hilton writes about how Black Twitter “began making jokes at Paula Deen’s expense in order to keep from crying—but ultimately drove the narrative around her and sped her demise.” How about when BlackTwitter “killed” the George Zimmerman trial juror’s book deal mere hours after the book deal was announced (Hilton)? #BlackLivesMatter.