In an increasingly globalized world, digital technologies, principally the Internet, has transformed human life. This course examined this transformation, as well as its social, political, and economic implications. To effectively do so, we explored a variety of theoretical, historical and technological issues that the Internet has posed to society. Through readings and discussions, we developed a broader understanding of these issues. From government surveillance and guerilla journalism to e-commerce and digital activism, we delved into the multiple functions of digital and social media in order to gauge its real-world effects. Professor Akdenizli also encouraged us to think critically about questions of power, autonomy, and representation as it relates to the Internet. This was perhaps my most valuable takeaway from the course.

As we surveyed major theories in digital communication, the course provided me with an intellectual framework to compare and contrast patterns and purposes of digital and social media use across different platforms and different cultural contexts. For the purpose of my research, I utilized this framework to gage the disparity between African-American influence versus African-American visibility on major social media platforms. The unit on the Internet and the mobile revolution established the white middle class as the demographic with the highest digital consumption, which encouraged me to more broadly research the demographics behind popular consumption of black culture as well. We additionally learned in this unit that African-American engagement with social media in terms of content creation is significantly higher than that of other races. When I later discovered in my research that white social media influencers dramatically outrank African-American influencers in terms of wealth and popularity despite their content heavily borrowing from black culture, I was able to draw on my prior knowledge from this unit to further my argument on Negrophilia. The unit on online social movements, however, encouraged me to consider alternate views on Negrophilia or at least challenges to its continued pervasiveness. As we learned in this unit, social media plays an exponentially greater role in cause engagement for African Americans. This has substantially increased their sociopolitical influence. The most notable example of this is the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which lit up the social media universe and ignited powerful dialogue around racial injustice and police brutality in America, which I would later touch on in my thesis.

The assignments in this course further enabled me to hone my research and writing skills. The in-class writing assignments (ICAs) taught me how to engage more critically with digital media as well as to apply the concepts we learned in class. Our first major assignment was a case facilitation discussion on an assigned topic; my group was assigned Muslim online dating. Although this topic was unrelated to my research, the assignment encouraged me to construct my thesis in a way that mirrors a discussion, one that is critical and analytical rather than simply descriptive. Our second major assignment was an extended research project that included a research poster, an in-class presentation, and a community presentation. I took this as an opportunity to explore an area of my research, so my group and I chose to center our project on urban black youth as the primary producers of viral Internet content. We found that despite their widespread influence, a majority of these young black creators have neither been recognized for nor profited from their creative products, effectively perpetuating their historic socioeconomic marginalization. This proved especially important in posing Negrophilia as a question of economics, which I would later incorporate in my thesis.