On Being Seen: Black Women’s Digital Intimacy
This research project is an interdisciplinary study of digital intimacy, social media, mediated friendship, and the experiences Black women have at the intersection of these phenomena. As our personal lives become ever more enmeshed with digital technologies and AI, the liminal space between offline versus online continues to be relevant. Not in an attempt to demarcate boundaries between the two, but because life, and research are inextricably linked to the “digital” (Berry, 2012).
The research questions are as follows: 1)How is digital intimacy, in the context of friendship, constructed for Black women on social media? 1a) In what ways do care and joy contour Black women’s construction of digital intimacy? 1b) How, if it all, does race and racialisation relate to the ways Black women engage and participate in digital leisure spaces? The project will make use of interview data and in-situ platform content as the corpus for analysis, resulting in a publication.
Main Research Topics
- Diaspora,
- digital intimacy
- Black feminism
- social media
Research Results
My fellowship project sought to theorise the relationship between digital intimacy, racialisation and relationality. My project’s results were a theory for ‘Black women’s digital intimacy’ – Black digital relational intimacies (BDRI). It argues that in a postdigital framework, BDRI takes seriously the ways that race, and racialisation, are modifying factors for the experiences people have because of the ways that digital technologies touch and alter offline lives. Postdigital intimacy contends that digitality is not disconnected from reality, instead, it reconstitutes so-called private life into public arenas, while also being shaped by the logics of both offline and online structures and norms. BDRI grapples with both sides of those logics, stitching together an analytic that draws on Black diaspora and affect, to express a way forward for thinking about the ways that Blackness affects intimacy formation, and can be an immaterial force and catalyst for experiencing intimacy.
Curriculum Vitae
Doctor of Philosophy: Culture, Media, and Creative Industries
King’s College London; UK
When: 10/2021 – Present
PhD Candidate at King’s College London. Working on my forthcoming thesis (2025): Black Women’s Digital Intimacy
Self-employed Freelance Consultant (alaàṣẹ lab)
When: 09/2021 – Present
As a freelancer, I provide consultancy services primarily for non-profits and civil society in the EU/UK digital rights and tech policy field.
Research Curator-in Residence (FACT Liverpool)
When: 01/2023 – 10/2023
FACT is the UK’s leading organisation for the support and exhibition of art and film that embraces new technology and explores digital culture. As the research curator in-residence, I further the discourse around the impacts of new technologies on society; consider new approaches to public engagement; and develop frameworks for collaboration between artists, technologies and audiences.
Publications & Presentations
bruce, K., Walcott, R., Mackay, K K., Osei, K., lasade-anderson, t., Sobande, F. 2022. “Black feminist and digital media studies in Britain,” Feminist Media Studies, DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2021.2006737.
lasade-anderson, t. (2022). Digital Safe Spaces and Self-Definition: Black British Women’s Confessional Vlogs. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.33767/osf.io/heg8k
A Black Feminist Approach to Investigating Black Women’s Digital Lives. Paper presentation. 2022. Feminist Digital Methods. York University, Canada. Online.
Black women’s digital intimacy: a care-full politic. Paper presentation. 2022. Digital Intimacies #8. Macquarie University. Sydney, Australia.
lasade-anderson, t. (in press). Affect, Black diaspora, and the Postdigital: Moving Towards a Theory of Black Digital Relational Intimacies. In A. Evans, J. Ringrose, J. Hakim, A. Shields-Dobson, and S. McGlotten (Eds.) Postdigital Intimacies and the Networked Public Private. UCL Press.
lasade-anderson, t. (2024, February 15-17). Digital intimacy, Black diaspora, and Black feminist affect: moving towards a theory of Black diasporic relationality [Conference presentation]. Critical Approaches to Black Media Culture, New Orleans, LA, United States.