Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://cris.library.msu.ac.zw//handle/11408/4532
Title: The discursive construction of blackness on WhatsApp status post updates in Zimbabwe
Authors: Mangeya, Hugh
Ngoshi, Hazel T.
Keywords: WhatsApp
Status posts
Coloniality of being
Public sphere
Issue Date: 2021
Publisher: Routledge
Series/Report no.: African Identities;
Abstract: The paper unpacks the discursive construction of black Zimbabwean identities through multimodal WhatsApp status update posts by Zimbabweans on the WhatsApp social media platform. Cognisant that WhatsApp constitutes part of the public sphere where public discourses are generated and shaped, it explores and interrogates how status update content provoke and inspire identity discourses that perpetuate unequal racial relations that we argue are rooted in colonialism and its legacies. It deploys netnography to collect data through online participant observation over a one-year period. Theoretically, the data analysis deploys Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis and Coloniality to demonstrate that the analysed posts generate meaning through interactions across multiple modes and that racial stereotypes articulated in the data texts are rooted in notions of Western colonial hegemony. The paper argues that the WhatsApp status posts constitute semiotic modes that articulate and disseminate ideological value-positions that ridicule blackness and extol white racial supremacy. It is concluded that hidden in the status posts are white racial hegemony and negative attitudes against black racial identity, widely consumed and which, if left unchallenged, undercut what anti-colonial struggles sought to correct.
URI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14725843.2021.1940092
http://hdl.handle.net/11408/4532
ISSN: 1472-5843
1472-5851
Appears in Collections:Research Papers

Files in This Item:
File Description SizeFormat 
Document1.pdfAbstract60.16 kBAdobe PDFView/Open
Show full item record

Page view(s)

64
checked on Oct 5, 2024

Download(s)

24
checked on Oct 5, 2024

Google ScholarTM

Check


Items in MSUIR are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.