Drawing on 2 years of ethnographic work following artists and support workers in Chicago’s Drill rap scene, speaker Jabari Evans explores the content and character of their work on social media toward acquiring “clout”- a digital form of influence rooted in Black cyberculture that allows marginalized youth to leverage logics of social media metrics in building social status, maintain authenticity, cultivate connections with fans, community among friends and other cultural producers. Ultimately, Evans argues Chicago’s Drill rap scene provides an example of why formal institutions need to rethink how race, class, gender and geography influence the barriers to sustainable careers in creative industry and how their digital practices add significantly to the understanding of Black entrepreneurs arising from social media.
Jabari Evans is an assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of South Carolina and a visiting scholar at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.
This talk is part of the blackbox Seminar, a D^3 Assembly series hosted by the D^3 blackbox Lab, that is open to faculty, doctoral students, and academic researchers.
Email us at blackboxlab@hbs.edu for information on attending this seminar.