Racialized images are often used in social media to express emotional reactions. The Digital Blackface project is the first to examine this widespread use, implementation and distribution of racialized images in digital environments. Digital Blackface examines standardized forms of reaction and expression – e.g. in memes and gifs – in their cultural genealogies and technical conditionalities. The project argues that the making available of racialized expression represents a digital interaction standard and the constitutive participation pattern of net communication: Cultures of reaction and expression on the Internet are based on racialized patterns. The hitherto unexplored phenomenon of digital blackface opens up for the first time the little-researched racialized foundations of digital culture: extraction, circulation and exploitation of racial difference are analysed as a condition and resource of digital communication. This project touches on the theoretical and historical foundations of media and cultural studies and image studies and intervenes in current debates on digital polarization, cultural appropriation and the defence against criticism of racism. The transdisciplinary project examines the omnipresence of racialized formulas in Western technologies and cultures, breaks down repressed meanings of (neo-)colonial relations and makes the constitutive race paradigms of contemporary culture visible.
The project is embedded in the program “Aufbruch – Neue Forschungsräume für die Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften” in the Exploration profile of the Volkswagen Foundation. The project partners are Dr. Simon Strick, European Media Studies at the University of Potsdam and Prof. Dr. Katrin Köppert, Institute for Theory at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig.
The Volkswagen Foundation promotes research and science in all its branches, particularly in the natural sciences, the humanities and technology. The Exploration profile offers space for creative and daring research approaches that contribute to solving major, science-driven challenges and are intended to generate new knowledge without defined utilization contexts. The Volkswagen Foundation’s Exploration profile supports projects such as this one, which advance unconventional ideas and penetrate previously unexplored areas of research. The Foundation encourages people to take risks and contribute to solving major scientific challenges with unorthodox questions and experimental approaches.
