The case study focuses on how racism was debated in German public media after the 2020 BLM protests.

I develop a framework to analyze how media representations (re)produce inequality in Germany's hybrid media system.

It offers insights from my PhD research on public debates about racism in political talk shows on German public-service television, YouTube, and Instagram.

New article out now in Frontiers in Sociology! [Open access]

My latest article has been published in Frontiers in Sociology:
🔗 www.frontiersin.org/articles/10....

We need to continue asking: What is it in platforms that could facilitate disruption of conformity to dominant discourse?

And yet, disruptions of a best-of-both-worlds normativity in the trend are:
“[…] difficult in current platform politics and increasingly unlikely with platforms’ recent accelerated return to promoting right-wing libertarian content policies […]”

Still, there are moments of rupture, where users push back against the constraints of the platform trend and the imposition of racialized ideals. Here, creators do resist dominant discourses and neoliberal platform logics.

“[…] satisfies the neoliberal desire for individuality while simultaneously reinforcing this need by sustaining and benefiting from the platform’s trend-driven infrastructure. As McMillan Cottom (2020) points out, platform capitalism is racial capitalism […].”

We show how TikTok’s platform logic rewards identity performances that conform to a dominant, white, cis-heteronormative gaze, while leaving little space for representations that challenge these norms. Performing an ideal of mixedness following gendered and racialized beauty standards thereby:

NEW PUBLICATION [OPEN ACCESS]
@floprim.bsky.social , Hanna Szabó and I have published our latest article in Platforms & Society: ‘Eyo, mixed girl check’: The commodification of embodied performance in the #mixedgirlcheck trend on TikTok

🔗 doi.org/10.1177/2976...

Great onboarding meeting with new & ongoing #YECREA reps! Excited to keep supporting early career researchers in media & communication studies through networking, mentorship & collaboration. Let’s make an impact together!