Kinyetta Nance Dissertation Defense

PhD Candidate Kinyetta Nance will be defending her dissertation titled, "African Americans and Mobile Video: Exploring Black Cultural Practice on Vine."

Her committee includes Professor Emerita Linda C. Smith (chair); Associate Professor Anita Say Chan; Assistant Professor Rachel M. Magee; and Safiya U. Noble, associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (research director).

Abstract: This study explores Black cultural practice on the mobile video platform Vine, a six second micro video editing mobile application. The purpose of this research is to critically examine how African Americans embraced social video through Vine and how Black cultural practice is enacted within the political economy of the mobile video landscape. This dissertation employs the use of Qualitative Content Analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) as a means of systematic yet adaptive exploration of the cultural phenomena transpiring in Vine videos, and Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (Brock, 2018) to establish context and meanings of the descriptions that emerge through the content analysis. The analysis demonstrates Vine videos produced by Black users were important to Vine’s success. Videos fall into the following categories: everyday life, celebrity cameo, content remix, Black boy joy, comedy & jokes “the dozens”, music & dance, tech speak, and socio-cultural commentary. Black content creators leveraged punchy storytelling to compel the world’s internet users to watch and adopt Vine. This practice is defined as Black digital efficacy in the study, the process by which technology is given direction, labor, and Black aesthetics to propel it forward.

Questions? Contact Kinyetta Nance.