Sobande, Francesca  ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4788-4099
2024.
Black audiences, brand voices, and affective communities.
Hill, Annette and Lunt, Peter, eds.
The Routledge Companion to Media Audiences,
Abingdon, Oxon:
Routledge,
pp. 383-393.
|
Abstract
Black audiences are situated in a wide range of ways, both literally and figuratively. Key factors that impact how such audiences are constituted include: (1) the geo-spatial locations of audiences and/or the affordances of devices and technological platforms used to engage media; (2) the nuances and contradictions of an audience’s somewhat collective social positionality; and (3) the conceptual positioning of their audience experience and its affectiveness. Referring to dimensions of the situatedness and affectiveness of Black audiences, this chapter offers a critical account of some of the ways that Black audiences, brand voices, and constructions and interpretations of perceived communities collide. I explore empirical examples from the UK and US (e.g., brand (dis)interest in Black Twitter, the marketing of Disney, the use of Black vernaculars by creative agencies, and the creation and positioning of Channel 4’s Black to Front project). Such analysis teases out some of the different ways that Black audiences have been situated and sidelined as part of industry activity, as well as within scholarly theorising that focuses on the frame of media audiences. The methodological approach at the centre of this work combines analysis of contemporary media and marketing examples with insights gleaned from my previous research on the digital and media experiences of Black people (particularly women) in Britain. As this chapter focuses on some of the ways that Black audiences, brand voices, and perceived communities collide, the methodology at its core oscillates between analysis of the framing of, and responses to, media representations and marketing.
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Date Type: | Publication |
| Status: | Published |
| Schools: | Schools > Journalism, Media and Culture |
| Publisher: | Routledge |
| ISBN: | 9781032214665 |
| Last Modified: | 09 Dec 2025 17:15 |
| URI: | https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/183067 |
Actions (repository staff only)
 |
Edit Item |
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)