Abigail De Kosnik on Why it Matters that Black Men and Queer Women Invented Digital Remix Culture
In the latest issue of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, BCNM Director Abigail De Kosnik penned "Why It Matters that Black Men and Queer Women Invented Digital Remix Culture." In her piece, she argues that black men developed digital sampling and queer women populated the first wave of online fan-fiction communities.
Gail delves into the origins of digital samplings in the 1980s and fan-fiction communities in 1990s. She credits these groups for their respective mediums gaining popularity on the internet.
From her article:
Media scholars should collectively recognize the history of digital remix culture to credit groups that are often stereotyped as lacking technological proficiency for their profound impact on digital culture. Black people, queer people, and women have never been assumed to be collectively technologically gifted; their cultures have never been considered STEM-inclined cultures, so anyone from these groups who becomes prominent in a scientific or technological field seems to stand out as an exception.