Conference Grants: Vincente Perez on ANAGRAMMATICAL (DIGITAL) BLACKNESS
Vincente Perez received a Fall 2021 BCNM Conference Grant to help cover his costs attending the 22nd annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR). Perez presented "ANAGRAMMATICAL (DIGITAL) BLACKNESS: BLACK TWITTER, SIGNIFYIN', AND THE MUNDANE". Read more about his experience in his own words below.
AoIR 2021: Independence was a phenomenal hybrid conference that started with a bang. Dr Andre Brock, author of Distributed Blackness (2020) was the keynote speaker and devoted his keynote to a discussion on the continued reality of race and racism in internet studies. The format of asynchronous panel videos and synchronous moderated discussions in 3 different time periods allowed a lot of participation from members all over the world. The conference also featured a virtual lobby space in "gathertown", which involved pixelated characters and virtual mingling/networking similar to the experience of social mixers or open lobby spaces at a physical conference (Gather).
I attended two of the moderated discussions of my panel's spotlight video. These discussions were incredibly generative resulting in a reading list , many networking opportunities, and the experience doing collaborative academic work in the digital humanities. Our panel was 1 of 3 spotlight panels that helped provide synchronous moments to come together and discuss the spotlight panel videos as well as the published papers. My paper "ANAGRAMMATICAL (DIGITAL) BLACKNESS: BLACK TWITTER, SIGNIFYIN', AND THE MUNDANE" was published as well as a spotlight panel video, where I give a 3 minute overview and explanation of the claims within the paper. Overall, our spotlight panel was well received and many people attended the moderated discussion to engage our questions and our claims within our papers/videos. My work was referenced extensively because it featured an example of Critical Technocultural discourse analysis, a framework created by Dr Andre Brock, the keynote speaker.