Dr. Sherri Williams: Black Social Television: How Black Twitter Changed Television
Kalamazoo Public Library presents Writers’ Block, a forum where independently published local writers can tell the world about their work. This edition features Dr. Sherri Williams, author of Black Social Television: How Black Twitter Changed Television.
About the Book
In this book, Sherri Williams explores the digital activism of the Black social TV audience, a subset of Black Twitter. In addition to demands for social equality and shifts in social justice, Williams argues, the Black social TV audience advocated for a representation revolution in television, leading to some shows being blocked from airing, some being taken off the air, and others even being revived. Williams positions this activism as an extension of Black people’s historic advocacy related to the use of their image, dating back a century to when the NAACP attempted to block screenings of the notoriously racist 1915 film The Birth of a Nation. This book details how Black audiences’ use of social media impacted the way television is watched, developed, and produced through digital discourse and activism, primarily on Twitter (now known as X). Williams also demonstrates how Black content directors, like Justin Simien, and Quinta Brunson, used social networks to develop their content and loyalty among audiences to ultimately bypass Hollywood’s traditional gatekeepers. Finally, the book touches on how contemporary events, such as the COVID pandemic and Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, have affected the ways in which Black content creators engage with their content and audience and vice versa.
About the Author
Dr. Sherri Williams started her writing career as a journalist at The Associated Press in Jackson, Mississippi. She worked as a full-time journalist in three different newsrooms for a decade. As a freelance journalist, she has written for multiple national media outlets, including The Washington Post, CNN, NBC, ELLE, The Nation magazine, Essence magazine, Ebony magazine, and The Crisis magazine.
Recorded 01/09/2025
Categories: Writers’ Block: Local Authors