Get To Know 22-23 RSM Visiting Scholar: Jabari Evans
Dr. Jabari Evans is an Assistant Professor of Race and Media at the University of South Carolina in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications (SJMC). During the 2022-2023 academic year, he joined the Berkman Klein Center’s Institute for Rebooting Social Media as a Visiting Scholar.
What do you feel is one of the biggest issues with cyberspace right now? And then how did your fellowship with BKC allow you to look into that?
I think we're in a time period where privacy, as well as surveillance, are starting just now to be understood, and technology is moving faster than policymakers and researchers. We have these tools that keep coming our way, and it takes us five to ten years to figure out how to distill what it’s actually doing to our society. In my work, I think a lot about how youth develop and utilize technology in different ways. When it comes to Black youth, my research tends to advocate for young people who utilize social media, I would argue, more than their peers, while also being surveilled differently. They are expressing themselves, but their ability to express themselves…it’s policed differently.
My work tends to advocate for these Black young people and point out those who have the ability to make change. When we talk about technology being this tool that is neutral, we are being racist. This essentially says the long and short of what my work tries to tackle. While I was at BKC, I worked on a podcast that allowed me to have conversations with other scholars, journalists, and some practitioners about differences in diversity and inclusivity, and what does it mean to be a digital citizen? When we call things “solutions” [to digital problems], who are the solutions for? Are they [creating] problems for some and solutions for others? I was having these really candid conversations being someone who does qualitative, ethnographic research.
What brought you to studying the intersection of the internet, Black youth, and social identity?
My undergraduate degree is in Mass Communications and Culture, so thinking about sociology and mass media was squarely of my interest even as long ago as 17, 18 years old. I spent time in the music industry after graduating, so I think being on the side of the culture, producing culture and thinking about how music, hip hop music in particular, speaks for Black folk, I’ve been able to witness and participate in an internal and external conversation about Black cultural communication and education to the outer world
And then, I have a master’s in social work, so I’ve always worked with young people. When you take these foundational pieces of who I am and start throwing them together, that’s where my research and interests are born. I was starting to advocate for young people doing arts education in Chicago, helping build curriculums, and working for nonprofits that were helping young people who self-identified as creatives. When I talked to a lot of these young people [about their desired careers], it went from a lot of them wanting to be in entertainment or music, to them wanting to be podcasters, influencers, vloggers. They wanted to be content creators. And I’m like, wait, okay, that’s what they’re doing; that’s where they want to move. So, instead of being dismissive, I became curious about how they were trying to accomplish their goals and then looking at the greater landscape, understanding and realizing this is a legitimate career path. It’s just not one that’s being supported for certain youth. Certain youth have more of a hindrance.
So, that’s a part of what my research tries to uncover: how these young people are phenomenal, making a way when it sometimes doesn’t look like there is one, and then on the flip side, how to get the powers that be [in tech] to put [systems] in place that better support the youth. It’s really just following what the young people are telling me.
With Millennials and Gen Z, and following generations, growing up within a tech boom, we’ve seen them create new social identities, lifestyles, and cultures based on internet interaction. Specifically, Black people have had a significant impact on internet culture and its development, with little to no recognition. How do you feel about that? And based on your research, what do you think proper recognition of Black youth’s technocultural impact looks like?
My work is starting to tackle how there’s a cool space that opens up, Black youth, Black kids, Black young adults, Black people, generally, find their way into the spaces, make them cooler, drive the price up, and then they get gentrified out of it. And then not only do they get gentrified out of it, people forget that they are the people who made it cool in the first place.
So, when these tools to create social networks exist, [Black people are] not just going to show up, we’re going to show out. I think in terms of academic research, often [Black social presence] is made an aside, it’s not central to issues of design or privacy, or times where policymakers are talking about hate speech, or how algorithms might be shadow banning certain individuals and not others.
I think that it’s super important for us to consider the technosocial aspects of these [digital] tools that are being created. We need to be thinking about the user’s experience, not just from a financial point of view but from a humanistic point of view. There’s an overrepresentation of Black people who are trying to participate, and the only way to balance [tech inequities] out is to be really intentional about inclusivity and be really intentional about creating safe spaces for persons of color, as well as other historically underrepresented groups.
Interviewer
Jetta Strayhorn is an undergraduate student at Harvard College, where they study English. During the summer of 2023, they interned with the Berkman Klein Center’s communications team.