Digital Diaspora: The Role of Social Media in Shaping Black Youth Identity
Every communication tool has its era, and each generation can recall the method of communication that facilitated particular milestones or memories, personally and professionally. Each generation can also witness, in real time, how reliance on one method can easily be replaced or upgraded by another. Dragging telephone cords across rooms for privacy, taking notes in class from an overhead projector, or listening to music on vinyl—witnessing the evolution of communication changes comes with an ease of delivery, as technologies and knowledge expand. It also comes with a learning curve, as users adjust to new processes, protocols, and purposes. The medium is the message. Since this was stated from mass media theorist Marshall McLuhan, as early as 1964, technologies have come and gone, and new instruments have made many of them obsolete. Now, just within one year, communication trends and tools move quickly, and can be eliminated simply due to changed rhetoric, cancel culture atrocities, n...