Ashleigh Wade on How Black Girls Use Social Media

Summary

---

Podcast Episode Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Lee Vincl
Guest: Ashley Green Wade
Episode: Ashleigh Wade on How Black Girls Use Social Media
Date: September 29, 2025

---

Episode Overview

This episode explores Ashley Green Wade's new book, Black Girl Autopoetics: Agency and Possibility in Everyday Digital Practice, which delves into how Black girls use social media as spaces for self-expression, creativity, and self-making. The conversation emphasizes a nuanced, balanced approach to understanding the digital lives of Black girls, moving beyond deficit perspectives often amplified in media and academic discourse. Wade shares her research methods, ethical reflections, and the ways Black girls innovate and assert agency online.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Genesis of the Project and Motivations

• Teacher Origins: Ashley began as a high school teacher, observing how digital life affected Black girls lacking a sense of belonging in school.
  • "I wanted to know more about what was actually happening on the phone ... I wondered if there was something that social media was providing ... that they weren’t getting in school." (07:52)
• Interdisciplinary Approach: She combines backgrounds in English, women’s and gender studies, and media studies to examine digital spaces.

2. Research Methodology & Ethics

• Ethnography (“deep hanging out”):
  • In-person participant observation as a volunteer teacher in Richmond, VA.
  • Digital ethnography through Instagram DMs and analysis of social media posts.
• Ethical Challenges: Balancing power dynamics as both educator and researcher, and deliberately choosing not to reproduce girls' public images for reasons of future re-interpretation and safety.
  • "Even though in this moment they may feel comfortable with whatever they have posted ... five or ten years from now, they might think, 'Oh, I wish I wouldn't have posted that.'" (19:44, Ashley)
• Creative Visuals: Commissioned abstract illustrations instead of using actual photos and involved a 12-year-old Black girl, Kya McBride, for cover art.
  • "It was important for me for a Black girl to do the cover because ... I wanted Black girls to see themselves and hear themselves in the work." (24:23, Ashley)

3. Why "Black Girl" is Central

• Draws on Ruth Nicole Brown and Black girlhood studies, refusing to conflate girlhood and womanhood.
  • "It's important for us to recognize girlhood as a distinct stage of life ... that deserves its own theoretical musings." (27:33, Ashley)
• Advocates for seeing girls as theorists and agents, not just as "women in training."

4. Balancing Harm and Possibility in Digital Life

• Acknowledging Risks: Cyberbullying, sexualization, and platform exploitation are real issues.
  • "I'm not trying to be on the opposite end and just be like, 'Oh, no, it's all rainbows and unicorns.' ... I wanted a book where Black girls could read it ... and say, 'Oh yes, this is me.'" (33:10–34:57, Ashley)
• Countering Deficit Models: Focuses on Black girls' creativity, agency, and non-pathological realities.

5. Concepts Explored in the Book

• Autopoiesis & Rupture: Drawing from Sylvia Wynter, Wade uses “autopoiesis” to conceptualize self-making and the possibility for agency and rupture within dominant digital systems.
  • "Autopoiesis then becomes this process of self making, but it's also a rupture within a bigger system ... and Black girls are saying, no, that's not what it is." (40:11, Ashley)
• Self-Fashioning Across Platforms: Instagram for wider/public personas (business, self-esteem, college), Snapchat (at the time) for close friends and private interactions.
  • "There are all these different ways that they're using Instagram as a way to ... communicate themselves to an outside world. And Snapchat was ... for my friends." (45:05-46:25, Ashley)

6. Spatiality and Surveillance

• Richmond context: Racialized spatial divisions (East and West End); heightened surveillance affects how Black girls present and protect themselves online.
  • "The girls in the East End were very guarded about sharing information ... because they're always being watched ... police are always patrolling. ... They saw me as ... an agent of this surveillance." (47:27, Ashley)
• Digital spaces are intertwined with physical geography and worldviews.

7. Archiving and Representation

• The historical lack of Black girls in formal archives and the instability of digital formats raise concerns about preserving their stories.
  • "The book itself is an archive ... for us to keep writing about how Black girls are using social media ... that is an archive too." (51:27, Ashley)
• Archiving the Black Web Project: A collaborative effort to systematically preserve Black digital histories.

8. Hypervisibility & Creative Self-Assertion

• Explores how some Black girls intentionally seek hypervisibility online, subverting respectability through:
  1. Ratchet Performativity: Embracing non-conformity and rejecting respectability politics.
     • "This is what I want to do ... and that's how I'm going to act." (56:07, Ashley)
  2. Sexualization: Advocacy for recognizing sexual agency in adolescence while condemning predatory behaviors and platform exploitation.
     • "The way to protect Black girls from hypersexualization is not by policing what they're doing with their own bodies." (61:28, Ashley)
  3. Flexing: Refusing to “dim their light,” using talents like dance and hair-braiding as self-promotion and entrepreneurship.
     • "Flexing is the very opposite of that. It’s like, 'No, I’m here. You’re gonna see me ... whether you want to or not.'" (63:16, Ashley)

9. Activism Online

• Highlights youth organizing, e.g., Marley Dias’s 1000 Black Girl Books campaign, Black Lives Matter In All Capacity, and Art Ho Collective.
  • "They didn't see the fact that they were young as a limiting factor in their activism." (67:03, Ashley)
• Activism as a means to reclaim agency when institutions fail Black girls.

10. Looking Ahead — Children as Content Creators

• Wade’s next project will examine how family and child influencers fundamentally reshape conceptions of childhood, labor, and development.
  • "There’s something about content creation that either obscures the fact that this is child labor or makes people look at it differently ... as if this isn't actually labor." (73:51, Ashley)
• Considers the democratization, risks, and nuanced impacts of influencer culture on children.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On optimism in research:
  "I have a tendency to be very optimistic, which is not celebrated in academia." – Ashley Green Wade [33:10]

• On self-making as rupture:
  "Autopoiesis then becomes this process of self making, but it's also a rupture within a bigger system ... and Black girls are saying, no, that's not what it is." – Ashley Green Wade [40:11]

• On archival urgency:
  "The book itself is an archive ... for us to keep writing about how Black girls are using social media." – Ashley Green Wade [51:27]

• On ratchet performativity:
  "Black girls who are engaging in irrational behavior online ... say, like, I actually don't care about your respectability politics – this is what I want to do." – Ashley Green Wade [56:07]

• On protecting Black girls:
  "The way to protect Black girls from hypersexualization is not by policing what they're doing with their own bodies ... Black girls are not the problem. The problem is the people who are hypersexualizing Black girls." – Ashley Green Wade [61:28]

• On flexing and self-worth:
  "Flexing is the very opposite of that. It’s like, ‘No, I’m here. You’re gonna see me, like, whether you want to or not.’" – Ashley Green Wade [63:16]

---

Important Timestamps

• 06:45 – Book’s purpose: Balancing negative and positive narratives of Black girls and social media.
• 07:52 – Wade’s teaching background and observations leading to the study.
• 10:41 – Ethnography and Instagram interviews.
• 15:04 – Navigating ethical dilemmas and IRB process.
• 19:44 – Refusing to reproduce girls’ images despite public availability.
• 24:23 – Involving Black girls in every part, including the cover art.
• 27:33 – The theoretical importance of "Black girl" over "woman".
• 33:10 – Balancing discourse on risks and agency.
• 40:11 – Explaining autopoiesis and rupture.
• 45:05 – Platform differences: Instagram (public) vs. Snapchat (in-group).
• 47:27 – Spatiality: Surveillance affecting self-presentation.
• 51:27 – Archival challenges of digital Black girlhood.
• 55:22 – Three forms of hypervisibility.
• 61:28 – Critique on victim-blaming and platform responsibility.
• 63:16 – Flexing: Affirmation amid cultural pressures.
• 67:03 – Examples of Black girl activism.
• 73:51 – New research focus: Family and child influencer dynamics.

---

Tone & Style

Throughout, Ashley Green Wade’s tone is empathetic, critical, and celebratory. The conversation is accessible while grounded in theory, constantly moving between academic insight and practical, real-world experiences of Black girls. Lee Vincl’s enthusiastic engagement draws out reflections to help listeners grasp why this work offers a necessary corrective to mainstream digital studies.

---

Final Takeaway

This episode is a vital listen for anyone interested in media studies, digital youth cultures, Black feminist theory, or ethnography. It showcases the complexity, creativity, and agency of Black girls online, urging scholarship and public discourse to see beyond stereotypes and pathologies, celebrating Black girls as theorists, creators, and agents in rapidly changing digital worlds.

Transcript

[Ashley Green Wade]

This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person on the phone or using the award winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm Is There Only Murders in The Building Season.

[Lee Vincl]

5 the Hit Hulu Original is Back.

[Ashley Green Wade]

The night Buster died, he was talking with this mobster.

[Lee Vincl]

Was he killed and hit? We need to go face to face with the mob. Get ready for a season. Buongiorno signore.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Oh, this is how I die.

[Lee Vincl]

You can't refuse. You're gonna save the day like you always do by being smart, sharp, and.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Almost always by mistake.

[Lee Vincl]

The Hulu Original series Only Murders in The Building premieres September 9th. Streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney for bundle subscribers Terms applied New episodes.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Tuesdays this episode is brought to you by ebay. We all have that piece, the one that's so you. You've basically become known for it. And if you don't yet fashionistas, you'll find it on ebay. That Miu Miu red leather bomber, the cousteau Barcelona cowboy top, or that Patagonia fleece in the 2017 colorway. All these finds are all on ebay, along with millions of more main character pieces backed by authenticity guarantee. Ebay is the place for pre loved and vintage fashion ebay Things People Love.

[Lee Vincl]

Welcome to the New Books Network. Welcome to Peoples and Things where we explore human life with technology. I'm Lee Vincl. Oh man, I'm really, really excited about this episode. Really, really excited. And I've been talking about it for months and months now, including here on the show. Now how this episode came to be is that we were lucky to have University of Virginia media studies professors Lana Swartz and Kevin Driscoll in town because my department had Lana in to give a talk. And by the way, we have an episode with Lana talking about her cool work on digital money and investing coming out in a few months and I hope to have Kevin on to talk about his work on computer history. Soon after that Lana and Kevin were in town and we were out to brunch and I was talking about some of my old hobby horses like method, particularly research work done to understand the users of of technologies and even more particularly how I'm always on the hunt for studies of different groups of users such as historically marginalized communities. And I worry, you know, I mean, I try not to be too annoying with my friends. Like I worry people like Lana and Kevin are like, oh God, here comes Lee. He's going to try to talk to us about social scientific method in technology studies. Anyway, I was talking their ear off about these themes and asking about leads and they said, well, have you heard about our new colleague Ashley Green Wade? And I had not heard about their new colleague Ashley Green Wade, who is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. And I think this is one of the frightening things about social reality in general and academic fields in particular is that you can be one network connection away from someone's good work and be completely ignorant of it. Which is why I always appreciate tips from you, my brothers and sisters of the P and T. Let me know who we should be talking to. But Ashley's work was such a perfect response and suggestion to my queries about method and the study of users. Because for her book, Black Girl Autopoetics Agency and Possibility in Everyday Digital Practice, Ashley spent time deeply hanging out with, and that's what we call doing ethnography around here, deep hanging out. She deeply hung out with black girls in Richmond, Virginia and learned about how they were using social media. And you'll hear in the interview that Ashley has put a lot of thinking into why she uses the word girl in her work. What she found is much more complicated and interesting than the kind of simple minded negative pictures you get from social media fear mongers like Jonathan Haidt and Nicholas Carr. Sure, there are negative things happening online and from our uses of digital technologies, but there are also other sides of this reality. In particular, Ashley found, as the press's book description puts it, that black girls self making creatively reinvents cultural products, spaces and discourses in digital space. She finds that black girls use social media to hang out with and celebrate their friends and also to create and sell fashion their own identities, including what might describe as boosting their self esteem. And in general, I would say that when I hear Ashley talk about her work and its insights, I feel the presence and authority of someone who has done the work. It's really impressive work. I also talked to Ashley about one of her potential new projects on child influencers and these kind of families that go all in on influencing as a business. You know, in technology studies there is certainly some rotten vegetables sitting in some corner of the fridge that we often forget to look in. But when I look out on the field so often, what I experience is A cornucopia of good, tasty stuff. And as I told you, hey, I'm excited. I'm totally excited, especially to share Ashley's good work with you. And folks, you should be excited too. Which is why I say, you know, it's actually a mantra. You can feel this energy coming off of it. Hey, get excited. Ashley, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me today.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Thank you for having me here.

[Lee Vincl]

So Black Girl Auto Poetics is such a neat book. When you are talking about it to strangers, maybe, you know, maybe non academic strangers even, what do you say? It's about what were you trying to do with it?

[Ashley Green Wade]

So usually the way that I describe it is that I say that it's about how black girls use social media as a way to tell their stories and as a way to express themselves. And the biggest thing that I was trying to do with it was just to identify ways that black girls are in spaces of technology in these digital spaces in ways that people might find surprising. Because I think when we talk about teenagers in general and social media, the conversation tends to be negative or like thinking about harmful things that they're doing or harmful ways that they're consuming social media. And I wanted to talk about, add some, some balance and some nuance to that conversation.

[Lee Vincl]

Totally. We're going to, and we're going to draw out what you just said in a number of ways over the conversation. But to start off with, how did you get into this? Like, how did you start down the road of this project?

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah, so I actually started out as a teacher. So I used to teach high school for about five years before I started my PhD and during that time, so this was in, I would say between like 2007 was my first high school teaching job and then my second one started in 2010. And so in that time span, a lot of things started happening with social media. Like it became more popular. Kids always had their phones in school. We were as teachers being trained on how to use technology in the classroom. And some people were resistant to the idea of using digital technology in the classroom because they felt like students were always on their phones and always had access to the Internet and they were using it too much. And so the convergence of those things that social media was becoming more popular, kids were always on their phones. I'm teaching with people who don't think they should always be on their phones made me really wonder, like I wanted to know more about what was actually happening on the phone and the way that I became interested in looking at Black girls specifically in this conversation was because my. I was working at an all girls school and the black girls would always come to my classroom and like talk to me about different things. And it started to dawn on me that at both schools where I worked, black girls didn't really have a place in the school. Like, they didn't really feel a sense of belonging in the school. And so I wondered if there was something that social media was providing for them or like these digital spaces were providing for them that they weren't getting in school or in other places where they were convening physically.

[Lee Vincl]

That's really interesting. And you're now. So you have a dual appointment and in one of the departments you're appointed in or programs is in media studies. But do I remember correctly that your PhD was like in women and Gender studies or something in that vicinity?

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yes. Yeah, yeah. So my PhD was in women's and Gender studies. I taught English when I taught high school.

[Lee Vincl]

That's right, yeah.

[Ashley Green Wade]

My first tenure track appointment was also in an English department. So I. All over the place, Very truly interdisciplinary.

[Lee Vincl]

And so what kind of research did you for this book?

[Ashley Green Wade]

So I did a combination of ethnographic research and media analysis. So the ethnographic research was both in person and online. For the in person research, I worked as or volunteered as a high school teacher in Richmond, Virginia. So I did participant observation. And then for the digital ethnography, I did interviews, like online interviews with girls through Instagram mostly. There were some girls I communicated with through Facebook or Twitter, but it was majority Instagram. I was reaching out to them through direct message and the majority of them responded back. Some of them were like, I don't know, but that was the main methodology. And then as far as like media analysis, I went through like, I didn't get to talk to every single girl whose Instagram profile I came across, but went through the posts that girls were making to see what were some of the. The themes or motifs that were coming up in these posts. And so that's what I did for that part of the research.

[Lee Vincl]

Yeah. Really nice. And can you say a bit, you have some. I mean, you've lived in Richmond for quite a while now. I think you still live outside Richmond. Do I have that right?

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yes.

[Lee Vincl]

But you have some really great reflection on why Richmond is kind of an interesting place to do this kind of study. So can you tell us a bit about that?

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah. So Richmond is. It's an interesting place in terms of its role in the history of this country, especially when we Think about race relations. It's a majority black city, a slight majority. It's not a big majority, but it's a majority black city. And I don't think that there are enough studies about digital technology and use in the south, even though most black people, 2/3 of black Americans live in the South. And so I wanted to highlight a southern city that wasn't Atlanta. And that was one reason I chose Richmond. Another reason why I chose Richmond is because it really has like this. I think it's a solidified reputation at this point as like an arts hub. And I thought that that would make for an interesting kind of departure point for thinking about youth and digital media and digital technologies. And I also have been here for so long that I formed community within Richmond. And so in some ways this research was a way for me to engage more deeply with communities in Richmond, especially communities in the east end of Richmond. And so those were the key reasons why I chose to do the in person ethnography in Richmond.

[Lee Vincl]

That's cool. You have a really great little interlude on ethics and I'm definitely going to teach your book in the next time I teach our graduate methods class here. I'm always looking for books that are both really good examples of people doing research that include explicit reflections on methods the way you do in this interlude. And one of the things you say is people, I really loved the beginning was everyone warning you about how dreadful the IRB process was going to be. And you're like, that's not really how it was actually, in fact, in some ways it probably helped you to go through that process and do a reflection really explicitly on what you're up to. So yeah, tell us a bit about, you know, how the kind of obvious ethical issues that arise in a studies like this and how you tried to negotiate that. Not tried, did.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah. So there were a few things that presented ethical challenges with this study and I felt like the IRB was just a foundation for it, but.

[Lee Vincl]

That's right.

[Ashley Green Wade]

It didn't really capture all of the challenges that came up as a result of working with black girls in spaces where they were experiencing lots of surveillance and working with black girls as a black woman, but not like a former black girl, but not a current black girl, and what that means in terms of power dynamics. So one of the things I mentioned earlier is that I did participate observation as a volunteer teacher. So that was one ethical challenge because I was their teacher, right? Meaning I'm responsible for their grade, but I still cannot compel them to participate in the Research. So luckily none of the girls who were in the class declined participating in the research. But that was kind of the first, the first like, ethical consideration when doing the class. Then I had to think about how I wanted to grade the class because again, I didn't want there to be some kind of conflation between the grade that they were making in the class and like, whether or not they contributed to the study. And so I just decided that, I mean, one, since I'm a volunteer, like, I can't get in trouble, they can't fire me. I just decided that I would give everyone an A. I didn't tell them that, but I was just like, you know, as long as they come do the work, like the assignments that I do, like, everybody's going to get an A. And so that was a decision that I made. And then the other thing that really presented a challenge was having to intervene or being expected to intervene as a disciplinarian when I'm also an ethnographer. And so like an ethnographer's role is supposed to be like, hands off in terms of like intervention. And so that was a challenge, not because I wanted to intervene. Part of the reason why I didn't make it as a high school teacher is because I'm not.

[Lee Vincl]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ashley Green Wade]

And so I. But there was always this expectation from the other teachers and the administrators that I was going to intervene in discipline and like, enforcing rules and that kind of thing. And so my classroom just became a space where, yes, they had to follow the school's rules. I didn't allow them to just run amok, but it was a more relaxed space because I was really not trying to involve myself in.

[Lee Vincl]

Yeah.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Disciplining them, especially because I didn't agree with a lot of the, the rules that the school enforce and the ways that they enforce them. So that was kind of the key ethical challenge with the in person ethnography. With the digital ethnography, the biggest ethical challenge was what to do with publicly available images and information on social media. And like, if I was going to reproduce that information.

[Lee Vincl]

Yes, Ashley.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Or if I was going to not or try to keep confidentiality or anonymity in some way. And so I decided that I did not want to reproduce girls pictures even if they were available publicly on social media. And that was one of the biggest differences between my own ethical decision and what the IRB requires. Because the IRB is like, well, if it's public, then go for it, have at it. Right, right. And so I made sure That.

[Lee Vincl]

I.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Didn'T just limit myself to that standard. And there were a few reasons why I did that. One is because teenagers are not like, their brains are not fully developed, right? So particularly the parts of their brain that are responsible for judgment. And so even though in this moment they may feel comfortable with whatever they have posted publicly on social media, five or 10 years from now, they might think, oh, I wish I wouldn't have posted that on Instagram. I took it down. But now this image is floating around.

[Lee Vincl]

Because, right, this woman wrote the book, right?

[Ashley Green Wade]

So that was one reason I was thinking about just, you know, what it's like to be a teenager and how you grow and evolve. Even during the course of my research, I saw that girls, as they were getting closer to graduation, would switch up what they were posting on Instagram. And so that was one reason. The other reason is because I'm talking about girls. I'm talking about black girls in a celebratory way, in a way that takes them serious as thinkers and cultural producers. But I realized that not everybody looks like black girls that way. And so I didn't want to expose them any further than they may have already exposed themselves to, like, potential harassment or other kinds of harm that may come upon them from someone who sees, you know, the reproduction of these images and decides that they don't like that for whatever reason. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from Epglis. After an initial dosing phase, about 4 in 10 people taking EPGLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.

[Lee Vincl]

A 250mg per 2ml injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis, that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EBGLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to ebglis, allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worse eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with ebglis. Before starting Epglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Searching for real Relief? Ask your doctor about Eglis and visit ebglis.lily.com or call 1-800-lilyrx or 1-800-545-5979. When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th.

[Lee Vincl]

And never miss a meme or milestone.

[Ashley Green Wade]

All protected with end to end encryption.

[Lee Vincl]

It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn [e-mail] yeah, and so how'd you deal with the images then? I mean, at least in some cases you got artists to like to render, you know, kind of abstracted versions of them, right?

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yes. So I had a friend and colleague, Al Valentine, who was in my cohort at Rutgers, do a bunch of illustrations. So I took screenshots and I sent them to Al and they reproduced them, but in a way where you can't tell exactly like where it came from. Also the screen names or like usernames are removed. And so that was the main way that I dealt with it. The other way is that there are a lot of descriptions of images that I don't necessarily include in the book. And I've gotten really good at describing images because permissions are expensive. And so like when you're writing journal articles and you have to use images, but you don't have $5,000 to pay for two images, you get really good at describing what the images look like. Yeah.

[Lee Vincl]

We should probably take this moment to talk about the COVID image. Tell us about that. I know it's something you love and want to support.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah. So the COVID image was created by then 12 year old Kya McBride, who is a black girl. And it's a beautiful illustration. And it was important for me for a black girl to do the COVID because one of the things that I saw this book as doing is collaborating with black girls. So, yes, I'm talking about their experiences, but I wanted black girls to see themselves and hear themselves in the work. And so it was like very important for me to have a black girl do the COVID art. And so I described to her what the book is about. And kind of a rough image like that was in my head. So, like, I can envision something, but my hands don't produce the image.

[Lee Vincl]

I'm with you.

[Ashley Green Wade]

And so I described kind of what I was envisioning the COVID would look like. And she executed it brilliantly. Yeah. And in fact, I'm working on a second. Not book project with her, but a second artistic project. She's designing the logo for a podcast that I'm working on with a colleague at University of Washington. So I'm so excited about that.

[Lee Vincl]

Hey, take a second. What's the podcast about?

[Ashley Green Wade]

So the podcast is called Lost Credits, and it's a podcast where we look at TV shows and movies from the 1990s and early 2000s and highlight black girl characters and the ways that black girls have been represented and or misrepresented in popular culture. And the reason why it's called Lost Credits is because a lot of these girls, well, now women were on TV shows and in movies, and they were, like, part of, like, a huge part of that moment in popular culture. And now no one talks about them or, like, no one gives them the credit that they deserve. And so part of what we're trying to do with the podcast is to give them their flowers.

[Lee Vincl]

That's cool. Well, wait. My friend Ben Waterhouse and I are creating a 90s history podcast, and we're hoping to do media stuff, so maybe we can have a crossover episode where we interview.

[Ashley Green Wade]

That would be great.

[Lee Vincl]

Okay, cool. So, all right, you've been using very purposefully the term Black girls throughout a whole conversation, and that is the core kind of conceptual analytic. It sounds vernacular, but you're using this in a very. You're using it on purpose and, you know, intentionally. So tell us a bit. Just tell us a bit about this. You know, how you think about Black girlhood and why talking about girls is so important for a variety of reasons.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah. So my conceptualization of Black girlhood draws a lot from Ruth Nicole Brown's work, who is now the chair of the Africana Studies department at Michigan State. But she's considered by many of us to be, like, one of the founders of Black girlhood studies as a field. And so part of the framework that I'm using to think about Black girlhood is really thinking about this erasure that happens within black feminist theory and women's studies, gender studies as a whole, where we are applying theories that have come from the experiences of women to the experiences of girls without thinking about what it means to be in the stage of childhood and how that impacts our lives differently. And so that's one of the biggest elements of Black girlhood that I focus on in the book and in general, like, in my thinking about Black girlhood, is that it's important for us to recognize girlhood as a distinct stage of life that Deserves or childhood, if we want to think about it in a gender neutral way, but as a distinct stage of life that deserves its own attention and deserves its own theoretical musings. So, like, what does it mean to be a child? What does it mean to be a girl in a world that is dominated by patriarchy? And so black girlhood studies is important because it gives us an intersectional approach to girlhood studies, which. Girlhood studies had a similar beginning in terms of. Had a similar beginning as a field. So we had women's studies, and there wasn't really space to talk about girlhood within women's studies that didn't kind of look at girls as women in training or women to be. Right. And so I think it's important to just think about girls as girls and not necessarily think about them as soon to be women, because, for one, not all girls become women. And so I think we have to think about, you know, what that means while they're in that stage of girlhood.

[Lee Vincl]

Yes. And one of the things I hear you saying throughout their conversation in the book as well is that there's a real difference between being an adult feminist theorist theorizing about childhood versus allowing. I mean, one way you put it is, like, girls as theorists allowing them to theorize their own life and position and then kind of like doing the work of helping that kind of surface, that understanding that they have, rather than kind of imposing our own frameworks. Do I have that right?

[Ashley Green Wade]

Exactly, yes.

[Lee Vincl]

Yeah. And that goes to the collaborative part of your picture.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yes, absolutely. And I think that it's important to note that I'm not. I'm not saying that black feminist theory or feminist theory is not useful for thinking about girlhood, but I am saying that when we conflate girlhood and womanhood, we do miss out on just other opportunities to understand girls and especially black girls.

[Lee Vincl]

Yep. So you kind of touched on this when you were introducing the book. I wanted to talk to you about kind of two things. The first is. I mean, you have a section early on in the introduction which is about the reality of bullying, hypersexualization of youth, especially by men, obviously, including on platforms like YouTube. And so you want to. Part of what I see you doing in that section, at least, is you want to acknowledge that this is a part of the context of that girls are acting in, Right? Undeniably, yes. And yet, I mean. So, yeah, I mean, talk about the balance, because you also don't want to, like, allow that or the kind of teen mental health fixation we have like the Jonathan Haidt book and all these kinds of things these days. Right. And so, yeah, just talk about how you try to strike a balance here and.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah, yeah. So I have a tendency to be very optimistic, which is not celebrated in academia.

[Lee Vincl]

No.

[Ashley Green Wade]

When I was writing the book, I remember, or actually when I was writing the dissertation, I remember people saying like that I couldn't completely ignore the, the harmful things that were happening online. And so I, I understand that because I'm not trying to like be on the opposite end of like the technophobe spectrum and just be like, oh no, it's all rainbows and unicorns. Because it's not. And so I think what I, what I wanted to do was to acknowledge that there are harmful things that happen to black girls and other teens on social media, other children. Because I'm not just talking about teens, but other children on social media. But the reason why I didn't want to make this a book about those harmful things exclusively or even predominantly is because I feel like in the limited amount of scholarship that exists about black youth, a large percentage of it is about how they're at risk, about how they are, their lives are traumatic. It's from a, a deficit perspective, right. Yeah, that's a nice way to put it. Yeah, I, I didn't want to contribute to that.

[Lee Vincl]

Yeah.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Conversation about black youth because I understand that it is relevant and it, it is an important conversation to have. But I think that when we're constantly talking about black youth in a deficit model, it can create a self fulfilling prophecy. And so I wanted to, I wanted a book, I wanted to write a book where black girls could read it and look at themselves and look at it and say, oh yes, like this is me, like this is my life too. And so that was one of the reasons why I didn't want to, I wanted to acknowledge the negative side, but I didn't want it to become like this pathology of black girlhood.

[Lee Vincl]

Totally.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah.

[Lee Vincl]

Well. And you know, it's just kind of. We lack balance in like digital studies these days between kind of like, you know, it's like, I think that I just got done teaching this class Algorithms and Society co teaching it this semester. And you know, we kind of like watched the Social Dilemma in a kind of Mystery Science Theater 3000 way where we encourage the students to like make of fun. Fun of it because it's so hilarious if you're watching critically. But it's like in the absence of stories about the benefits and kind of value that users of all sorts Get. And they get all kinds of different values. Whether it's professional or the kind of self creation that you talk about. You have to turn to these kind of conspiratorial visions of what's driving you. It has to be some kind of evil. I mean there's literally shows like puppet master strings and it's like, really? I mean like, sure there's bad happening and like we can talk about all kinds of harms and stuff, but unless we can like, you know, unless people do the work of reconstructing like the val. The. The value people, you know, all kinds of different groups are getting out of it. We just don't have a proper understanding of the media.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Right.

[Lee Vincl]

You know.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Right.

[Lee Vincl]

And then, you know, that, that kind of brings me to like, you know, so I learned about your work from your colleagues, Lana Swartz and Kevin Driscoll. I was talking, they were here visiting the year before you gave a talk. They came and gave a talk. Lana came and gave a talk. And I was grilling them about kind of my obsession with methods and who in their circles were doing really interesting work. And they told me about your stuff and like I'm obsessed with you studies. It's kind of like, you know, I'm, I'm always talking about it and I got, I feel like this is a beautiful example of like showing like doing the work of looking at users and how they're kind of do, you know, doing what they're doing and you know, one of the, you know, so you use this concept of auto police states. Am I saying that right?

[Ashley Green Wade]

I'm sorry, you froze after you said. The last thing I heard was users and what they're doing.

[Lee Vincl]

Okay, well I, I mean, I see this as like, so I'm obsessed with kind of user studies and you know, I see this as a beautiful example of doing that work of, you know, just looking at how users are, are, Are doing things in daily life with technology and their reasons, what, how they're thinking about it and all that. Right.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah.

[Lee Vincl]

And so you use this concept of autopoiesis. Is that how you. Yeah. As kind of a way of thinking about you. So tell us a bit about autopoiesis and how, you know, how that has a helpful frame for thinking about the way these black girls are using technologies.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah, so I use the term autopoiesis. I'm, I'm borrowing that term from Sylvia Wynter, but I'm using it in a slightly different way than she uses it. So Sylvia Wynter uses autopoiesis in the biological sense. Because she's talking about, she's using the term in relation to biologists and in biology. Autopoiesis is a process through which cells replicate themselves. And so she talks about how when we apply the concept of autopoiesis to like human behavior, how we can replicate certain systems and behaviors without really knowing it because we're just on like autopoiesis mode. So we're just like replicating and replicating. But she says that there is a possibility for rupture in this process of replicating. And that's where I pick up is the rupture part. Right. So like, I feel like within. So one of the things you mentioned, the movie, the documentary, so. Well, whatever. I don't know.

[Lee Vincl]

Social dilemma.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah, the social dilemma.

[Lee Vincl]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ashley Green Wade]

And one of the things that they kind of argue in that movie is that there's kind of this kind of like Big Brother force that's like controlling all of us. And like we can't do anything about it really.

[Lee Vincl]

Right.

[Ashley Green Wade]

And so my argument is that we actually can do something about that bigger force. And what black girls are doing is part of this rupture of like, not only like reproducing the status quo, but also using these tools as a way of asserting themselves. And even if that assertion is only posting selfies, that's still important in a culture where black girls tend to be erased. And so autopoiesis then becomes this process of self making, but it's also a rupture within a bigger system that, you know, cites one type of person as like the generic universal human. And black girls are saying, no, that's not, that's not what it is. And I think teens in general, the way that teens are using social media in general, which is important why it's so important to have this balanced conversation about what's happening in these spaces.

[Lee Vincl]

Yeah. And so I really. And one of the ways that you kind of draw this self fashioning picture is, is in something you briefly mentioned earlier, which is that you actually see them changing the way they're projecting themselves over time. Right. So you can, you might come back to them as an ethnographer like months later talking about to them about something they did months ago. And they're like, you know, like. Right. I mean, so this is kind of like, especially as teens, things are changing pretty fast, right?

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah, yeah. And they, they would do that like within conversations too. For example, sometimes when I was talking to girls who were like, let's say, and maybe 9th or 10th grade and they might be having a conversation about their interests, and they're like, yeah, not like when we were in middle school when we used to. Right, right. You know, so, like, they see themselves as evolving even within the space of childhood. And then as they get closer to adulthood, you can see it. You can see, like, how they're thinking about it, how sometimes they're a little bit nervous about it, especially if they're going to be going away from home to go to college. And so sometimes they're excited about it, too. But you see that transition in working with girls over time, how they're starting to think about that, that transition into adulthood.

[Lee Vincl]

And you also. I mean, especially. I remember in the Q and A portion of your talk, you talked about how they. They very explicitly use different platforms in different ways. So I'm. I'm sorry, I'm forgetting the platform, but there's one that. It's like you send an image out and it disappears pretty quickly.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Right. Snapchat.

[Lee Vincl]

That's what I thought. Yeah. I didn't want to embarrass myself. I'm Scott Hanson, host of NFL Red Zone. Lowe's knows Sundays hit different when you earn them. We've got you covered with outdoor power equipment from Cobalt and everything you need to weatherproof your deck with Trex decking. Plus with lawn care from Scott's, and of course, Pit boss Grim and accessories, you can get a home field advantage all season long. So get to Lowe's, get it done, and earn your Sunday Lowes official partner of the NFL. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. When your computer breaks, you don't wait for it to magically start working again. You fix the problem. So why wait to hire the people your company desperately needs? Use Indeed's sponsored jobs to hire top talent fast. And even better, you only pay for results. There's no need to wait. Speed up your hiring with a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply. So, okay, so like, Instagram versus Snapchat, they're representing themselves in very different ways. Public, private, in, group, out, group.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Right, right, right. Yeah. And like, so even though now, like, the kids don't even use Snapchat anymore. So that's just how. That's how fast, you know, things are changing. But at the time of this research, Snapchat was like the. Like TikTok. So, like, the way kids use TikTok now is how they were using Snapchat at that time.

[Lee Vincl]

Yeah.

[Ashley Green Wade]

And Snapchat was definitely more of the platform that they used for in group dynamics. And Instagram was the platform that they used as a way to show themselves to other people. And who those other people were depended on a number of different things. So, for example, like, there were some girls who used their Instagram to promote businesses. Like, one of the girls that I interviewed had a hair braiding business. And so she used her Instagram account to show examples of like hair that she had dyed. Another one used her Instagram as a way to book, like she was a dancer and she used Instagram to book gigs, to dance and get paid to dance and be in like performances and stuff. And then other girls would use Instagram as a way to look like well rounded college applicants. So like, like there are all these different ways that they're using Instagram as a way to, I guess, communicate themselves to an outside world. And Snapchat was the thing that it was like, oh, no, this is for my friends.

[Lee Vincl]

Right, right, right, right.

[Ashley Green Wade]

You have to be like in my circle to receive certain types of messages on Snapchat.

[Lee Vincl]

Yep.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah.

[Lee Vincl]

So one of the concepts you find helpful early in the book is spatiality. So tell us a bit about spatiality and how you were thinking about it, especially in that kind of context of Richmond.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah, So I talk about spatiality in the first chapter, especially thinking about Richmond and the city itself. And I also talk about it in terms of thinking about how digital space is not necessarily this kind of like abstract elsewhere, but that the way that black girls are navigating digital space is dependent upon how they're navigating their physical spaces. And also what I describe as conceptual space or like their worldview.

[Lee Vincl]

Sure.

[Ashley Green Wade]

And so I talk about Richmond in terms of the differences between East End Richmond and West End Richmond. And it's not, you know, it's not unfamiliar to most people, even if you don't live in Richmond, that a lot of times the east end of a city is where there's like concentrated poverty. It tends to be where if there's low income housing, where low income housing exists, where the school systems are not as well resourced as in other parts of the city, like the West End in Richmond, for example. And so I talk about how living in the East End versus the West End created differences in both the physical, the physical ways that girls were moving about in the world, but also what they posted online. And so like, one example of that was the girls in the East End were very guarded about sharing information about what they were posting on social media, at least initially. And it's because they're always being watched. Like in school they are being watched by administrators and teachers. And then in their neighborhoods, like, police are always patrolling. And so, like, they have a very contentious relationship with surveillance. And so they saw me as. Initially they saw me as an agent of this surveillance because that was how they were used to interacting with adults. Whereas the girls that I talked to in the West End, they were, you know, telling me everything. Like, I mean, some of them knew me, but most of them didn't. And they were just talking to me about everything. And then at the end, one of them said, like, did we help you with your research? You know, so it's like it was a huge difference in terms of like, how they saw me as an adult. Because even though as a. There's a power dynamic, they didn't look at it that way. Like, they didn't see me as like some. Yeah. Authority figure that they should avoid. They saw me as like, oh, like this is a person who wants to know about me and she looks like me and you know, I want to share my experiences. And so I talk about that because I really wanted to emphasize how there's a relationship between physical space and what's happening in the digitally. Yeah, totally.

[Lee Vincl]

And then, you know, another thing you talk about in the book is, you know, we can think of social media posts as kind of an act of self curation, but that, that is against two backgrounds. The first is the history of black people, but especially black girls not being represented in formal archives or lots of collections. And the second is the kind of transitory nature of this media form. Right. Which is just not being collected.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah.

[Lee Vincl]

So how do you think about this at that? You know, if we want to like archive black girls, the lives of black girls for all kinds of reasons, like, well, how do we do that in this context where it's like, you know, not only do we have this historical legacy, but we also, it's like, you know, what are these digital media forms? Like, how does that even work?

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah. So one thing that I. That was brought to my attention that I wasn't necessarily thinking about this when I was writing the book, but the book itself is an archive. That's right, Black girls, social media activity of their stories and the way they use social media. So that's one way is for us to keep writing about how black girls are using social media and to keep telling these stories, whether it's through books, documentaries, however we want to tell them, because that is an archive too. Also, I want to shout out a project that I'm a part of. It's not my project, but it's called Archiving the Black Web, and it is a mel funded project, and it is specifically about documenting black users. Social media, like the way black people use social media because of the ways that these platforms are so ephemeral in a lot of ways. And so the work that they're doing is using Web Recorder, for example, which has different features to archive digital content and to archive dynamic digital content like social media posts. So that's one thing that I think we need more people developing those types of programs so that we can archive what's happening, because I feel like social media will be around, but I feel like the actual platforms themselves are gonna change so much. Totally.

[Lee Vincl]

We already. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. Yeah. Well, and especially this whole dynamic of youth versus old is like a very important part of the dialectic, right?

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah. So I think that that's another way that we can approach the archive when we're talking about social media. Because social media content is an archive, but it's an unstable archive. Right. Because.

[Lee Vincl]

Yeah.

[Ashley Green Wade]

You know, not only are the platforms themselves dependent on profit, but individual users can change their content at any time. So totally.

[Lee Vincl]

No, I mean, you know, Twitter's just gone so far downhill when it comes to, like, you know, I used to use the search function to go back to old conversations. It's just. It's totally useless now.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah.

[Lee Vincl]

So, yeah, these things change as the platforms do. So the Archiving the Black Web and I have a webpage and I'll definitely. Yeah, I should reach out to these folks. I'd love to have them on to talk about what they're up to. It looks really.

[Ashley Green Wade]

That would be great. Yeah.

[Lee Vincl]

So the other, you know, you have this other chapter on kind of hypervisibility that I really loved this chapter. It was so great. And you say. One of the things you say is that, like, you know, you understand the kind of hyper, which is part of your rupture picture. Like, these people are, you know, they're owning their self image and they're doing specific things that are kind of transgressive in some ways. I mean, that might be too strong, but it's close to that. They're upending kind of expectations. And you interpret that through three concepts that I wanted to hear you kind of spell out. One is ratchet performativity. So I want to hear about ratchet performativity. The second one was sexualization, and the third one's flexin. So tell us about these three Concepts and how they fit your kind of picture.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah, so first of all, chapter three was my favorite chapter to write. Like, I had so much fun writing that chapter. And so one of the things that I really wanted to point out in that chapter is this tension between wanting to protect black girls while still understanding them as autonomous people that have desires. And so with those three concepts, I talk about ways that black girls actually make themselves hypervisible. Because usually when we talk about hypervisibility or hyper invisibility, we're talking about ways that other people are imposing particular readings of black girlhood or blackness onto black girls. And I'm talking about how there are some black girls who actually want that attention and actually seek that attention. And so the first thing I talk about is like ratchet performativity. And ratchet is a term that is used as most of the time it's used in a derogatory way to describe people who are acting beyond, you know, acting in a way that's not respectable, acting in a way that, you know, there's no decorum. And so I talk about how girl Black girls who are engaging in irrational behavior online is part of, like, their self expression and their way of saying, like, I actually don't care about your respectability politics. Like, this is what I want to do, this is how I want to act, and that's how I'm going to act. And so that's one way of like, that black girls make themselves hypervisible. And I talk about some specific examples of that would be like, you know, taking pictures with your middle finger in the air or like, using poses that are like, kind of like, meant to be sassy. Like, people talk about how black girls and women, how we like, move our necks when we talk, like doing stuff like that, but doing it on purpose and not caring if, you know, like people are reading that as ratchet. And then with the hypersexualization, or not hypersexualization, but just like sexualization, that part is about black girls sexual agency and how we have to hold that intention with how black girls are hypersexualized and how black girls are read as hypersexual. And what I really wanted to get at in that section is that we have to be honest about adolescence as a stage of sexual development and like emergent, like sexual desire. And so there are some black girls who want to be seen as sexually desirable, and that doesn't make them any less worthy of protection from predators. But we have to be honest about the fact that there are black girls who want to show their bodies or who want to be online in a sexual way. And so that's their prerogative to do that as autonomous beings. Now, I think that we do need to continue to have conversations with black girls about what it might mean to be online in this way, in a public way, but that's not on them. And one of the points that I make is that black girls are not responsible for people's misreadings of them. They're not responsible for how people have these anti black and sexist understandings of black girlhood. And so that's the. That's another way that I think about rupture in these spaces.

[Lee Vincl]

Well, I think we also just. Our culture is so puritanical around these things, you know, I mean, it's just I have ended up in these meditation traditions out of, you know, India and Tibetan, places like that, where, like, there's these female deities that are, like extremely sexy gods, you know, and it's just like, that's a part of, like, owning their womanhood is like, they're hot, you know, and they're. They're sexy. And that's just it, you know, and so there's that side of womanhood too. And, you know, and there's such a kind of puritanical thing, especially with youth, as if there's, you know. Right. So I don't know. It's a complicated topic. I absolutely, you know, obviously with. Including with your bullying sexualization opening section, but it's just like, I don't know. Yeah. You hear me?

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah. And I think so. That. And that was one of the things I really wanted to talk about in this chapter too, is that I'm not arguing for the hypersexualization of black girls or the over sexualization of black girls. What I am wanting us to understand is that the way to protect black girls from hypersexualization is not by policing what they're doing with their own bodies. Right.

[Lee Vincl]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ashley Green Wade]

And so, like, the solution is not with black girls, because black girls are not the problem. The problem is the people who are hypersexualizing black girls. And so. And I talk about this also in an episode of Code Switch where, like, we talk about, like, not wanting black girls to act grown or, like, appear grown. And part of that is legitimately about trying to protect black girls from harm. But I think when we place the onus on black girls themselves, we are not being honest about or we're not holding predators accountable.

[Lee Vincl]

Like, all these platforms that are profiting for Them, as you point out, like, YouTube is making a lot of money off twerk videos or whatever.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yes, yes. And Kira Gaunt writes about that extensively. She has a lot of. She even has a TED Talk, I think, about, like, the way that YouTube profits off of black girls twerking online. And these are. She's talking about young girls. Like, these are, like, eight, nine year olds. And she's talking about how there are all these, like, sexual comments. And, like, YouTube doesn't do anything to take them down. Right. Because, like, for them, engagement is what drives profit. And it doesn't matter if it's, you know, engagement that's inappropriate or, you know, should be illegal. Right. Like, they don't. They don't care because any engagement is gonna drive up their. Their profit.

[Lee Vincl]

Yeah, yeah. And then flexing is. Tell us about flexing.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah. So flexing is basically like a way of showing off. And the reason why I wanted to include a section about flexing is because black girls are always taught to, like, dim our light so we don't stand out and, like, you know, take up as little space as possible. And flexing is the very opposite of that. It's like, no, I'm here. You're gonna see me, like, whether you want to or not. Right?

[Lee Vincl]

Yeah.

[Ashley Green Wade]

And so I talk about Karis Rogers, who is in college now, but she was. I think she's a freshman or sophomore at ucla, and she started a clothing line called Flexman and my complexion when she was 10 because she was being bullied for having dark skin. And her sister, her older sister posted her picture online and was like, I'll help my sister to feel confident about herself. Tell her that she's pretty. And so that was the way that she started the clothing line. And so she started posting more herself, like, on social media, just as a way to, like, build confidence. And so I talk about flexing or showing off as a way that black girls are refusing this idea that they shouldn't take up space and that they should be quiet and demure, as everyone is the word that everyone's using now, but, like, demure, you know, so, you know, they don't have to. They don't have to be that way. And that showing off is actually okay because especially in a context where you're told that, you know, your presence is not important or that your presence is a problem. And the examples that I use, other than Caris Rogers are girls who do hair and girls who dance. And I think that those two things are really important when we're talking about black Girls. Because black girls get in a lot of trouble for both of those things. Like, so, for example, like, when black girls are like in class doing each other's hair, like, that's usually something that they get in trouble for if they're dancing when they're not supposed to be dancing. That's also. So, like, I wanted to highlight those specific examples of flexing to say, like, this is what black girls do and they're proud of it. And it's. In this case, it was earning them money. So something that other people are writing off as, like, this kind of frivolous activity is something that black girls are actually using to earn a living for themselves. Yeah, that's great.

[Lee Vincl]

And then, you know, one of the things you've highlighted so far is all these different, you know, the uses of these technologies really depend on people's self concepts and what they're trying as individuals, what they're trying to accomplish in the world. Right. I'm not.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah, they're.

[Lee Vincl]

They're doing self creations, image creation towards ends of, you know, how they want to. How they want to be perceived and such.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah.

[Lee Vincl]

And one of those. So then one of the ways you take that is like you have a chapter on activism where you talk about, like, how media is used for that. So tell us a bit about examining that topic and how it, you know, both like, felt similar and different from the rest of what you looked at.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah. So when I was writing my dissertation or like when I originally came up with the research questions for the dissertation and then the book, I saw that I was going to talk a lot more about black girls activism online. But I found that a lot of black girls were engaging in discourse about social issues, but not necessarily participating in activism in traditional ways that we understand activism. But I did find a few examples of activism that black girls were doing. And what I thought was, you really powerful about this activism is that they didn't see age as a factor in, as a limiting factor. So they didn't see the fact that they were young as a limiting factor in their activism. And so I talk about three examples or three main examples. Marley Dyess 1000 Black Girl Books Campaign, in which Marley Dyess, again, 10 years old when she started that campaign, now like a rock star at Harvard. Like, she is, like, doing so many important things. Like, I think that campaign was a catalyst to her being a world changer. And like, I expect to see her, like, for a really long time doing really great things. So I talk about that. I talk about the black Lives Matter In All Capacity organization, which was started by two girls in Michigan. One of them actually is a student at Michigan State now. And she reached out to me because she read my book and she was like, oh, my gosh, this is me. So that's so cool. So I talk about that. And they were actually doing very what we would think of as traditional activist campaign. Like, they were organizing sit ins and also using, like, formal politics as a way to engage with a situation where there was a girl who was in juvenile detention essentially for not doing her homework. And so they were like, wait a minute, something's not right here. And they went to bat for a girl that they called Grace. They never released Grace's real name for protection reasons. And so I talk about them, and then I talk about this other group called the Art Ho Collective, which was started by two genderqueer teens, and they focused on, like, highlighting art from people of color. That organization is actually, as far as I know, not around anymore. They're not on Instagram anymore. So again, the importance of, like, writing as archives, because now at least there are some written records of, like, the work that they were doing. And so I talk about how black girls and black non binary teens, in the case of Art Health Collective, are using activism as a way to reclaim time that's been taken away from black girls through things like early adultification, or in Grace's case, incarceration or school suspension. And even though I wish that black girls could live a carefree life where they didn't have to engage in these kinds of processes, I think it's important that they are, and that is a part of what it means to be a black girl at this moment.

[Lee Vincl]

Yeah, yeah, I totally hear you. Well, I really like this book a lot, and I think it's deeply fascinating. It's just so great the book exists and I'll definitely be teaching it. What's up next for you? Do I remember correctly that you might do a project on influencers next? Is that part of something you're thinking about?

[Ashley Green Wade]

Yeah. So my next project is going to look at content creation and how the impulse to create content has fundamentally changed how we understand childhood and the parameters of what of childhood and what it means to be a child. And I'm basing that on looking at examples of people who either create content with their children, like, had like a family page or like a. A mom vlog, and people who run content creation pages for their children who are not old enough to be on social media. Right. So we're talking, like, Toddlers and elementary age children who are influencers. And thinking about what this dynamic means for how we understand childhood in the context of labor, in the context of like development, like psychosocial development, like the fact that they're always online and what that means for how they're developing. And also thinking about just the, just the different ways that this new kind of era of content creation has really shaped or shifted how we understand what children's roles are in our society. Because I think that, and I'm really looking at this mostly from the perspective of labor because I'm thinking about how we have child labor laws and there's a reason why those laws came about because.

[Lee Vincl]

Reasons. Yeah.

[Ashley Green Wade]

You know, children were being floated, they were being harmed. And I think that there's something about content creation that either obscures the fact that this is child labor or makes people kind of look at it differently or look at it as like, oh, this isn't actually labor.

[Lee Vincl]

Well, and I think the outcomes and structures of each story is probably very different depending on, you know, how exploitative is and how much.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Right.

[Lee Vincl]

You know, the parents kind of setting the kid up for future success and.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Right.

[Lee Vincl]

You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of deep stuff to analyze there. But as I told you that when you first told me about this, it's also just like from my perspective, you know, I told you like when we were kids it was like, you know, like basketball or being a rap star or rock star or whatever. But like, look, I have an 11 year old daughter and a 9 year old son. Like influencers are what all these kids want to become.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Right, exactly.

[Lee Vincl]

And as you pointed out, I mean, there is a difference here because there is a kind of like, you know, as I told you, I always put the word democratization in quotation marks because I don't really like the term. But there just really is something fundamentally different that you can have of some kind of digital camera and you know, and make videos. And if it hits with the right niche or subculture or whatever, you can get huge in a way that you're not going to be Michael Jordan. Yeah. And so I mean, it is a different kind of thing here. And so it's so clear that, you know, sure. You know, there are lots of cases where there are parents involved and in many cases they have to be involved to make it happen at all. But it's also just true that so many young people, this is like they really want to be influencers. This is the thing.

[Ashley Green Wade]

I agree. And I want to talk about that in the book as well. Like the difference between children who aspire to be influencers or aspire to be like, even like actresses, because I think that social media actors and actresses, because I think that, like, social media is an avenue to that for a lot of kids. So I feel like there's a difference between that and people who have their children on social media as part of content creation, like, before they're even born. Right. And so like a page for like a sonogram, like, this is, you know.

[Lee Vincl]

Yeah. That's their first social media post.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Right, Right. Yeah. So, but you're right. I think that there is this sense of attainability.

[Lee Vincl]

That's right.

[Ashley Green Wade]

With like, influencers that just wasn't there for the kinds of aspirations that we had. And I think from like the parents perspective too, I think that it also feels easier for them to help their child achieve that if that's what they want, than to like, you know, become the next Michael Jordan. Right. Because if you don't have any basketball skills, you can't really.

[Lee Vincl]

Right.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Train your kids. But with social media, it's a little different because you might have some savvy that you can use to help your kids. So, yeah, I think it's just. But I. I think it's just so interesting to see, like, how childhood as a whole, I think, is changing because of our collective obsession with content creation.

[Lee Vincl]

Yeah. Well, I'm looking forward to that project too. Ashley, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on today. It was just as much fun as I thought it would be. I really appreciate your work and you, so thank you very much.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Thank you so much for having me. Foreign.

[Lee Vincl]

I hope you enjoyed this episode of our podcast. You can reach us with questions, comments and [e-mail] or by following me on Twitter @stsnews or on YouTube @peoplesnew.

[Ashley Green Wade]

Things.

[Lee Vincl]

Our podcast is distributed by the New Books Network, the leading platform for academic podcasts. So that you can find us wherever you get your podcasts. Peoples and things, like most things in this world, depends on the work of many people. I want to thank my brother, Jake Vincl for writing the music for the show. I want to thank my buddy Juliana Castro for designing the logos for the podcast. You can check out her [e-mail] Jo Fort is the producer for the podcast and Mandy Lam is the production assistant. This podcast and other Peoples and Things programming are produced in affiliation with Virginia Tech Publishing and supported by the center for Humanities and the University Libraries at Virginia Tech. For information about other podcasts from Virginia Tech publishing, visit publishing Vt.edu. for the entire peoples and Things team, I am Lee Vincel and most importantly, I want to thank you for listening. Thanks.