ABSTRACT

Current research describes how the history of Black representation in the United States’ mainstream media – both on screen and behind the scenes – impacts Black media professionals and complicates the reproduction of authentic Blackness in the twenty-first century. Coupling Hall’s model of encoding and decoding with media production studies, we analyze 22 interviews with self-identified Black media professionals at a Black-owned full-service communications company that targets Black consumers for mainstream brands. Findings suggest that mediated representations of Black people, which are inescapable and influential, are also narrow because white audiences’ perceptions of authentic Blackness determine which depictions of Blackness are profitable. By contrast, Black media producers argue that profitable Blackness is not authentic because it does not include the diversity of the Black experience. We leverage participants’ understandings of Blackness and the role of media to provide practical insights into how media industries can incorporate notions of diversity and inclusion to create authentic mediated Blackness.

摘要

目前的研究描述了美国主流媒体中黑人代表的历史——无论是在屏幕上还是幕后——如何影响黑人媒体专业人士，并使 21 世纪真实黑人的再现复杂化。将 Hall 的编码和解码模型与媒体制作研究相结合，我们分析了对黑人拥有的全方位服务传播公司的 22 次自我认同的黑人媒体专业人士的采访，该公司针对主流品牌的黑人消费者。研究结果表明，不可避免且有影响力的黑人的媒介表征也很狭窄，因为白人观众对真实黑人的看法决定了哪些黑人描绘是有利可图的。相比之下，黑人媒体制作人认为，有利可图的黑人是不真实的，因为它不包括黑人体验的多样性。我们利用参与者对黑人和媒体角色的理解，就媒体行业如何结合多样性和包容性的概念来创造真实的中介黑人提供实用的见解。