Limited emancipation online: Why constructions of 'race' and racisms are still evident in new social media

The increasing popularity of the new social media technologies such as Facebook™, MySpace™, Twitter™ and YouTube™ have brought about significant changes in the ways in which we connect and communicate both locally and globally. The interactive, intense and instantaneous nature of the communication coupled the ability to reach large global audiences makes these mediums a source of possibility but also new sites of risk. On the one hand, a number of social science and feminist research on online spaces have heralded the disembodiment of ‘race’ as a social marker, freeing people to explore different alternative identities. However, on the other, a number of social science researchers also argued that online spaces merely became another site for old forms of ‘race’ and racisms to be reintroduced and reinforced. Recent examples of how these online spaces have been used to espouse old and generate newer forms of racisms abound. As a result, this paper aims to comparatively and critically explore how 'race' and ‘racisms’ are experienced online.