Black girl lost: Mediated experiences of adolescent Black females' academic self-concept

The broad socialization of new media has the ability to cultivate the values, beliefs, interests, and personality characteristics of Black girls. Specifically, new media’s digital platform of social media offers individuals immediate access to vulnerable messages about self or perceptions of self through instant and online cultivated messages about race, gender, and sexuality. The implications of these inherent everyday messages amplified in social media about Black girls’ race, gender, and sexuality juxtaposed to their developing sense of global and academic self and relationships with others is an understudied phenomenon. By understanding how these mediated messages of racism and anti-feminism influence late adolescent Black girls as they begin exploring and maturing into their adult selves is undertaken. This study follows theoretical paradigms of critical media literacy, Black feminist thought, and interpretive phenomenology to examine the lived experiences of late adolescent Black girls, ages 18 to 24, with social media, and its influence on their global and academic self-concept. This study took place in a large, urban city located in the Southeast. Data sources included interviews, focus group, and a collection of media artifacts. The data was analyzed through thematic analysis and interpretive phenomenological analysis to better understand the lived experiences of late adolescent Black girls and the ways in which they make sense of these experiences in their adult lives. This chapter discusses the implications for the role that social media has on femininity and the adolescent Black girls’ sense of self (globally and academically) in both traditional and non-traditional spaces.