The interplay between race and technology has captured the attention of scholars in sociology, communication, media studies, and beyond. Previous research has focused on a range of topics including the centrality of race to the structure and function of the Internet, critiques of digital divide studies, and the phenomenon of Black Twitter. Although a robust history of critical race and digital studies exists, there has yet to be a definitive overview that traces the development of this important field. In this review, I fill this gap by delineating a genealogy of critical race and digital studies by mapping the intellectual terrain of the field. To do this, I begin with a broad overview of the history of Internet studies before reviewing key areas in the field of critical race and digital studies, including colorblind studies of the web, digital divide studies, and Black Twitter. I conclude with a focus on the ways that this body of literature can be brought forth to critically understand the implications of emerging areas of academic debate on studies of race and technology.

The explosion of Black Lives Matter protests in the mid-2010s rendered visible state violence against Black Americans, producing a barrage of images and videos of lethal police violence and the protests that followed. These images served as a powerful site of contestation about the meaning of race and racism in the United States for both movement supporters and critics. We examine these dynamics through the lens of media coverage of the pivotal 2014 killing of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson and the protests that followed in Ferguson, MO. Drawing from literatures on race, visuality, and media studies, we explore how media outlets pictured the killing of Michael Brown and the protests in Ferguson, either resisting or reproducing the white racial frame through the selection of images in their coverage. We analyze the images in digital media coverage across nine ideologically diverse media outlets in the month after Brown’s death and the month following the non-indictment of Officer Wilson. Across 1,303 articles, we show that most sites did not center images of violence against Brown, preferring instead images of Brown’s life and, more commonly, protesters and law enforcement. While we found few consistent differences in image categories preferred across outlets’ ideological profiles, the specific content and tone of these images starkly diverged, with liberal sites choosing humanizing images of Brown and protesters and conservative sites favoring criminalizing images. We conclude by considering the role media images play in mediating perceptions of race and racism.

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Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s work on colorblind racism has become a prominent theoretical framework for analyzing racial attitudes, ideologies, and discourses in the contemporary United States. However, the scholarship has yet to produce an empirically rigorous, quantitative assessment of colorblind racism to document the theory’s generalizability and assess it as a theory of racial attitudes. In this article, we build upon the rich body of qualitative research to develop a novel measurement model of colorblind racism using nationally representative survey data. We then use the model to estimate the impact of adherence to colorblind beliefs on support for affirmative action policies and awareness of structural disadvantage. Our findings indicate a good model fit, and that awareness of structural disadvantages acts as a mediator between colorblind racism and affirmative action support. We use our findings to develop colorblind racism theory, especially regarding structural disadvantage, both empirically and theoretically; we also consider the implications of these findings and colorblind theory more generally for the study of racial attitudes in the post-Trump era.