Adopting a fresh and innovative perspective, this book examines the social phenomenon of construction and dissemination of racist hate speech on social media against upwardly mobile black women, and oftentimes disguised in disparagement humour. In this book, Dr Trindade explores the idea that online hate speech is not exempt of societal impacts as offenders claim and believe, and that, in fact, disparagement humour reveals the hidden facet of deep-seated colonial ideologies still present in Brazilian society despite being hailed as a unique model of a post-racial society.

The author argues that these ideologies establish and naturalise superior social positions and symbolic privileges to whites while undermining and delegitimising black women’s upward social mobility. Thus, social media platforms enable the proponents of these beliefs not only to engage in the practice of online hate speech but also to attract a considerable number of like-minded people, creating a long-lasting echo chamber effect in the cyberspace. This way, offenders manage to amplify the reach and reverberation of their hateful voices in the online environment in ways not commonly seen in the offline social contexts.

Watch the book trailer below:

No Laughing Matter: Race Joking and Resistance in Brazilian Social Media is available in hard cover and paperback at Amazon.

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