In May 2020, Darnella Frazier used her smartphone to record the fatal suffocation of a Black man named George Floyd Jr. by Derek Chauvin, a white law enforcement officer employed by the Minneapolis Police Department at the time. The 17-year-old shared the video on Facebook, where it ultimately went viral, like so many other smartphone videos and photos that have immortalized deadly assaults of Black men by law enforcement in the United States during the past five years. The advent of mobile internet phones and social networking software has enabled bystanders to these incidents to bear witness in real time to an audience that can number into the billions. Yet, this type of witnessing comes with untold risks, as Darnella Frazier reported receiving death threats on the same Facebook page she had used to bring attention to George Floyd Jr.’s death. Still, one has to wonder: Had a Black teenager not filmed this incident, would Derek Chauvin still have a job with the Minneapolis Police Department today?

Bearing witness while Black changes the odds, according to Allissa Richardson, whose new book by that title recounts how Black organizers in the United States draw on digital technology in their fight against police brutality. The book draws on interviews with 15 anti-police brutality activists across the United States.

Richardson’s concept of Black witnessing expands on media witnessing, a concept in media and journalism studies that suggests that bystanders observe an event as an eyewitness through live transmission, historicity (e.g., visiting an art exhibit on the event), or a recording of the event. Chapter 1 sets forth the three recurring observations that Richardson makes about how Black organizers practice media witnessing. First, these witnesses assume an editorial stance that advocates for the civil rights of Black people. Second, they turn to the Black virtual public sphere to distribute news and information about police brutality. Finally, Black witnesses interface with overlapping Black public spheres, enabling them to engage diverse audiences and exercise varying degrees of political agency. Black witnessing emerges from a complicated history wherein Black Americans have historically used various media to educate and alert each other about racialized violence. Richardson argues its contemporary iteration involves Black users’ dense networks on Twitter, referred to colloquially as “Black Twitter”; thus, Twitter becomes a type of news outlet that also functions as a multilayered Black public sphere. Specifically, the Black subaltern public sphere—whether an enclave, counterpublic, or satellite—shapes how Black witnesses communicate, because these social formations shape who makes up their audience.

Media and journalism scholars have examined the Black virtual public sphere and conclude that these racialized online spaces foster community among Black people both offline and online. Richardson contends that Black witnesses leverage these racialized online spaces to create counternarratives about victims of police brutality, to battle myths and stereotypes about Black people normalized by legacy news outlets, and to redress the grievances that motivated their activism. She thus presents a framework for understanding how Blackness as a social identity determines witnessing in the digital age; Black digital media scholars have also examined aspects of this framework, such as using social media to create counternarratives or Black Twitter’s functionality as a news outlet. Through a mixed-methods analysis of interview and Twitter data, Richardson connects the Black witnessing associated with today’s anti-police brutality movements to Black media outlets’ historical legacy in the United States.

In chapter 2, Richardson maps out the origins of Black witnessing. She begins with the narratives of slaves, such as indigenous West Africans’ oral practices and firsthand written accounts or secondary accounts written by Black witnesses. From the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, Black newspapers wrote about antislavery, antilynching, and other civil rights advocacy efforts. According to Richardson, by the mid-twentieth century, Black witnesses had turned to magazines, television, and radio to document the civil rights movement and produce counternarratives around Black violence. Black witnessing on the internet begins in the late twentieth century, first on web 1.0 digital media spaces like blogs or digital news sites and then with social networking sites, which Richardson expands on in the rest of the book.

Chapter 3 draws on Richardson’s analysis of her interviews with Black anti-police brutality organizers and emphasizes Black witnessing as a counternarrative. Richardson sorts the respondents into five groups: Black Lives Matter activists who participate in the formal social movement organization; the Day 1’s who witnessed the uprising in Ferguson in real time; the Masters of Agitprop who create propaganda art inspired by the movement; the Bards who produce music and other written words in their activism; and the Rogues who eschew other labels despite their participation in the movement. In this chapter, Richardson shows how these activists use digital storytelling for several reasons, including a desire to redeem the movement from mainstream media depictions and to express motivated anger at police violence’s lack of accountability. These themes speak to Black witnesses’ aim to “seize power from these negative images and narratives” (p. 71) about Black people and police encounters.

Chapter 4 brings attention to Black witnesses’ positionality as citizen journalists on the frontlines of a movement. Social media and smartphone technology enable them to educate everyday people and political stakeholders about Black people’s civil rights issues. Yet, they must also create strategies to game the algorithms of social media services designed for purposes other than activism. This type of frontline activism, Richardson observes, comes with risks and regrets for these organizers. Still, they feel compelled to do this work out of responsibility for Black people and culture. Chapter 5 expands on how this sense of responsibility motivates these activists, who also look at their actions as a labor of love to Black people. This love creates spaces that affirm their identities, allows the ability to self-reflect, and also pays homage to the Black organizers of yesteryear whose work inspired them.

Chapter 6 introduces the analysis of data collected from Twitter in January 2017, a date Richardson chose to coincide with the beginning of the Trump presidency. As part of their editorial workflow, Richardson argues that activists engage in six recurring steps: observation, discussion, authentication, production, publication, and agitation. Activists leverage Twitter features, including tweets, replies, favorites, hashtags, and retweets, to distribute relevant news stories. Taken together, Richardson contends that these actions constitute a new form of protest journalism.

Chapter 7 attends to the imagery generated by this activism and the symbolism or meaning derived from the Black visual public sphere that activists have created. Richardson observes that protesters connect the contemporary moment to the past by remixing old images of resistance or mashing up old and new images. They produce symbols about Black death through public imagery like staged die-ins, linking their arms like chains, and mimicking resurrection at iconic Black death scenes. Imagery also involves satiric humor like memes such as “BBQ Becky,” which call out white women’s tendency to use the police as a personal security service when they encounter Black people in public. Richardson asserts that this imagery shows how the Black visual public sphere offers collective memory and empowers distant witnesses.

Chapter 8 highlights that Black witnessing comes with trauma for these new protest journalists. Richardson recounts the mysterious or unsolved deaths of several activists whose images dominate the Black visual public sphere. Living activists deal with mental health issues, legal issues, and surveillance by law enforcement. Richardson asserts that, although digital technology can empower activists, it can also empower white supremacists and continue Black people’s oppression. Chapter 9 unravels problems related to digital technology, focusing on how the call to equip law enforcement agents with bodycams introduces three dilemmas: first-person viewership bias, narrative fragmentation, and naive realism. Richardson warns us that the failure to account for these problems will lead us to “a point where more cameras equal only more gazes, more questions, and less justice for families of the slain victims” (p. 186).

This book’s focus on smartphone technology, social networking software, and anti-police brutality activism in the United States limits its argument’s scope. Whether Black witnessing of an incident of police violence differs depending on the local context’s racial composition, for example, remains an open question. Although Black Lives Matter started in the United States, the movement has inspired nations with a smaller population of Black people like the United Kingdom and nations with a predominantly Black population like South Africa. Potentially, Black witnessing differs based on these contexts, which Richardson accounts for in exploring how different types of social formations constitute the Black public sphere. This book also draws primarily on Twitter and activists who use Twitter, leaving open the question of what Black witnessing looks like for activists on Instagram, Tik Tok, and other social networking sites or applications. Potentially, these platforms’ features might lead to different or unique steps in the news production process that Richardson highlights in the sixth chapter. Nevertheless, Richardson asserts that Black witnessing can lead to changes in how mainstream media report Black civil rights issues.

In conclusion, the book contributes fruitful groundwork and directions for future research on how digital technology has shaped the relationship between Black people and the news in the twenty-first century.