“Give ‘em Hell Nicki”:
Muted Group Theory and the Twittersphere’s Battle Over Nicki Minaj’s COVID-19 Remarks, 2024
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Nicki Minaj, the award-winning millennial rapper, and songwriter of Trinidadian descent, ignited a backlash of negative feedback after tweeting a remark on COVID-19 that went viral. Minaj tweeted, “My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married; now the girl called off the wedding.” She continued, “So just pray on it & make sure you’re comfortable with ur decision, not bullied”. Even though this tweet received about 150 k likes, she irritated users after she attempted to battle Joy-Ann Reid, the host of MSNBC’s The Reid Out and the first Black woman to lead a prime-time cable show, after Reid commented on her tweet during her live news broadcast aired later that night. This critical content analysis used muted group theory to investigate a string of Minaj’s tweets and the Twittersphere’s response to two tweets on this issue. Conducting this research will help understand the scope of one millennial celebrity’s influence on social media, especially since this virus has thus far claimed approximately 6.6 million lives globally (Coronavirus Resource Center, 2022, November 23).
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"Did He Freeze": Afrofuturism, Africana Womanism, & the Women of Wakanda. 2021
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Click on the photo to read the entire article from the Taylor & Francis site.
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Article DescriptionSome have viewed the internationally acclaimed blockbuster hit, the Black Panther film, as feminist; meanwhile, others have highlighted its aspects of African culture focusing on its traditional elements and Afrofuturistic aspects. One of the main characters, Actress Lupita Nyong’o, who played Nakia said that Black Panther signifies a balanced representation of women and men, and she later alluded to feminism as she explained the balanced idyllic gender representation between the sexes. This study found that the roles of the leading women characters in this Afrofuturistic film —the top characters were derived from the IMDB’s list—represented Africana womanism. The women at the heart of this study are warriors including Nakia, a War Dog of Wakanda; Okoye, the first lieutenant of the Dora Milaje and Ayo, a member; Princess Shuri, the head of Wakanda’s technological division; the Queen Mother of Wakanda, Ramonda, who was King T’Challa and Princess Shuri’s mother; and the Merchant Tribe Elder and the Mining Tribe Elder of the Wakandan Tribal Council. The egalitarian relationship between the women and the men in the film, and the representation of the women, showed a revisioning of African history in the recreation of an Afrofuturistic present. Thereby, the women’s portrayal emerged from the wider egalitanian Wakandan society, which depicted a mythological African utopian nation, and yet, simultaneoulsy reignited an African historical reality.
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This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in African Identities on December 13, 2021, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/2J3NXC4ZQTNN33K5RWZF/full?target=10.1080/14725843.2021.2005534
Let's Pray for President Trump in Church: An Analysis of Franklin Graham's Trump Posts on Facebook, 2021
| Let's Pray for President Trump in Church.pdf |