Race and Identity in Digital Media

A Review of Lisa Nakamura's Essay Race and Identity in Digital Media (1)

Nakamura submits that microaggressions in digital media occur in television, film, websites, social media, and online games, where inaccurate or negative stereotypes are depicted. Attempts in the pioneer days of internet social media, to create "virtual villages" and "colour-blind" social environments online, are called out as evident failures, Citing IBM and MCI's early adverts that presented the internet as a utopian virtual landscape that would rise above the political, race and gender.

Highlighting the sexism inherent in the online gaming community, Nakamura describes the practice of female players choosing to play using male avatars to avoid being the recipient of overt discrimination. She further highlights incidents where successful players with female avatars are accused of being masquerading male players, which infers an inherent weakness in female gameplay. 

Continuing within the gaming world, Nakamura describes the lack of a diverse range of available avatars, with selections that often favour white, athletic, conventionally attractive characters. Such restrictions might be considered racist, sexist, ageist, or ability-based microaggressions. What might be considered by game manufacturers as offering an idealised sense of self, could equally be considered demeaning to anyone who does not see themselves against those metrics.

Nakumara reminds us that overt racism still exists online, through the retelling of a story of two male professional game players being suspended for unsportsmanlike behaviour, where racist and xenophobic abuse was traded in the guise of "banter". She dismantles aspirations of a utopian virtual environment where everyone has equal opportunity, with references to factors outside of the digital world. She explains how real-world social inequalities affect how individuals are able to engage with the digital world. Setting aside the obvious financial implication of digital equipment ownership the introduction of virtual currency within the virtual world, a currency that has real financial significance within the real world, has spawned an entirely new industry, that of virtual gold farming/mining.

Gold farming is the practice of skilled gamers playing online games as a business to win virtual goods in order to then sell to less accomplished players. Nakamura explains that Gold farming became a booming business from 2005 onwards and that the farmers were very often "poorly paid semi-illegal labourers" (Nakamura 2010 p.341). The purchasers of their wares being comparatively wealthy game players serves to demonstrate that the virtual world is not immune to capitalist inequalities.

In reading Nakamura's essay, I am reminded that it is based on technology, legal frameworks, and social practices of the years up until 2010. Fourteen years later I would like to believe or perhaps hope that we have improved both in our understanding of the media and our behaviour during use. Sadly, in many areas, my experience suggests that we have not moved far. Legislation may have moved on, but human behaviour is slow to evolve.

Celebrities and Politicians who are female, or people of colour, or living with a disability are regularly quoted in the news describing abuse and threats they regularly receive via digital means. Discrimination continues despite legislation aimed at its prevention. In a society where in the real world these behaviours, whether intentional or subconscious are often overt, there is little chance that the virtual world will fare any differently.

Television producers have made improvements to their depiction of and inclusion of people of colour and female roles, but there is so more distance to be covered. Examples of negative stereotypes (overt or inferred) are still apparent on our screens.

Overall, my takeaway thought after reading Nakamura's essay is that the problem of race and identity depiction within digital media is not inherent to the media, but to the society in which we live. Until we resolve these issues in the real world, we will never resolve them in the virtual one.

NAKAMURA, L., 2010. Essay Race and Identity in Digital Media. In: CURRAN, J., Media and Society. 5th Ed. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp 336-347

BLOOMSBURY, n.d. Media and Society [viewed 1st Sept 2024]. Available from: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/media-and-society-9781501340734/