“Ma con la B posso dirla?”: social media e percorsi di negoziazione della n-word tra appropriazione culturale e policy della piattaforma

Abstract

This study aims to explore some issues related to the problems of the so-called n-word (Kennedy 2008). We refer to the context of rap music, whose transcultural consumption brings performative references to black culture (Taronna 2016) to controversial appropriations of meaning. We focus in particular on relationship between “n-word" and the Italian rap scene, deepening in the context of social media some reflections that emerge within a particular audience community. Practices of participatory cultures within social web (Boccia Artieri 2012) can be an interesting clue about the collective construction of an interpretation of a controversial issue, within which we see several voices emerge on the possible contextualization of n-word uses, that have to deal with the normative negotiations of platforms policy (Gillespie 2010) and possible drifts of meaning.