Meredith D. Clark
VerifiedUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill · Journalism and Media
Active 2014–2025
About
Meredith D. Clark, Ph.D. (she/her), is an associate professor of race and political communication in the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Her background includes a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as an M.S. and B.A. from Florida A&M University. She is a recovering journalist and has contributed to the field through her research and scholarship. Her book, "We Tried to Tell Y'all: Black Twitter and the Rise of Digital Counternarratives," was released in 2025, indicating her focus on digital communication, race, and political discourse. Her work explores the intersections of race, media, and digital platforms, emphasizing the role of communication in fostering democracy and understanding social issues.
Research topics
- Sociology
- Political Science
- Social Science
- Media studies
- Art
- Gender studies
- Aesthetics
- Computer Science
- Artificial Intelligence
- Law
- History
- Criminology
- Data science
- Telecommunications
- Pedagogy
- Visual arts
- World Wide Web
- Linguistics
- Literature
Selected publications
Political Communication · 2025-01-27 · 7 citations
articleOpen accessA Critical Time for Critical Race Theory Research
Journalism & Communication Monographs · 2025-05-15 · 1 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingPolitics Groups and Identities · 2025-10-06
articleUNC Libraries · 2025-10-16
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingFox News has dedicated considerable attention to Critical Race Theory (CRT), recoding it as indicative of anti-white racism. This study examined whether exposure to these narratives is associated with white audiences’ racial consciousness: white identity, perceptions of anti-white discrimination, and white racial mobilization, as well as attitudes toward CRT-related education policies. Using the 2020 Collaborative Multi-racial Post-election Survey, we examine relationships between white Americans’ (N = 2917) use of Fox News, racial consciousness, and opposition to CRT-related educational policies. We find a positive association between Fox News use and perceptions of anti-white discrimination, with this relationship strengthening during periods of heightened news coverage of CRT. Furthermore, the relationship between Fox News use and opposition to diversity and fairness instruction in K–12 education is mediated by perceptions of anti-white discrimination across ideological groups. We discuss these findings in consideration of conservative media’s recoding of CRT and its implications for accessible white racial consciousness and opposition to equity initiatives.
Reconstructing the First Amendment
Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2025-07-25
book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorrespondingWe Wish to Tweet Our Own Cause—Theorizing Black Twitter
2024-11-21
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract Every bit of Black Twitter’s construction has a larger significance in digital discourses about Black life, from usernames and avatars to hashtags and private-in-public conversations. Using a series of case studies from the early 2010s (#PaulasBestDishes, Juror B37, #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen), this chapter details the multistage process of Black Digital Resistance and discusses the ways that Black Twitter coupled the platform’s affordances with cultural references to create new worlds and counter harmful messages. Analysis of these case studies contributes to a grounded-theory explication of Black Digital Resistance as enacted by Black Twitter, a six-stages process of positively self-identifying as Black; self-selecting into conversations on topics about issues of concern to Black people and communities; signaling participation through the use of key, culturally resonant hashtags and phrases; affirming other speakers in the culturally bound conversation; reaffirming the online messages of resistance in offline spaces, and pursuing vindication for the collective through a series of protest acts and demands.
From Calling Out to Cancel Culture
2024-11-21
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract What exactly does it mean for someone to be “canceled”? With origins in Black vernacular traditions of “reading” and “dragging,” digital accountability practices within Black Twitter have taken on a life of their own through media misinterpretation. Black Twitter’s unfiltered practices of symbolically “cancelling” businesses, institutions, and trends has a history rooted in analog forms of resistance, such as boycotts used as tools to assert personhood and reclaim dignity. But platforms create discourse on a scale that illuminates the imperfect details of collective resistance often omitted from historical narratives that frame protest as orderly and respectable; narratives that have since been used to criticize contemporary resistance as deviant and dangerous. This chapter explores the controversy around so-called cancel culture to explain how Black Twitter has leveraged platform affordances, community connections, and cultural resonance to hold the powerful to account.
2024-11-21
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract Black women are the locomotive power of Black Twitter. Whether gathering online to tweet through a live TV show or simulcast movie, or developing theory outside the walls of academia, the intellectual labor of Black women and femmes from all walks of life is a foundational contribution to Black Twitter’s prominence and relevance. From mobilizing voters to tip the balance of power at a critical moment, to creating digital spaces to confront common attitudes of hypersexualization and adultification of Black girls, the women and femmes who make up Black Twitter have, through their online discourse, extended a legacy of Black feminist intellectualism rooted in everyday theorizing into the digital space. This chapter discusses how Black women navigated the platform to form networks of defense and encouragement, while actively testifying about the truth of their lives.
Advance Praise for <i>We Tried to Tell Y’All</i>
2024-11-21
other1st authorCorrespondingThings We Lost in the (Dumpster) Fire
2024-11-21
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract “What comes after Black Twitter?” is the wrong question, but one many have asked in the years since the phenomenon first attracted mainstream media attention. The question took on renewed urgency when the platform was purchased by a South African billionaire in 2022, but the lesson remains: Black Twitter’s place in media history is like Black people’s place in the history of the world. Ever-present, ever-relevant, ever-evolving. This chapter provides a look back at how lessons from Black Twitter, particularly its response to historically whitewashed journalism, should be applied to develop more honest, just, accurate, and culturally competent news-making in the future.
Frequent coauthors
- 19 shared
Deen Freelon
- 16 shared
Sarah J. Jackson
- 16 shared
Lori Kido Lopez
University of Wisconsin–Madison
- 3 shared
Charlton D. McIlwain
New York University
- 1 shared
Gwendelyn S. Nisbett
University of North Texas
- 1 shared
Kerry R. McGannon
- 1 shared
Tracy Everbach
- 1 shared
Dorothy Bland
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