Resumo:
This study departs from an ethnographic character with the objective of investigating and
understanding the relationship between cultural appropriation, blackfishing and the
Afrocentric agency based on the analysis of social media in two Facebook communities,
seeking to understand how digital spaces are linked to ramifications of appropriation,
how much technology can contribute to reinforcing and enhancing forms of racism that
are already known, as well as the quality of the Afrocentric agency within this digital
scenario. For that, we looked for the relevance of blackfishing from the data provided by
Google Trends and, later, we entered two Facebook groups, where we can develop in the
field work the collection of publications involving cultural appropriation and
blackfishing and also the conduction of interviews with members from a focus group of
eight people. The bibliography used to support this study sought in an interdisciplinary
way to contribute from the paradigm of Afrocentricity with other areas related to
technology and ethnic-racial relations in the digital field, as well as directing our gaze to
users who use social media for the construction of racialized spaces. As a result, we can
reflect that the investigated black communities understand blackfishing as an offshoot of
cultural appropriation and that it is already widely known by Afro-Brazilians, even
though the knowledge of the practice has been spread from a North American word. We
conclude that, in terms of Afrocentric agency, we can notice a process of disagency of
black people also in online spaces, from the State and the traditional media, in what we
identify as a weak agency quality, and that the more traditional media vehicles little focus
on the production of Afro-Brazilian knowledge on these themes that already exist in
depth in Brazilian society.