In Drill music, Chicago’s subgenre of Gangsta rap, Black male gang-affiliated recording artists (Drillers) often distribute content on social media platforms to solidify the authenticity of their song lyrics and music videos and validate their own embeddedness in gang territories. Using content analysis of two prominent Drillers’ vlogs, this study examines how YouTube channels serves as important intermediaries to not only circulate one’s music but provide Drillers a valuable reputation management tool. Results of this analysis suggests there are three primary ways that Drillers relate audiences: “signifying” (using humor to discredit a rival’s accusations and appear unbothered), “calling bluffs” (threatening or challenging a rival to retaliate by inviting them to their physical location) and cross referencing (calling attention to private information that contradicts one’s public image through storytelling). These findings show that though publicly crafting violent personas remains central in Black male youth gaining visibility in the corporate rap music industry, through social media entertainment, there are newer and riskier labor practices required for Black male youth seeking to self-authenticate street reputations, monetize, and create community around personas communicated within their music.

The paper explores the relationship between "fringe online groups" on the Italian Telegramsphere, and the mainstream digital public sphere, investigating monetization dynamics within these fringe spaces. Fringe platforms and communities aim to challenge mainstream ideologies and practices, impacting the norms of the platform ecosystem. These spaces are heterogeneous in terms of visibility, regulation and audiences, but also connected by mutual migration dynamics. What is still unclear and under-researched, is the relationship between what may be defined as “fringe platforms” and the more visible and mainstream web spaces as well as legacy media. The paper presented is a step of a broader research project (CORIT), funded by the Next Generation EU Program, concerning the development of narratives that are capable of “intoxicating” the Italian hybrid media system. While the goal of CORIT project is to understand Italian contemporary public spheres, analyzing the relation between fringe and mainstream media environments, this paper focuses on one aspect in particular: the monetization dynamics occurring in such fringe spaces. The research employs ethnographic observation and scraping tools to collect data on Italian Telegram channels/groups disseminating problematic content. Preliminary results suggest nuanced interrelations between fringe and mainstream spaces, including technical, economic, sourcing, cultural lexicon, and visibility exchange dynamics. Monetization strategies in fringe spaces resemble those on mainstream platforms, challenging the perceived distinction. The study's ongoing ethnography aims to deepen understanding and clarify the ambiguous nature of fringe concepts, shedding light on the multifaceted relationship between fringe and mainstream digital environments.

Over the past decade, service providers have taken on larger roles in the regulation of violent digital networks. As reactionary platforms like Gab and Parler emerge to cater to far-right users estranged from mainstream social networking sites, their stack suppliers – domain registrars, web hosts, app stores, etc. – may enforce their Terms of Service, revoking access to services, in what José Van Dijck et al. term “deplatformization.” Deplatformization has proven circumstantially effective as in the 2021 destruction of Parler by Amazon Web Services. However, reactionary platforms have responded by building their own service providers, marketing them as “cancel-proof,” and seeding a cottage industry of far-right infrastructure firms immune to deplatformization. In this trend, which I term “replatformization,” far-right networks scale their capacity to fracture and terrorize online publics. This paper investigates replatformization through a diachronic analysis of the stack of Kiwi Farms, a text forum known for its deadly transmisogynistic harassment campaigns, its history as “victim” of service denial by multiple firms including Cloudflare, and its in-house solutions such as DDoS mitigator “KiwiFlare” and web host “Final Solutions LLC.” Anchored by materialist critical theory, I argue that the replatformization of far-right platforms reifies the role of reactionary digital networks within the social reproduction of racial capitalism. I trace an emerging reactionary Stack-consciousness as KF users become a vanguard in digital service provision. Efforts to regulate online hate culture must attend to the fact that the private ownership of the means of mediation empowers reactionary webmasters with inordinate leverage.

Drug users use surface, deep, or dark web to enhance their activity. This paper examines the intersection of the digital space and illicit substances and analyzes a Polish drug forum as a refracted public (Abidin, 2021). To illuminate the accommodation of the medical cannabis industry in the social worlds of users, their digital presence below the radar is studied through qualitative thematic analysis of the content of the major Polish surface web drug forum. The study draws on more than 8000 forum posts. The results reveal that there has been a widespread subcultural accommodation of medical cannabis for non-medical use in the form of a backchannel about the quality of the product and ways of obtaining it. We also observed an emergence of self-care and reflexive cannabis narratives, where traditional cultural framing of the substance as source of fun and pleasure converged with medical purposes narrative. Also, complicated self-regulation of use was revealed based on experimenting with tolerance, acknowledging one’s harmful use, and counteracting potential harms. We also unveiled the peer harm reduction potential of this space. Taken together, the forum accumulates knowledge and know-how for the consumers that is otherwise lacking due to the illicit or stigmatized nature of the cannabis market in Poland. Looking at what the digitally enabled discussions reveal sheds light on the possible social accommodation of cannabis ahead of significant societal and legislative transformations.