ABSTRACT
This chapter uses qualitative data drawn from a digital ethnographic study to demonstrate that social media have played a critical role as a site of racial conflict where white racists express their views in an unfettered fashion to the detriment of social cohesion. It focuses on the race-talk in South African social media. The chapter uses the social media posts by Hellen Zille, Penny Sparrow, Justin Van Vuuren and Chanelle Sheasby. Digital ethnography comes with ethical considerations researchers are expected to negotiate these of various magnitude in their quest to represent the world or a phenomenon that they are interested in. The chapter then uses Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a tool to read racist-talk in South African social media debates. CRT has its origins in the mid-1970s ‘as a response to the failure of Critical Legal Studies to adequately address the effects of race and racism in United States jurisprudence’.
