Points of views: Post documentary interviews and reactions on social media surrounding the women in the documentary Surviving R. Kelly

Sammanfattning: This thesis aimed to analyse post-documentary interviews and reactions on Twitter surrounding the African American women in Surviving R. Kelly. To explore how gendered and racial stereotypes affect audience perceptions of the women and their stories of abuse. There was not enough research about how African American ’women’s narratives in documentaries were constructed and then perceived by the wider society. Therefore this thesis contributes to these discussions by exploring the discourses that emerged around the women from Surviving R. Kelly, as they were being discussed in post broadcast interviews and on social media. The research problem was approached by using a combination of content and critical discourse analysis, mainly focusing on Faircloughs 3 dimensional framework and intersectionality. These were used as a lens to analyse the results and look at broader social and political issues in society. Content analysis was used for the analysis of the public commentary on Jada Pinkett- Smith’s Twitter feed following the documentary concerning the women in Surviving R. Kelly and then an analysis of the episode with Lisa Van Allen on the Red Table Talk. The results show there was Political discourse mentioned such as black feminism and power relations with the media and representations of the African American community. Other discourse were adultification of black girls, stereotyping African American women, internalised racism and history of neglect and lack of self-love. Furthermore, the result of the content analysis also revealed that more tweets were non-supportive than supportive of the women in the documentary and that stereotypes of African-American women were used.