Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Vernacular Of Surveillance: Taylor Swift And Miley Cyrus Perform White Authenticity, Rachel E. Dubrofsky

Communication Faculty Publications

This article looks at popular visual media in the context of the larger surveillance society in which it occurs. Bringing into conversation scholarship in feminist media studies, surveillance, performance, and critical race studies, the piece offers another way to explore race in popular media and consider the implications of surveillance. The work examines how principles from contexts of surveillance carry over into contexts not under surveillance. The article explores the vernacularization-the process of making things mundane, everyday, unremarkable-of ideas about authenticity and performing, and the implications when it comes to race issues, which are animated in contexts of surveillance, but …