The Lusophone Digital Diaspora and the Presence of Black Cultures in the Media: A Study on an Interview With the Founders of BANTUMEN

Abstract: In the current media landscape in Portugal, migrants and/or racialised people are often framed by their otherness, facing dynamics of (in)visibility. When not marginalised in the mainstream media, they are usually represented through the use of stereotypes. However, the growth of alternative media, especially in recent decades, provides these groups with a crucial platform to amplify their voices. In these alternative spaces, counter-narratives are actively constructed to challenge the hegemonic social representations. This study focuses on the alternative digital media platform BANTUMEN and analyses, with a focus on the vision and voice of its founders, how it functions as a digital diaspora, reproducing the identity experiences of black Lusophone communities. Subsequently, aims to understand how the platform contributes to questioning the dominant representations in the Portuguese media landscape. The methodological procedures focus on the qualitative content analysis of a semi-structured interview with the two people who founded BANTUMEN, journalists Vanessa Sanches and Eddie Pipocas. The results indicate that the platform builds its work on an editorial line committed to strengthening new cultural references for Portuguese-speaking black communities inside and outside Europe. The analysis also highlights the activist dimension of the project, marked by resistance to colonial and racist dynamics that permeate the media space, reinforcing a necessary problematisation of media landscapes in the Lusophone space and emphasising a presence that is both personal and political: an exercise that reconfigures margins into centres of discursive and cultural creation.

Reference: Correia Borges, G., Simões , C., & Posch, P. . (2025). A Diáspora Digital Lusófona e a Presença das Culturas Negras nos Média: Um Estudo a Partir de Entrevista aos Fundadores da BANTUMEN. Revista Comunicando, 14(2), e025025. https://doi.org/10.58050/comunicando.v14i2.470