Infrastructural fugitivity: contraband cellphones, TikTok, and vital media behind bars

Abstract

This article engages with TikToks created by incarcerated people using contraband cellphones. We read the #PrisonTok hashtag as part of a new genre of digital media created by imprisoned people that invites users to learn directly from them about everyday life behind bars, some of which includes producing and consuming digital media and memetic culture through practices of infrastructural fugitivity. TikTok’s affordances permit imprisoned people to share and demystify aspects of their everyday lives such as cooking, charging phones and maintaining digital infrastructure, despite prison rules prohibiting prisoners from owning phones. We discuss viral TikTok users such as Jeron Combs whose cooking videos have attracted millions of viewers, and conclude with an analysis of #PrisonTok’s implications for both media, visual culture and carceral studies. We do this to submit a framework for scholars, as well as free-world people broadly, to engage with illicit digital media created by imprisoned people.