Sustaining Black Music and Culture during COVID-19: #Verzuz and Club Quarantine argues that Instagram is a premier digital leisure space to celebrate and promote Black American culture and identity, particularly evidenced during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as the United States grappled with mandated shelter-in-place orders. Club Quarantine (CQ) and Verzuz emerged as highly successful Black music-listening events streamed on Instagram Live, collectively ushering Black (techno)culture through a once-in-a-generation pandemic and beyond. Contributors to this collection explore the communicative and cultural significance of these events as respite from social isolation and as a rearticulated space for Black cultural engagement in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased racial tensions in the United States.

Research on the dark side of communication has typically been studied from a single standpoint confined to a specific context. As an intradisciplinary project, this volume transcends the traditional unilateral perspective and focuses on a wide range of communication topics across a variety of contexts. From interpersonal communication, organizational communication, computer-mediated communication, and health communication, the book presents a collection of essays that merges theory with practical application. Chapter contributors write candidly and unapologetically about how they and various populations under investigation mitigate a wealth of dark side behaviors spanning sexualization, cyberstalking, bereavement, and various illnesses. The different perspectives offer a lens through which students and academics can enhance their understanding of how dark side behaviors are experienced and communicated. They enlighten our understanding of the dark side of human communication, initiate thought-provoking conversations, and inspire future studies that will advance the limitless inquisitions of contextual dark side research.