Racial justice activist hashtags: Counterpublics and discourse circulation

Abstract

Using critical discourse analysis and network analysis, I address how racial justice activist hashtags #NotYourAsianSideKick and #SolidarityisforWhiteWomen circulate discourse across networked online publics within and outside Twitter. These hashtags showcase relationships between feminist online publics, demonstrate ways that hashtags circulate racial justice discourse, and exemplify the fluidity and intersectionality of racialized and feminist online publics. I draw on critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA) (Brock, 2012) as my technique in order to examine the hashtag’s discursivity. In order to analyze message spread and network relationships, I then provide a network analysis that illustrates message circulation in online feminist spheres.

Keywords

Activism counterpublics feminism hashtags intersectionality networks race Twitter

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Benford

Snow

(2000) Framing processes and social movements: an overview and assessment. Annual Review of Sociology 26: 611–639.

Bitch Media (2014) About us. Available at: http://bitchmagazine.org/about-us (accessed 2 November 2014).

Bonilla

Rosa

(2015) #Ferguson: digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States. American Ethnologist 42(1): 4–17.

Brock

(2012) From the Blackhand side: Twitter as a cultural conversation. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 56(4): 529–549.

Byrne

(2008) The future of (the) “race”: identity, discourse. and the rise of computer-mediated public spheres. In: Everette

(ed.) Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 15–38.

Chari

(2008) Critical geographies of racial and spatial control. Geography Compass 2(6): 1907–1921.

Chun

Lipsitz

Shin

(2013) Intersectionality as a social movement strategy: Asian immigrant women advocates. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 38(4): 917–940.

Clark

(2015) Black Twitter: building connection through cultural conversation. In: Rambukkana

(ed.) #Hashtag Publics: The Power and Politics of Discursive Networks. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc, pp. 205–218.

Crenshaw

(1991) Mapping the margins: intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review 1991: 1241–1299

10.

Daniels

(2009) Rethinking cyberfeminism(s): race, gender, and embodiment. Women’s Studies Quarterly 37(1 and 2): 101–124.

11.

Daniels

(2013) Race and racism in internet studies: a review and critique. New Media & Society 15(5): 695–719.

12.

De Maeyer

(2013) Towards a hyperlinked society: a critical review of link studies. New Media & Society 15(5): 737–751.

13.

Fernandez

(2002) Cyberfeminism, racism, embodiment. In: Fernandez

Wilding

Wright

(eds) Domain Errors! Brooklyn: Autonomedia, pp. 28–44.

14.

Fraser

(1990) Rethinking the public sphere: a contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. Social Text 25/26: 109–142.

15.

Gay

(2013) Twitter sparks a serious conversation about race and feminism. NPR Codeswitch, 23 August. Available at: http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/08/22/214525023/twitter-sparks-a-serious-discussion-about-race-and-feminism (accessed 4 November 2014).

16.

Grillo

Wildman

(1991) Obscuring the importance of race: the implication of making comparisons between racism and sexism (or other isms). Duke Law Journal 1991(2): 397–412.

17.

Hall

(1997) The spectacle of the other. In Hall

(ed) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: SAGE Publications, 223-290.

18.

Hanneman

Riddle

(2011) Concepts and measures for basic network analysis. In: Scott

Carrington

(eds) The SAGE Handbook of Social Network Analysis. London: SAGE.

19.

Harris-Lacewell

(2004) Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

20.

Kendall

(2013) #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen: women of color’s issue with digital feminism. The Guardian, 14 August. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/14/solidarityisforwhitewomen-hashtag-feminism (accessed 10 November 2014).

21.

Kolko

(2000) Erasing @race: going white in the (inter)face. In: Kolko

Nakamura

Rodman

(eds) Race in Cyberspace. New York: Routledge, pp. 213–232.

22.

Leonard

Park

(2014) In defense of Twitter feminism. Model View Culture, 3 February. Available at: https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/in-defense-of-twitter-feminism (accessed 2 February 2015).

23.

Loza

(2014) Hashtag feminism, #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen, and the other #FemFuture. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, no. 5. Available at: http://adanewmedia.org/2014/07/issue5-loza/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=issue5-loza

24.

McAdam

Paulsen

(1993) Specifying the relationship between social ties and activism. American Journal of Sociology 99(3): 640–667.

25.

McIlwain

(2015) Racial discourse networks: race blogs, media influence & the possibilities for collective action. Social Science Research Network. Available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2757900 (accessed 30 July 2016).

26.

Murphy

(2013) The trouble with Twitter feminism. Feminist Current, 18 December. Available at: http://feministcurrent.com/8403/the-trouble-with-twitter-feminism/ (accessed 4 November 2014).

27.

Nakamura

(2006) Cultural difference, theory, and cyberculture studies: a case of mutual repulsion. In: Silver

Massanari

(eds) Critical Cyberculture Studies. New York: NYU Press, pp. 29–36.

28.

Rambukkana

(2015) From #RaceFail to #Ferguson: the digital intimacies of race-activist hashtag publics. In: Rambukkana

(ed.) #Hashtag Publics: The Power and Politics of Discursive Networks. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc, pp. 29–46.

29.

Roberts

(2013) Still ain’t feeling feminism. Transgriot, 14 August. Available at: http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2013/08/still-aint-feeling-feminism.html (accessed 4 November 2014).

30.

Schulman

(2008) Hyperlinks and marketing insight. In: Turow

Tsui

(eds) The Networked Society. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, pp. 145–158.

31.

Smith

(2014) Interlopers on social media: feminism, women of color and oppression. Prison Culture, 30 January. Available at: http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/2014/01/30/interlopers-on-social-media-feminism-women-of-color-and-oppression/ (accessed 10 November 2014).

32.

Snow

(2004) Framing processes, ideology, and discursive fields. In Snow

Soule

Kriesi

(eds) The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 380-412.

33.

Squires

(2002) Rethinking the Black public sphere: an alternative vocabulary for multiple public spheres. Communication Theory 12(4): 446–468.

34.

Wilde-Blavatsky

(2013) Stop bashing white women in the name of Beyoncé: we need unity not division. The Huffington Post UK, 20 December. Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/adele-tomlin/white-feminism_b_4477351.html (accessed 4 November 2014).

35.

Verloo

(2013) Intersectional and cross-movement politics and policies: reflections on current practices and debates. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 38(4): 893–915.

36.

Youmans

York

(2012) Social media and the activist toolkit: user agreements, corporate onterests, and the information infrastructure of modern social movements. Journal of Communication 62: 315–329.

37.

Young

(2014) This is what I mean when I say white feminism. BattyMamzelle, 23 June. Available at: http://battymamzelle.blogspot.com/2014/01/This-Is-What-I-Mean-When-I-Say-White-Feminism.html (accessed 2 February 2015).