“Camping” or abortion? Polyvarience and coded language on social media

Abstract

In the context of hashtag activism and hashtag feminism, this article examines the use of “camping” as a code for abortion on Twitter following the 2022 Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. Utilizing a critical discourse analysis approach, the analysis assesses the discursive practices of using “camping” as a symbol while considering the affordances and limitations of social media spaces in conveying messages that influence social and political life, such as abortion access advocacy online. The findings revealed the discursive practices created by the “camping” code and the impact of other users’ concerns around this iteration of hashtag activism that resulted in the following four themes: adoption, disidentification, rejection or caution, and redirection toward advocacy. This study presents the affordances of constitutive effects online and the limitations of using symbols within social media spaces to claim oneself as a “safe” person to trust in lieu of existing activist networks.