Ideology as/of Platform Affordance and Black Feminist Conceptualizations of “Canceling”: Reading Twitter

Abstract

As Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter highlights, platforms’ affordances extend further than UI choices and content formats emphasized. Extant work addresses that political perspectives are implicated in the affordances of platforms; however, the notion of “ideology as/of affordance” requires more scholarly attention, namely, from a Black feminist position which grapples with the raced and gendered dimensions of how such shaping of affordances is understood and experienced in digital contexts. A Black feminist analysis offers a critical intervention that examines the dynamics between ideology, digital culture, and relational experiences of autonomy. Thus, our article outlines how “ideology as/of affordance” is a helpful intervention for illuminating the power relations by which both “cancel culture” and “platform affordances” are defined. Specifically, we explicate how white supremacist ideology underpins platform affordances, which in turn shape who is “canceled,” and consider the key connections and disconnections between them.

Keywords

platform affordances cancel culture Twitter Black feminism ideology

Introduction

As Elon Musk’s 2022 takeover of Twitter¹ highlights, the ways in which affordances operate extend further than the User Interface (UI) and content formats that are emphasized. Such platform affordances are also imbued with the owner’s personal ideologies, as well as being impacted by broader societal power regimes. Digital studies, platform studies, and political economy studies have critically analyzed and illuminated the functions, affordances, and capitalist roots of social media, microblogging, and content-sharing sites such as YouTube and Twitter (Dijck 2020; Srnicek 2017; Weltevrede and Borra 2016). However, much of such work stems from a point in time prior to the rise of rhetoric regarding so-called “cancel culture.” Experiences of “cancel culture”, like affordances, can shift depending on the context of use, and primarily, who is being targeted (Clark 2020). Although extant work has addressed how power relations and political perspectives are implicated in the affordances of platforms, the notion of “ideology as/of affordance” (lasade-anderson 2022a) provides a critical intervention that uses affordance scholarship to illustrate its ideological power. Such theorizing is in conversation with Chun’s (2009) work on race as technology, where they argue that “as” operates in a way that “facilitates comparisons between entities classed as similar or dissimilar” (p. 9). “Ideology as/of affordance” provides a rethinking where ideology is considered not from what it does to affordances, but to how ideology can also be a kind of affordance. This paper takes such an approach, employing a Black feminist epistemological position which grapples with how imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy (hooks 1994) and misogynoir (Bailey 2010, 2021) is implicated in the shaping and experiences of platform affordances (e.g., on Twitter) (lasade-anderson 2022b).

A Black feminist conceptualization of ideology as/of affordance offers a critical intervention examining the dynamics between ideology, digital culture, and relational experiences of autonomy. Such an analytical lens puts the concepts of “platform affordances” and “cancel culture” in dialog in a productive way which deals with how both have been wielded and weaponised to infer that individuals have more agency and autonomy online than they typically do. Put differently, a Black feminist conceptualization of such matters provides necessary analysis of “platform affordances”, alleged processes of “canceling,” and the tempestuous relationship between them. In taking such an approach to critically analyzing these issues, we lay bare how notions of “platform affordances” and “cancel culture” can function in ways that mask the extent to which platforms have power over people’s digital visibility.

Focusing on the fluctuating platform affordances of Twitter, while reflecting on the notion of affordances more broadly, we outline how the concept of ideology as/of affordance is a helpful intervention for illuminating the power relations which define both “cancel culture” and “platform affordances.” To achieve this, we draw on the vital work of Clark (2020) in “A brief etymology of so-called ‘cancel culture’.” Specifically, we examine how white supremacist ideological underpinnings shape platform affordances, which in turn shape who is supposedly “canceled,” and associated ideas about what “canceling” involves.

Conceptualizing Affordances

Within the field of internet studies, there is consensus on the biased nature of the internet (Benjamin 2019; Coleman 2019; Fuchs 2014; Safiya Umoja 2018; Sengupta and Graham 2017; Vaidhyanathan 2017). Legal scholar Lessig (2006) wrote “In cyberspace we must understand how a different “code” regulates—how the software and hardware (i.e., the “code” of cyberspace) that make cyberspace what it is also regulate cyberspace as it is” (p. 5). It is a specific element of coded regulation—affordances—which we argue can be seen as being ideological.

Existing analyses of social media consider how platforms’ networked nature influences user behavior across community-building, political activism, and language and cultural practices (see for e.g., boyd 2010; Dijck 2013; Graham and Smith 2016; Jackson 2020; Kuo 2018; Marwick and Boyd 2011). Amongst these, the focus has been on specific affordances related to the design features and UI of platforms, such as hashtags, rather than how affordances can operate theoretically, which is what this paper advances. “Affordances” is broadly considered across a diverse range of scholarship; there lacks consensus on a single definition. A term coined by Gibson (2014), “affordances” defines the relationship between animals and the environment. Affordances “are what the environment offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes” (p. 56). While Gibson (2014) uses the term in the context of ecological psychology, in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Norman’s (2013) definition is “the perceived and actual properties of the thing,” where the “thing” are artifacts in design (p. 9). In media and communications studies, scholars interpret affordances as add-on feature sets (e.g., boyd 2010; Treem and Leonardi 2013) rather than being intrinsic to the technology (Sun and Hart-Davidson 2014). Nevertheless, where there is consensus is in the relationality of social network sites’ (SNS) technological functions and resulting user behavior—the co-constitutive relationship between affordance and agentic human behavior (Davis 2020; Hutchby 2001). For instance, providing an alternative definition are Hutchby (2001) and Majchrzak et al. (2013) who suggest that affordances are the result of the relationship between the potential actions allowed on SNS and the technological capabilities underpinning them. For these scholars, affordances are technological elements that provide or restrict, while simultaneously not entirely determining actors’ behavior. Overall, then, affordances can be seen as engendering possibilities, and both constraining those possibilities. Our use of the term affordance follows scholars Bucher and Helmond (2018), who propose that “affordances are key to understanding and analyzing SNS interfaces and relations between technology and users” (p. 235). A relational view of affordances is important in our argument because it unveils the “social capabilities that certain communication technologies enable” (Sun and Hart-Davidson 2014, 3535). Therefore, the analysis that follows is shaped by an understanding of affordances as being a term that encompasses structural power relations which impact who is afforded what. Put briefly, we conceptualize affordances—platform-based and otherwise—as typically functioning in unequal ways in the context of imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy (hooks 1984).

Platform Affordances

Scholarship on platform affordances focuses on the dynamics, social interactions and communication practices that features on platforms allow (Bucher and Helmond 2018). This literature examines the materiality of SNS features, those composed of “properties of bits” (boyd 2010); or they highlight the mediated dynamics enabled by affordances, which may give rise to different types of communicative practices or experiences, particularly for marginalized or minoritised people (Bailey 2021; Brock 2018; Graham and Smith 2016; Steele 2015). These two groupings of affordances, either abstract or feature-specific, (Bucher and Helmond 2018), —while useful for typologies of platforms—do not offer a theoretical framework that examines the dynamics between ideology, digital culture, and relational experiences of autonomy. Davis (2020) writes: “The social world is power laden, and so too are technologies. Conceptual tools for the study of human-technology relations must therefore also assume and attend to political dynamics as they manifest in social and material forms” (p. 33).

An ideological analysis is a necessary one, given a key conceptual point in affordances research is that affordances “do not determine social practice” (boyd 2010, 46), but constrain and control it, much like ideology. In the information age, social media are essential infrastructure (Lovink 2016), and “It is precisely at this juncture of “becoming infrastructure” that we (re)open the ideology file” (Lovink 2016, 10). Similarly, William Gaver makes the case that affordances are not only about the perceived utility of the environment, but that they are “properties of the world defined with respect to people’s interaction with it [emphasis added]” (Gaver 1991, p. 80 quoted in Bucher and Helmond 2018, 237). Gaver’s position encourages us to think about which kinds of societal perspectives affordances contain, and how they both reflect and impact people, places, and forms of power.

Ideology as/of Platform Affordance

Chun (2005) declares “software is a functional analog to ideology. In a formal sense, computers understood as comprising software and hardware are ideology machines” (p. 18). To analyze how ideologies shape affordances and therefore platform behavior such as “canceling,” we are in conversation with extant literature that reads software as ideological. Ideologies are systems and beliefs, they “explain a given political order, legitimizing existing hierarchies and power relations and preserving group identities” (Fairclough 2013, 257). Thus, conceptualizing ideology as/of platform affordance is possible because they both have relational characteristics. Ideology and platform affordances are “ways of representing aspects of the world, which may be operationalized in ways of acting and interacting and in ‘ways of being’ or identities, that contribute to establishing or sustaining unequal relations of power” (Fairclough 2013, 8). Hence, we can see the connective tissue between software and ideology: operating systems, like affordances, constrain and enable possibilities. Chun (2005) contends:

the “choices” operating systems offer limit the visible and the invisible, the imaginable and the unimaginable. You are not, however, aware of software’s constant constriction and interpellation. . .unless you find yourself frustrated with its defaults (which are remarkably referred to as your preferences) (p. 18).

The function of ideology is to serve power, and “technologies are often infused with the politics of the powerful” (Davis 2020, 11). Affordances’ traits of enabling and constraining underscore how they wield power (Sun and Hart-Davidson 2014). Social media companies treat users differently: whether through the “bending” of their own platform policies for profit-bearing Creators (Baker-White 2020), or by disproportionately shadowbanning fat, Black and queer account holders (Are 2022; El-Wardany 2020), platforms categorize users into different class hierarchies. Consequently, the power and class differentials within social media, supports an ideology as/of affordance hermeneutic, “because ideologies are a significant element of processes through which relations of power are established, maintained, enacted and transformed” (Fairclough 2013, 26). At this juncture, we suggest that the dominant ideology on platforms, specifically Twitter, is a right-wing “white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (hooks 1994, 26). Certainly, to advance a right-wing, white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal ideology, is to grant power and privilege to whiteness and maleness, and to extract wealth and resources from those disproportionately disadvantaged by such power and privilege. Antiblack “cancel culture” tactics and discourses of “canceling” are emblematic of such right-wing ideologies on platforms. Here, we provide a Black feminist analysis of “cancel culture”, which we argue furthers the theorizing of ideology as/of platform affordance.

Tweet(In)g and Calling Out: A Black Feminist Lesson on “Cancel Culture”

As journalist and media studies scholar Clark (2020) affirms in crucial work in the “Etymology of so-called ‘cancel culture’”: “The term ‘cancel culture’ has significant implications for defining discourses of digital and social media activism,” and it is a term that has been used to dismissively reframe “the evolution of digital accountability praxis as performed by Black Twitter” (p. 1). Clark (2020) goes on to explain:

“Canceling” is an expression of agency, a choice to withdraw one’s attention from someone or something whose values, (in)action, or speech are so offensive, one no longer wishes to grace them with their presence, time, and money. The term has since devolved into journalistic shorthand wielded as a tool for silencing marginalized people who have adapted earlier resistance strategies for effectiveness in the digital space (p. 1).

Canceling then, is imbued with a Black feminist approach to accountability and analysis of power. Such work critically articulates dominant ideologies at work in society, while tackling the intersecting nature of oppression and its impacts (e.g., the nexus of racism, sexism, classism, and ableism). As an example, Black feminisms enable critical consideration of how Twitter’s tagline, “Here, your voice matters” (Twitter 2024), glosses over the reality that some voices may be responded to and/or silenced in ways shaped by ideological forces (e.g., imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy) that yield any public critique of oppressive forces as “canceling.” As Clark (2020) notes, “what it means to be ‘canceled’ [requires] contextualizing the power relations that inform the assumption of an equitable public sphere” (p. 2). Making use of the critical framework the matrix of domination (Collins 1991), Black feminist analysis of “cancel culture” illuminates both the agency of people and the force of structural power relations—all of which contours people’s capacity to freely express themselves publicly online. Therefore, a Black feminist analysis of “cancel culture” exemplifies how ideology as/of affordance operates, because such conceptualizations refuse the myth that anyone can “cancel” and/or be “canceled.” Such work highlights that power regimes shape the extent to which someone can cultivate predominantly negative societal perceptions of another person and their perspectives, both online and offline. More than that, Black feminist approaches call into question the very notion of “cancel culture” and clarify that framing public critique of an individual as their “canceling,” can have the effect of strategically positioning powerful people (e.g., white and wealthy public figures) as being somehow oppressed.

A Black feminist perspective on “cancel culture” helps to parse the ways that power is weaponised on platforms and in people’s experiences of them, by critically analyzing how notions of “free speech” and “canceling” are constructed and contended online. Such conceptualizations of these matters also highlight that contemporary discourse on “cancel culture” (e.g., who claims to be canceled and who they claim to have been canceled by) is imbued with dominant ideological positions (e.g., who feels entitled to speak and act with impunity, regardless of the harm they cause, and why they feel that sense of entitlement). In other words, a Black feminist analysis of “cancel culture” enables a nuanced understanding of the relationship between ideology and platform affordances, accounting for the relational nature of power and agency. For example, Black feminist theory addresses and explains how intersecting forms of oppression shape whether and how people can express themselves online (e.g., accounting for how the combined impact of ableist platform affordance designs and the normalization of online misogynoir can obstruct the digital experiences of disabled Black women, and, in turn, their free speech).

Ultimately, a Black feminist analysis of “cancel culture” alongside the theorizing of ideology as/of affordance, challenges the notion that “canceling” is a contemporary social process that simply involves negating someone and/or something. By critically accounting for pervasive and centuries-long power dynamics, Black feminist theoretical explications of “cancel culture” illuminate that the term is but one of many that is used to both describe and dismiss forms of critique and efforts to hold people accountable for their actions (Brock 2020).

Canceling, “Cancel Culture,” Ideology, and Twitter

People’s capacity to participate in conversations on Twitter can be constrained by the prospect of them being subjected to online abuse and harassment. For instance, extensive research on abuse and harassment faced by Black women on Twitter (Akiwowo 2022; Amnesty International 2018; Chatelain 2019; Glitch, and End Violence Against Women Coalition 2020), illustrates that Twitter’s perceived affordance of “space to converse,” is one that is not equally accessible to all its account holders. On Twitter there are numerous examples illustrating how surrounding notions of “canceling” nod to both the political and practical functions of social media sites: for claims of being “canceled” include examples such as the suspension of Twitter accounts and accusations of being censored/silenced by the allegedly politically “woke” (Sobande 2024). We note that in this context, “canceling” is constructed as oppositional to so-called free speech and, consequently, is framed as undermining Twitter as a platform where “Here, your voice matters” (Twitter 2024)—a notion that, arguably, is far from being ideologically neutral.

Distinguishing between the discourses entangled in what has become known as “cancel culture,” media, culture, and politics scholar Ng (2020) “defines ‘cancel culture’ as comprising both cancel practices (canceling) that involve actions against a cancel target, which may be an individual, brand, or company, and cancel discourses, which is commentary about canceling” (p. 1). Much of contemporary discourse on “cancel culture” on social media, is a by-product of the ideological positions of different platform owners and the culture embedded in their approach to content moderation and other forms of community management online (Harry 2021). While we acknowledge that Twitter is a site of many different political conversations and contestations (Sobande 2020), informed by studies of its right-wing leaning (Kreis 2017; Pérez-Curiel 2020), we recognize the imagined affordances (Nagy and Neff 2015) of Twitter as including its propensity to promote right-wing ideologies.

For example, in response to a tweet including a video of Matt Taibbi and Joe Rogan discussing changes to Twitter under Musk’s leadership, Elon Musk replied: “RIP Cancel Culture, you won’t be missed” (@ elonmusk 2023). Both Rogan and Taibbi have been embroiled in socio-political controversy. Taibbi, a journalist, has faced sexual harassment accusations and been described as a “red-pilled culture warrior chasing subscriptions” (Barkan 2021). Taibbi also published the “Twitter Files,” a sensational report made up from classified Twitter documents about content moderation. Taibbi argues the files reveal that Twitter “censored” tweets in support of Republican propaganda against the Democrats (Kwet 2023). Rogan, a podcaster, has faced public fallout about his controversial behaviors, including his liberal use of the N-word (which resulted in Spotify pulling several episodes from the platform (Romano 2022)). Rogan, Taibbi and Musk, have made public comments about the “wokeness” of the Left, “cancel culture” and so-called free-speech suppression (Kwet 2023). If, at the heart of “cancel culture” is the “withdrawal of any kind of support. . .for those who are assessed to have said or done something unacceptable. . .generally from a social justice perspective” (Ng 2020, 623), then in his tweet, Musk signals that he, (including through Twitter), will call for its end: that is, will allow for all types of voice and speech, even if they are racist, homophobic or otherwise.

So, how does this relate to Twitter’s ideology as/of affordance? Firstly, it signals who is encouraged and allowed to use Twitter. One of Musk’s first changes as CEO was to reinstate previously “banned” right-wing accounts which were associated with the harassment of marginalized people (Woodward 2022). In doing so, Musk conveys that the platform’s facilitation of “space to converse” is underpinned by and will be encouraged to be those opinions and perspectives that align with right-wing ideologies in the broader public sphere. Secondly, a right-wing, white supremacist capitalist ideology as/of affordance on Twitter, privileges the silencing of minoritised groups and individuals over dominant ones. We wonder: how can Black women consider Twitter as a space where “. . .real change starts with conversation” (Twitter 2024) if people and accounts which dehumanize their very existence are encouraged and welcome on the platform? In the context of “conversation,” the mediated dynamics affordances engender on Twitter are ideologically unsafe for Black women (Amnesty International 2018; Anderson 2016). Earlier, we noted how affordances scholarship centers on the communicative practices that affordances allow: affordances constrain and enable behaviors. Part and parcel of this “allowance” is that affordances also prohibit conversation. In 2014, Chatelain (2019), made use of Twitter for knowledge production and dissemination. In response to the murder of unarmed teenager Michael Brown by the police, Chatelain’s #FergusonSyllabus campaign highlighted the socio-political circumstances leading to Brown’s death. Chatelain explains that Twitter allowed for educators to organize and gather. However, she also notes that because of the virality of the hashtag, she was the target of racist trolls and harassment. Similarly, Tressie McMillan Cottom, explains how Twitter can provide visibility for racialised academics whose work would otherwise remain subjugated (Cottom 2017). On the other hand, Cottom, has also explained that because of increased visibility on Twitter, she receives racist harassment, and hateful emails (@ tressiemcphd 2022).

In September 2022, Dr Uju Anya, a Black woman, tweeted about Queen Elizabeth and the violence of the British empire in an “offensive” way, as news about the Queen’s deteriorating health spread around the globe (Flynn 2022). As a response, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, quote-tweeted admonishing Dr Anya, resulting in increased visibility of her tweet from his 6.2M followers. Ultimately, Twitter deleted Anya’s tweet—stating it violated their hate speech policy—(2022), while Anya faced criticism and backlash both on Twitter and news media. The above examples illustrate the encoded power and ideological imbalances Black women face on the platform. Twitter “. . .can foster ideological rigidity” (Ng 2020, 623); conversations by outspoken Black women result in threats of violence toward them, silencing or self-censorship. Musk and his proponents re-narrativize “cancel culture” and “wokeness” as restricting free-speech and alternative views, but “canceling” actually involves “previously silenced groups making a real if small dent in the power of those traditionally privileged by gender, [and] race” (Ng 2020, 623), by pushing back against the normalization of racist, sexist, classist and homophobic attitudes (Clark 2020). As Chatelain’s (2019) article asks: “Is Twitter any place for a Black [academic] lady?” These examples, and our analysis, would suggest no.

Conclusion

Our article introduces the theorization of ideology as/of affordance and offers a Black feminist analysis of platform affordances, “cancel culture,” and their entanglements. Informed by pivotal research such as Clark’s (2020) on the etymology of so-called “cancel culture”, and Bailey’s (2021) on misogynoir and Black women’s digital experiences, our piece puts Black digital studies, critical race and internet studies, platform studies, and critical accounts of “cancel culture” in dialog. We do so at a point in time when Twitter’s affordances, content moderation (or lack thereof), and socio-political brand has shifted in ways tethered to the ideological views espoused by its owner, and the continued rise of populist right-wing politics. In the spirit of Black feminism’s ability to create a world that is otherwise (Emejulu and Francesca 2019), here, we consider it necessary to take the opportunity to reflect on what platforms and their affordances could evolve to. What platform experiences might be possible if platforms embraced Black feminist principles from the point of design, and within a society where Black women and Black feminism flourished? Perhaps a platform that centers and was predominantly for Black people might exist, one that took community care and transformative justice seriously (Bailey and Cole 2021). It would be one where Black women content creators, scholars and activists like the recently departed Shafiqah Hudson (known on Twitter as @sassycrass), were properly attributed and compensated for their innovations and work in making platforms safer (Eordogh 2018). Future Black feminist digital platforms rooted in a focus on collective creation, ownership, care, and communal space to come as you are, would still be sites where perspectives diverge. However, such platforms and participation in them could avoid the trappings of notions of “cancel culture”, by fostering forms of mutual respect and accountability praxis of calling in (not out), which are free of the punitive logics that underlie common concepts of “canceling.”

In the words of Black digital studies scholar André Brock, in Shamira’s (2022) article on “Can Black Twitter Ever Really Die?”: “The fact that somebody racist takes charge of a space that we inhabit, doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll flee. We don’t do white flight.” Affirming and elaborating on Brock’s point (Shamira, 2022), we consider our theorizing of ideology as/of platform affordance and “cancel culture” as enabling an understanding of online platforms and digital experiences, which goes beyond conceptual binaries such as “individual” and “institution.” Indeed—we deem Musk as both an individual and an institution. Our Black feminist theorising of ideology as/of platform affordance and “cancel culture” can help to explore the complicated but potentially generative, and, even, pleasurable, space(s) between “staying” on or “fleeing” from Twitter. As such, future work might benefit from considering what it means to “stay” on Twitter, but approach use of the platform, and disengagement from it, in different ways than before Musk’s takeover of it. In this vein then, we could consider approaches that do not move fast and break things, but rather embrace forms of pausing, pacing, and privacy in a world that does not, but needs to demand the safety, of Black women.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [551413 LAHP DTP2].

ORCID iDs

temi lasade-anderson

Francesca Sobande

Notes

Author Biographies

temi lasade-anderson is a writer and PhD candidate in the department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries. Her research explores the conceptualization of digital intimacy as it pertains to Black women, Black feminist praxis, and notions of the Black diaspora. She is interested more broadly in race, identity and gender on social media, sociology of friendship, digital subcultures, and platform governance. Her work has been published in Feminist Media Studies.

Dr Francesca Sobande is a writer and reader in digital media studies at Cardiff University. Her books include Big Brands Are Watching You: Marketing Social Justice and Digital Culture (2024), Consuming Crisis: Commodifying Care and COVID-19 (2022), and The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain (2020). Francesca is also co-author of Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland (2022) and Black Oot Here: Dreams O Us (2023).

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