#identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation

by Abigail De Kosnik, Keith Feldman

Overview

Since its launch in 2006, Twitter has served as a major platform for political performance, social justice activism, and large-scale public debates over race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and nationality. It has empowered minoritarian groups to organize protests, articulate often-underrepresented perspectives, and form community. It has also spread hashtags that have been used to bully and silence women, people of color, and LGBTQ people.

#identity is among the first scholarly books to address the positive and negative effects of Twitter on our contemporary world. Hailing from diverse scholarly fields, all contributors are affiliated with The Color of New Media, a scholarly collective based at the University of California, Berkeley. The Color of New Media explores the intersections of new media studies, critical race theory, gender and women’s studies, and postcolonial studies. The essays in #identity consider topics such as the social justice movements organized through #BlackLivesMatter, #Ferguson, and #SayHerName; the controversies around #WhyIStayed and #CancelColbert; Twitter use in India and Africa; the integration of hashtags such as #nohomo and #onfleek that have become part of everyday online vernacular; and other ways in which Twitter has been used by, for, and against women, people of color, LGBTQ, and Global South communities. Collectively, the essays in this volume offer a critically interdisciplinary view of how and why social media has been at the heart of US and global political discourse for over a decade.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780472901098
Publisher:	University of Michigan Press
Publication date:	04/23/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	376
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Abigail De Kosnik is Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley in the Berkeley Center for New Media and the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies.
Keith P. Feldman is Associate Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Hashtags We've Been Forced to Remember Abigail De Kosnik Keith P. Feldman 1

1 Is Twitter a Stage?: Theories of Social Media Platforms as Performance Spaces Abigail De Kosnik 20

Part I Black Twitter Futures

2 #OnFleek: Authorship, Interpellation, and the Black Femme Prowess of Black Twitter Malika Imhotep 39

3 "You Ok Sis?": Black Vernacular, Community Formation, and the Innate Tensions of the Hashtag Paige Johnson 57

4 #SandraBland's Mystery: A Transmedia Story of Police Brutality Aaminah Norris Nalya Rodriguez 68

5 Creating and Imagining Black Futures through Afrofuturism Grace Gipson 84

6 Ferguson Blues: A Conversation with Rev. Osagyefo Sekou 104

Part II Mediated Intersections

7 Confused Cats and Postfeminist Performance Lyndsey Ogle 123

8 #WhyIStayed: Virtual Survivor-Centered Spaces for Transformation and Abolishing Partner Violence Julia Havard 137

9 #gentrification, Cultural Erasure, and the (Im)possibilities of Digital Queer Gestures José Ramón Lizárraga Arturo Cortéz 152

10 Hashtag Television: On-Screen Branding, Second-Screen Viewing, and Emerging Modes of Television Audience Interaction Renée Pastel 165

Part III Disavowals

11 Hashtag Rhetoric: #AllLivesMatter and the Production of Post-Racial Affect Kyle Booten 183

12 #CancelColbert: Popular Outrage, Divo Citizenship, and Digital Political Performativity Abigail De Kosnik 203

13 #nohomo: Homophobic Twitter Hashtags, Straight Masculinity, and Networks of Queer Disavowal Bonnie Ruberg 218

Part IV Twitter International

14 "Is Twitter for Celebrities Only?": A Qualitative Study of Twitter Use in India Neha Kumar 237

15 Reterritorializing Twitter: African Moments, 2010-2015 Reginold A. Royston Krystal Strong 249

16 #IfAfricaWasABar: Participation on Twitter across African Borders Naveena Karusala Trevor Perrier Neha Kumar 268

17 Beyond Hashtags: Black Twitter and Building Solidarity across Borders Kimberly McNair 283

Part V Notes from the Color of New Media

18 The Color of New Media Enters Trumplandia 301

19 The Color of New Media Responds to UC Berkeley's "Free Speech Week" 317

Contributors 343

Index 347