Partially supported by a NULab Seedling Grant.
Through a unique combination of network analytics and critical readings of tweet texts, #HashtagActivism: Networked Counterpublics in the Digital Age examines how and why Twitter hashtags have become an important platform for historically disenfranchised populations to advance counter-narratives and advocate for social change. We contend that members of these marginalized groups, in the tradition of counterpublics, are using Twitter hashtags to build diverse networks of dissent and shape the cultural and political knowledge fundamental to contemporary identity-based social movements.
Principal Investigators
Sarah Jackson, Faculty, Communication Studies; Moya Bailey, Faculty, Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Digital Humanities; Brooke Foucault Welles, Faculty, Communication Studies
Publications and Presentations
Bailey, M., Foucault Welles, B., and Jackson, S.J. #HashtagActivism: Race and Gender in America’s Network Counterpublics. MIT Press. March 2020. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/hashtagactivism
Foucault Welles, B. and Jackson, S. (2019). The Battle for #Baltimore: Networked Counterpublics and the Contested Framing of Urban Unrest. International Journal of Communication. 13, 1699-1719.
Gallagher, R. Young, J-G., and Foucault Welles, B. (forthcoming) A Clarified Typology of Core-Periphery Structure in Networks. Accepted for publication in Science Advances.
Jackson. S. J., Bailey, M. & Foucault Welles, B. (2019). Women Tweet on Violence: From #YesAllWomen to #MeToo. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media & Technology, issue 15.
Jackson, S.J., Bailey, M., and Foucault Welles, B. (2017). #GirlsLikeUs: Trans advocacy and community building online. New Media and Society, doi: 10.1177/1461444817709276.
Jackson, S.J. and Foucault Welles, B. (2016). #Ferguson is Everywhere: Initiators in Emerging Counterpublic Networks. Information, Communication and Society. 19(3), 397-418.
Jackson, S.J. and Foucault Welles, B. (2015). Hijacking #myNYPD: Social Media Dissent and Networked Publics. Journal of Communication. 65(6), 932-952.
Joseph, K., Gallagher, R., and Foucault Welles, B. (2020). Who Says What with Whom: Using Bi-Spectral Clustering to Organize and Analyze Social Media Protest Networks. Computational Communication Research, 2(2), 153-174.
