This article shows how the inclusive design of social media platforms can facilitate the preservation of positions of privilege in public debates, where informal representation often takes place. Analyzing the most popular tweets under the Twitter hashtag #solidarityisforwhitewomen, we found that despite seemingly noble intentions, white feminists’ claim to “listen and learn” from the hashtag conversation directed attention away from black women’s suppression. Using Mouffe’s (2012) concept of agonism as a crucial component of the democratic character of good representation, our analysis suggests that the main contestation in the most visible hashtag conversation tended to happen through a consensus-seeking neutralization of the conflict rather than through an agonistic dialogue in which the other side’s claims were recognized and occupied space in the discussion. Twitter’s democratic potential, therefore, requires closer attention to good-representation practices, such as active self-limitation through good gatekeeping and the amplification of underrepresented voices.
In The Good Representative, Dovi (Reference Dovi2007) stressed the importance of understanding informal representatives as part of an analysis of good representation. In our contribution, we explore what good representation could be in a relatively new and nonconventional representative arena by analyzing claims and conversations within a hashtag on Twitter. The need to analyze political representation beyond mainstream electoral arenas has been highlighted by several scholars who argue that there is more to representation than the static relationship between formally elected representatives and their constituents. Instead, representation should be understood as a performative act: an ongoing, constitutive process in which constituencies are formed from “below” at the grassroots level as well as from “above,” when an actor is claiming to represent someone or something (Saward Reference Saward2006; Severs, Celis, and Erzeel Reference Severs, Celis and Erzeel2016; Urbinati and Warren Reference Urbinati and Warren2008). As Severs, Celis, and Erzeel (2016, 3) explained, representation in itself (re)produces social relationships through its depictions of the political world. Therefore, we must aim to understand it as “a dynamic process in which power is performed and social positions of privilege and disadvantage are (re)constituted.” We argue that claim-making participants in political conversations on social media can be understood as informal representatives whose descriptions of reality are (re)producing relationships between and within social groups.
Using these considerations, we explored the following question to understand Twitter’s normative potential as an arena in which representation takes place: What does it mean to be a good representative on social media? Dovi (Reference Dovi2007) argued that representatives are “good” if they exert representation in a democratic manner—that is, if they are representing in a way that advocates the norms and values distinctive of democratic institutions, such as the inclusion and equal voice of all citizens in the public-policy-making process. Due to the low threshold for participation, rapidness, and geographical dispersion, social media provides a relatively new type of public space in which different voices can be expressed and mobilize support. With more than 313 million active users worldwide (Twitter 2017), Twitter is a technology at the core of these dynamics. A tweet can gain wide attention in a matter of minutes, and hashtags can group thousands of tweets on a single issue from all over the world in no more than a couple of hours. In this context, one could be tempted to see social media almost as a democratic utopia: a virtual space where everyone can have a voice and all positions can be heard. Thus, on the one hand, Twitter could provide a possibility for non-publicly-elected representatives of claims to take part in public discussions and dispute the political consensus on mainstream representative arenas. However, on the other hand, the extremely inclusive design of many online platforms for public discussions also could facilitate the (re)production of power positions because there are few restrictions that hinder groups from dominating or distorting conversations.
We explored this issue by examining the hashtag #solidarityisforwhitewomen, which gained notoriety in August 2013 after women of color used it to question the privilege of white feminists to define feminist struggles. Kendall (Reference Kendall2013), creator of the hashtag, pointed out that the attention it received cannot be disconnected from years of black feminism fighting against the assumption that gender trumps race and that black feminist scholars enjoy the same status and privilege as white feminists. The hashtag quickly generated a huge response from Twitter users worldwide, being included in more than 75,000 tweets during the first four days (Topsy 2015, cited in Loza Reference Loza2014) and receiving widespread attention in many large digital and mainstream media outlets (e.g., The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and The Huffington Post). It was reported and discussed in numerous online communities, websites, and personal blogs. Many recognized it as a unique opportunity for women of color to voice their concerns in public debates.
By examining the most visible tweets (i.e., “Top Tweets”) during the first week of #solidarityisforwhitewomen, we unpacked how positions of privilege are maintained in social media in practice. In particular, we show how the seemingly noble intentions of self-identified white feminists to state their presence and engagement in #solidarityisforwhitewomen could contribute to black women’s suppression by occupying space in the conversation and directing attention from the original claim toward the presence and actions of white feminists. Against this backdrop, we argue that to achieve its democratic potential, it is necessary that good representatives on Twitter recognize that the claims of their opponents can be voiced legitimately without dominating or distorting the conversation. In practice, this could imply using Twitter to retweet messages instead of emphasizing one’s own place in claim making—for example, by actively stating that one is listening and learning from a conversation in which the voice of other actors must be heard.
The next section examines the potential of Twitter’s inclusive design in disputing power biases on more mainstream arenas for representation. Then we turn to the hashtag #solidarityisforwhitewomen to understand how agonistic dynamics can emerge in social media and to show how claim making can dilute or aggravate power status. Finally, we briefly discuss how the good representative on Twitter can emerge only from an agonistic rationale in which conflicts are neither called out as illegitimate nor neutralized.
In particular, we show how the seemingly noble intentions of self-identified white feminists to state their presence and engagement in #solidarityisforwhitewomen could contribute to black women’s suppression by occupying space in the conversation and directing attention from the original claim toward the presence and actions of white feminists.
OPENING UP FOR THE POLITICAL ON TWITTER: MOVING TOWARD AGONISM
Twitter has the potential to be an inclusive representative arena because it has no formal gatekeepers that control access to it. As a result, it does not possess the barriers to visibility that more traditional media have. Moreover, in comparison to other social media, Twitter’s architecture creates possibilities for contestation and resistance among citizens. For example, in contrast to Facebook—where interactions are built primarily on already existing relationships—Twitter opens up interactions among millions of users outside one’s real-life network (Rightler-McDaniels and Hendrickson 2014, 176). Consequently, “Twitter is in a unique position to allow all users, regardless of gender and race, an equal opportunity to participate in discussions unrestricted” (Rightler-McDaniels and Hendrickson 2014, 178). Thus, Twitter has a political potential that other forms of social media lack—namely, providing a new form of visibility that could allow previously marginalized actors to represent their own claims and publicly challenge the claims of others. Twitter therefore could be a venue in which claims made by representatives in mainstream electoral arenas might be disputed.
To understand Twitter’s potential for good representation, we turn to Mouffe’s concepts of agonism, antagonism, and the political. Mouffe (Reference Mouffe2012) argued that a (democratic) political space requires the possibility to confront ideas within the framework of democratic institutions. Whereas antagonism implies that the opposing sides try to eliminate and dismiss one another’s claims rather than engage in a democratic dialogue, an agonistic relationship is characterized by a situation in which “adversaries share a common symbolic space and they recognize, at least to some degree, the legitimacy of the claims of their opponents” (Mouffe Reference Mouffe2012, 633). In this way, agonism is a necessary component of democracy because it allows for the recognition of oppositional actors and their claims as legitimate, thereby opening up the possibility for contestation rather than the elimination of opponents. Unfortunately, in the current (neo)liberal mindset of consensus (Mouffe Reference Mouffe2005), presuppositions based on a consensus-seeking logic result in a situation in which antagonism, rather than agonism, emerges as the main form of contestation. Because Twitter presents a new arena for disputing claims on mainstream political venues, we thus pose the question of whether it could be a space for agonistic politics. The following section examines the discussion within #solidarityisforwhitewomen and shows how “good representatives” should act to foster Twitter’s democratic potential for agonistic politics.
TWITTER AS AGONISM?
We analyzed 460 tweets identified by Twitter as “Top Tweets” (i.e., tweets that found resonance within the hashtag; Twitter 2015) during the first week of existence of #solidarityisforwhitewomen.Footnote 1 We also included in our analysis conversations that were sparked by these tweets and material that was linked through them (e.g., blog posts and articles in traditional media). Following Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001, 96) understanding of discourse as an articulatory practice that constitutes and organizes social relationships to an extent that it fixes identity and order, we conducted a qualitative discourse analysis to illustrate how contestation to a mainstream discourse occurs on Twitter.
WHAT ARE THE POWER DIFFERENTIALS AT PLAY IN #SOLIDARITYISFORWHITEWOMEN?
The hashtag #solidarityisforwhitewomen was itself a contestation of mainstream feminism by questioning its exclusion of black voices. “Solidarity is for white women” is a direct reference to both the antagonistic character of racism and the naturalizing force of feminism. In particular, the tweets pointing out the marginalization of women of color within mainstream feminism attempted to reorganize the privileged subject position of white feminists and to reveal it as one among many contestable discursive positions.
However, turning to the Twitter conversations that followed the emergence of the hashtag, we found several ways in which the criticism #solidarityisforwhitewomen directed against mainstream feminism was contested. The first type of contestation found in the Top Tweets is the most obvious: tweets that openly contest the claims about white privilege within feminism. These contestations were often made by self-identified white feminists, which attempted to reorganize and reorder the discourse by arguing that claims about white privilege within feminism simply are either untrue or destructive because they are divisive for feminism as a movement. However, few tweets of this type made it to the Top Tweet selection. Most often, these tweets instead were found within the conversations following the Top Tweets that contributed to the notoriety of the hashtag by using the reply function (@).
It is interesting that the more typical contestation found through the hashtag was a call urging others on Twitter to “listen and learn” from the hashtag conversation. Some of these listen–and-learn tweets were a direct reaction to the open contestation of the hashtag described previously by targeting the white mainstream feminist audience that was voicing criticism about the hashtag within (and outside) Twitter. They urged them to “sit down, listen, and learn” from the tweets instead of contesting them. However, most of the listen-and-learn tweets were of a somewhat different type; they often simply called for others to read and learn from the hashtag or simply to highlight that they were listening to it. This type of claim often was made by self-identified white feminist Twitter users and directed toward a white feminist audience. For example:
I suggest every white feminist check out the #solidarityisforwhitewomen tag. A good opportunity for us to listen & learn.
During the first week of the hashtag, the listen-and-learn tweets constituted a large part of the total number of Top Tweets (i.e., about 10%). Notably, by far, the most retweeted tweet during this period was one by a self-identified white feminist urging other white feminists to listen and learn from the hashtag. Consequently, although these tweets were not openly contesting the hashtag, they nevertheless were occupying a large space (from black feminists) in the hashtag conversation. This concern also was expressed in reaction to these types of tweets. For example:
If you’re a white woman, just listen to #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen. Don’t co-opt this space from WOC to elevate our own privileged voices.
@name I am. Just listening. But keep getting interrupted by white feminist women telling other white feminist women to listen.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM #SOLIDARITYISFORWHITEWOMEN IN TERMS OF GOOD REPRESENTATION?
The architecture of Twitter allows for a quick redistribution of other users’ claims by retweeting their content. However, instead of retweeting the claims of others to simply listen and learn, many white mainstream feminists considered it important to reinstate their voice and presence in these tweets and to be noticed by others in the conversation. When self-identified white feminists claim that they are listening and learning from the hashtag but at the same time inviting the claims from “other” women to be part of a feminist conversation, they confirm and (re)produce their own power position. Instead of choosing to simply retweet the critique leveled toward white privilege, they repositioned themselves as subjects in the conversation by actively expressing that they actually are listening and by acting as informal representatives of a claim that originally was addressed to them. This was perceived as an attempt to neutralize the claims made by black feminists in the #solidarityisforwhitewomen conversation. For example:
White feminists say they want to learn and listen but want to direct the conversation so that they’re comfortable #solidarityisforwhitewomen.
Through a third contestation found within the hashtag, pressure therefore was exerted on white mainstream feminists to do more than only listen and learn—for instance, by amplifying the voice of women of color instead of drowning it in a sea of tweets and directing attention to themselves.
When self-identified white feminists claim that they are listening and learning from the hashtag but at the same time inviting the claims from “other” women to be part of a feminist conversation, they confirm and (re)produce their own power position.
As previously discussed, Twitter does not hinder privileged groups from dominating or distorting conversations (such as Facebook with its link to report fake news). Although many black feminists urged white feminists to be passive in the #solidarityisforwhitewomen conversation and only listen and learn from it, tweeting that one is listening, in fact, is not the same as passively listening. These tweets occupy space in the conversation and direct attention away from the original claim for voice and recognition from black feminists to the white feminists expressing their engagement. The contestations within #solidarityisforwhitewomen thus display the ease by which privileged groups may distort conversations in social media and how even seemingly noble intentions may contribute to the suppression of marginalized voices.
How, then, should white feminists have acted to be good representatives? To understand how agonism could emerge in social media, it is useful to use what Dovi (Reference Dovi2007) referred to as “the virtue of good gatekeeping” relative to good representation. This implies that representatives, to exert good representation, should limit and constrain the influence of some individuals “to create space for underrepresented groups that have a legitimate claim, based on considerations of justice, to more representation” (Dovi Reference Dovi2007, 148). This means that the practice of good representation includes amplifying the voices of marginalized others, as well as limiting the power of overrepresented groups in some cases. Relative to our case, this includes an exercise in self-limitation to open the space for a democratic dialogue. The white feminists in #solidarityisforwhitewomen that claimed to be listening and learning from the conversation could have exerted their agency through the virtue of good gatekeeping by instead retweeting the claims made by women of color and thereby amplifying their presence in the public space. Taking that step would not necessarily mean remaining passive but rather making a conscious decision to limit one’s presence. Thus, good representation on extremely inclusive platforms such as Twitter requires privileged groups (e.g., white mainstream feminists in the #solidarityisforwhitewomen conversation) to take an active step back and find technical ways to put forward the claims of historically disadvantaged groups without displaying their own agency.
CONCLUSION
This article demonstrates how the inclusive design of social media platforms may facilitate the (re)production of privileged positions in public debates, where informal representation often takes place. By asserting that they were listening and learning from the hashtag conversation, mainstream feminists could distract attention from claims about the suppression of women of color within mainstream feminism instead of engaging with these claims. In other words, white feminists’ claim to listen and learn hindered the possibility of agonism through neutralizing the conflict within feminism and distracting attention from the discursive status of women of color. As good representatives, they instead should have taken an active step back and amplified the voices of marginalized others. When evaluating good representation, therefore, we must look beyond the intentions of the actors and analyze how they impact deliberations and the effect on marginalized groups.
