837305 Alexander Whittle MECM30002

Global Media Cultures

Research Essay

How do social media contribute to the development of resistance communities and empower

marginalized groups? How successful are these?

“Everything good in my life, I owe to the internet’s ability to empower people like me,

people who wouldn’t have a voice without it. All the garbage that is thrown at us is

enabled by this broken machine, yet I firmly believe the internet is also the best tool we

have to address the problem” (Quinn, 2017, p. 13)

New technologies and norms of communication have reshaped the ways people organise and

mobilise in pursuit of a cause. These technologies have simultaneously become new frontlines of

oppression for marginalised communities and for many activists, use of social media includes

navigating persecution in the very space in which they organise to resist it. This essay will examine

resistance in social media using two case studies involving social media-based social movements.

First, it will devise a theoretical grounding for empowerment and social change. Then it will

address case studies, beginning with #GirlsLikeUs and #Free_CeCe, transgender activist

movements with roots in the black transgender community, and will examine their response to

violence against queer people and queer people of colour (QPOC) in the United States. Next, it

will inspect GamerGate, which was a period of severe online violence directed at women and

queer gamers and game creators, and some of the communities which performed resistance
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against it. These two case studies will uncover social media’s empowering potential and

indispensability to organising and motivating resistance communities. However, this essay will

posit that its empowering, organising and motivating potential is not automatic, nor does its use

equate with automatic improvement in the material realities of the marginalised.

Empowerment is a complex social process which “fosters power in people for use in their own

lives, their communities and in their society by acting on issues they define as important” (Page

& Czuba, 1999, p. 1). Empowerment connotes a start from powerlessness, and Columbia

University psychology theorist Burke (1986, p. 51) notes that “To empower, implies the granting

of power – delegation of authority” (Conger & Kanungo, 1988). Social media can grant power to

women and queer people to be creators and moderators of online discourse. Wielding discourse

is significant because of the way anti-trans, anti-feminist and misogynist reactions to #GirlsLikeUs

and GamerGate work to silence it. French social theorist and scholar Michel Foucault defines

discourse as communications which transmit and construct power but also challenge and expose

that power (Foucault, 1990, p. 101). He argues that discourse was initially the realm of the

financially privileged and politically dominant (Foucault, 1990, p.120). Therefore, discourse is

simultaneously a way of establishing and wielding power, but also undermining it. The

undermining power of the discourse of minorities is strengthened by the “world-making” of

social media through self-organisation of like strangers into publics and counter-publics (Warner,

2002). Though this signifies the power potential in social media, organisational theorists Conger

& Kanungo (1988, p. 473) ask, “does the sharing of authority and resources with subordinates

automatically empower them?” The following case studies will seek to prove that while it shares
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authority and resources by providing voice and visibility to the marginalised, social media does

not, in fact, automatically improve their material reality.

Case Study 1: Hashtag activism within transgender and QPOC online communities

Twitter empowers transgender people and QPOC by promoting community-building and

celebrating queer and QPOC histories through #GirlsLikeUs and #Free_CeCe; concurrently, its

transparency allows the general public to view and engage with this, fostering resistance

communities. #GirlsLikeUs and #Free_CeCe developed in response to ongoing violence against

transgender women and QPOC in the United States (Jackson, Bailey, & Foucault Welles, 2018).

Led by prominent black transgender activists Janet Mock and Laverne Cox and alongside the CeCe

Support Committee, these movements work to advocate for trans autonomy and visibility in

heteronormative spaces, starting with social media. This case study will first give context to these

movements and situate them in the ongoing violence against queer people and QPOC in the

United States. Within this contextualisation it will examine aspects of Twitter that have

empowered #GirlsLikeUs and #Free_CeCe tweeters, as well as resistance techniques they have

used.

The #GirlsLikeUs movement has been successful in empowering communities because, as

transgender activist Eli Erlick (2018, p. 73) writes, technology and digital spaces have historically

been an escape for trans people from “the antagonism of personal interactions... distinct from

the trauma and realness of the non-digital environment.” Within digital spaces, and particularly
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Twitter, hashtags have become an effective method of sharing information between people in

the trans community. In creating and moderating online discourse using hashtags, QPOC are able

to centre and normalise their voices in a common and public space (Jackson, Bailey, & Foucault

Welles, 2018). Searching #GirlsLikeUs on Twitter immediately reveals the varied and relatable

everyday posts that trans Twitter-users make. One user posted a selfie captioned with, ‘Well it is

cold and nasty. Snow predicted tomorrow even. Thank heavens for indoor health clubs. Feels like

the tread mill today #TransIsBeautiful #girlslikeus #exercise’. Another tweeted a selfie captioned,

‘I asked the hairdresser to give me wispier bangs #girlslikeus’1. Quotidian trans discourse like

these evidence that QPOC can communicate their experiences and identities on social media

without losing ownership of their narratives through mediators whose discourse style may be

transphobic, misrepresentative or incomplete (Booth, 2015).

#Free_CeCe is more frequently used than #GirlsLikeUs in tweets about black trans-directed

violence, and Fulbright Scholar Mia Fischer’s research suggests it is solely oriented to resistance

community-building for a specific cause, rather than empowering entire marginalised

communities (Fischer, 2016). The #Free_CeCe campaign is situated in and motivated by extreme

and frequent violence against and marginalisation of QPOC. The Southern Povety Law Centre

(2016) found that trans women are the most frequent victims of hate crimes in the U.S. and that

QPOC were murdered at a rate of one per week in 2015 (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2016). It

evolved following a transphobic attack on CeCe McDonald, an African American transgender

1
Taking cues from Jackson, Bailey, & Foucault Welles (2018), this essay will not reveal the identities of Twitter
users who are not public figures, or who have not provided consent.
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woman, and her friends. In defense, Cece stabbed her attacker with a pair of fabric scissors and

was summarily charged with two accounts of second-degree murder (Fischer, 2016, p. 756).

Initially employing traditional media to cover CeCe’s story, her eponymous CeCe Support

Committee found that social media was a more effective media strategy (Fischer, 2016). Fischer

describes the pitfalls of involving an external traditional media outlet in covering their story

(2016, p. 760). The Committee had little ownership over the nuance or narrative in traditional

media coverage, particularly evident in McDonald’s misgendering by the Minneapolis Star

Tribune and the City Pages. These newspapers also reinforced transgender stereotypes of

deception and danger, and ignored her assailant’s prior convictions of burglary, domestic assault

and drug posession and the swastika tattooed on his chest (2016, p. 760). The difficulty in getting

McDonald’s story run fairly in traditional media makes evident that content which is deemed by

traditional gatekeepers as “harder to digest” is less spreadable (2016, p. 760). McDonald and the

Committee used social media as a stronger opportunity for creating counter-narratives to those

in traditional media and the courtroom, which were both reluctant to challenge ‘colour-blind’

discourses that denied McDonald the nuance of her transgender subjectivity and the structural,

systematic violence against black and transgender people. Collective action through Twitter

served to publicly identify the injustice, then spur others into political action, and finally provide

a common basis for shared identity and in so doing, form a resistance community (Brown, 2017,

p. 1839). However, Fischer (2016) notes that despite her online prominence as a now-former

prisoner and significant activist, McDonald still bears the disadvantage cast on her by society as

a black transgender woman; the material realities of her underlying disadvantage have not

changed and social media did not automatically improve her case (Fischer, 2016, p. 767).
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Foucault’s (1990, p. 101) theorising of discourse is particularly salient to queer and QPOC Twitter

activism, as it entails the transferral of power to marginalised communities through discourse

affordance. In this case study, queer and QPOC Twitter have embraced a public platform in a way

that was historically wielded only by financially privileged and politically dominant. Queer and

QPOC online activism as a self-organised counter-public has become far-reaching. American

gender scholar Judith Butler (1999, p. 52) theorises that patrilineality is subverted through failure

to repeat, deformity or parodic repetition of homogenous masculine culture, which #GirlsLikeUs

and #Free_CeCe successfully perform.

Case Study 2: Gamergate and QPOC resistance in online gaming

“Wait wait wait. You’re not just any girl. You’re black. Get this black bitch off my team.

Did you spend all your welfare check buying this game? Why aren’t you doing what you

love? Get back to your crack pipe with your crack babies.” (Gray K. L., 2011)

The toxic culture of gaming was revealed to the world when ‘Gamergate’ unfolded in 2014. This

case study will examine how online gaming has been mostly unsuccessful in empowering its

marginalised groups, but has been integral to developing resistance communities to misogyny,

anti-feminism and trans- and homophobia on its platforms. Its inception as an environment

“created-for-men-by-men” meant its platforms were historically prohibitive of others, which

conversely motivates these resistant communities into being (Gray, Buyukozturk, & Hill, 2017, p.
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3). It will first provide further background to Gamergate and situate it in the context of games’

historic problematic representation of and engagement with non-dominant groups. It will then

reveal examples of resistance to Gamergate’s gendered violence to demonstrate that use of

online gaming platforms in organised resistance does not equate with improvement in the

material realities of its targets. Finally, it will examine theoretical perspectives to explain

frameworks of resistance from both Gamergate and its targets.

Online gaming historically and continues to harbour depicted and real violence towards non-

dominant groups, which has informed a presumed maleness of the surrounding culture and

spaces (Gray K. L., 2013). Gamergate was punctuated by two distinct resistance communities –

the first, supportive of women and marginalised gamers; the second, male supporters resisting

the inclusion of women and increased diversity in game narratives (Gray, Buyukozturk, & Hill,

2017, p. 2). After a relationship breakdown with her abusive ex-boyfriend in 2014, game

developer Zoë Quinn was the target of his viral manifesto and the subsequent online mobs who

extended their crosshairs to include prominent female gamers and game creators, constituting

the multi-platform GamerGate. Quinn wrote in 2017:

“It spread like wildfire… The places where I sold my games, talked with friends, or even

just looked at cute cat videos were suddenly awash in pictures of mutilated bodies,

images of horrible violence, and threats to do these things and worse to me. My home

address and phone number were discovered and distributed, leading to 5 a.m. phone calls

from strangers...” (Quinn, 2017, p. 10)

“GamerGate wasn’t really about video games at all so much as it was a flash point for

radicalized online hatred that had a long list of targets before, and after, my name was

added to it.” (Quinn, 2017, p. 13)

Throughout, women routinely received threats of rape and murder; targets also included people

of colour, queer and transgender people (Warzel, 2019; Pozo, Ruberg, & Goetz, 2017). Warzel

(2019) notes Gamergate’s tactics – the misogynistic online movement’s use of anonymous

Twitter, 4Chan and Reddit accounts and online message board doxing – was not original, but was

particularly impactful because it coincided with the rise of these social media platforms.

Kishonna Gray (2011; 2013; 2017) is a visiting professor in gender studies at MIT whose research

leads in understanding non-dominant groups’ resistance techniques to Gamergate and

oppression in online gaming more generally. Gray conducts ethnographies of women gamers in

online games, joining ‘clans’ as they go online to fight against others. Gray notes women in

gaming often feel the need to literally ‘prove themselves’ to male players by proving ownership

of their console or their account. In this first step of resistance, Gray notes women players

frequently have some form of ‘Miss’ in their usernames, or use racial slang to reveal their racial

identity (2011, p. 121). Women’s clans such as the Conscious Daughters, Puerto Reekan Killaz

and Militant Misses demonstrate the next step of resistance, using techniques of educating other

players about racism and sexism, griefing, and exceptional playing standards, respectively (Gray,

2011, p. 130). Puerto Reekan Killaz prefer to resistance grief – mindlessly killing opponents and

teamplayers alike in multiplayer online fighting games. Gray writes, “This type of griefing

behavior, although annoying, seriously disrupted the enjoyment of the males wtihin the game”
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(Gray K. L., 2011). Another tactic employed by both this clan and the Conscious Daughters is ‘lag

switching’, which involves switching internet modems on and off during gameplay to slow it down

and cause lag for other players. However, the Conscious Daughters also employed blogging,

posting complaints in Xbox Live forums and sit-ins in online games (Gray K. L., 2011). Members

of this clan testified to Gray that they were tired of account suspensions for using Puerto Reekan

Killaz’ tactics, instead favouring blogging because they found their in-game tactics violated Xbox

terms by inciting racism and sexism amongst players (Gray K. L., 2011). These efforts of collective

and organised resistance are evident of a resistance community forming around and in

opposition to Gamergate to resist dominant structures of online oppression.

Butler’s (1999, p. 179) theory of gender transformation applies to the possibilities of

hypermasculine culture change in gaming. Just as gender identity is formed through “stylized

repetition of acts through time”, the gendered culture of online gaming can be altered through

“a failure to repeat, a deformity, or a parodic repetition” - of dominant culture (Butler, 1999,

p.179). The construction of the gaming space as “created-for-men-by-men” pressures female

gamers to conform to limited gender stereotypes, reducing their agency and ability to reshape

those stereotypes through failure to repeat or deformity or parody of dominant culture

repetition (Gray et al., 2016, p. 3). The other apparent option to conformity is exclusion, which

Butler notes as securing patrilineality (Butler, 1999, p. 52). The everyday reality of male

domination and gender differentiation between gamers normalises virtual symbolic and real

violence against non-dominant gamers and so the resistance techniques discussed earlier seek
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to upend gaming culture’s repetition of hypermasculine behaviour to be more accepting of other

(Gray, Buyukozturk, & Hill, 2017).

Conclusion

While social media may be a new ecosystem for human interaction, it is evident that material

inequalities are similarly perpetuated, played out and resisted in its platforms as they are in real

life. Two different case studies have been presented in this essay which examine how social

media is used as a space to organise resistance while simultaneously being a space for

encountering persecution. On Twitter, #GirlsLikeUs presents an opportunity to share quotidian

trans discourse and reshape online discourse to be more accepting of transgender people, in line

with Butler’s (1999) theories of masculinity and culture change. #Free_CeCe, though engaging

with a similar community, was discussed as holding a starkly different utility of forming a

resistance community for a specific cause. In discussing Gamergate, this essay examined how it

affected female and queer gamers and creators alike and how women’s Xbox Live clans have

become resistance communities, fighting online racism and misogyny through blogging, griefing

and proving themselves through exceptional standards of play. While social media has proven

successful – to differing extents – in these case studies of empowering the marginalised and

forming resistance communities, this essay has also shown its minor and often absent impact in

improving the material realities of the marginalised people who make use of it.
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