Celeste Bloom
Sociologists have long observed how marginalized identities develop alternative forms of kinship and community inside systems of oppression. In the digital age, many groups have cultivated sites of safety, activism, and empowerment out of online platforms that were not originally built for them. Queer Facebook? Digital Sociality and Queer Theory by Benjamin Haber, and On Thursdays we watch Scandal: Communal viewing and Black Twitter by Apryl Williams critically explore the development of online marginalized communities. The authors specifically investigate the sociopolitical implications of queer and Black communities developing online from mutual experiences and worldviews.
Based on Erving Goffman’s theory on the presentation of self, both Haber and Williams find that users experience “context collapse” when their private and public audiences merge online. The authors then explore how this identity conflation influences the development of queer Facebook and Black Twitter. They also discuss whether these platforms are ultimately empowering or limiting for these marginalized communities. Haber mainly references theory, whereas Williams provides more empirical data. However, I aim to illustrate that these articles are complementary and must be read together to provide an intersectional understanding of marginalized digital communities.
In his article, Haber explores the nature of Facebook through a queer lens. He defines “queer” not only as sexual preference, but all acts, communities, and spaces that contradict heteronormativity. Haber identifies the queerness within Facebook’’s “vast processes of algorithmic aggregating and disaggregating of words, movements, and images into potential desires and fragmented identities.” These elements of Facebook disrupt heteronormative notions of connection, kinship, nuclear family, and fixed identity. Haber investigates Facebook’s construction of space, identity, and temporality, as queer alternatives to heteronormativity.
To Haber, online context collapse produces the same spatial anonymity as urban city landscapes which have historically sheltered queer individuals. However, due to consumerism, Haber argues that Facebook actually operates as a gentrified neighborhood that “markets queer social forms, but sanitized for heterosexual consumption.” Haber observes that while flying the rainbow flag, Facebook polices and restricts its online space within the boundaries of heterosexuality.
Additionally, Haber observes queer temporality within Facebook’s “feed” that blurs the past and present. Facebook’s decentering of heteronormative linear time is arguably liberating for queer individuals. However, for Haber, this temporal ambiguity also causes a traumatic context collapse of past and present audiences and personalities. For example, Facebook’s “people you may know” algorithm of suggested followers can cause queer users to re-experience past sensations of homophobia and closeting in the present, limiting true queer liberation.
Ultimately, Haber finds that queer Facebook is corporate and oppressive. Consequently, he states “queer utopian and contrarian thought might need to once again be reimagined.” Haber’s article is pertinent to queer activist Facebook users who want to consciously navigate and resist oppressive structures on the platform. This article will help queer individuals and allies who wish to move away from capitalist and heteronormative practices on online platforms.
While Haber is mostly critical of queer Facebook, Williams explores Black Twitter as “one of the most powerful and unified communities to emerge on social media.” Williams argues that Black American kinship, which emerged from a shared “cultural history of the American Slave” parallels and reinforces context collapse. The historical displacement of Black biological family and subsequently association based on experience, parallels the Black Twitter’s formation from modern structures of racism. This article is crucial for anti-racist activists and movements, many of which start online, to understand how platforms such as Twitter operate as sites of activism and community both on and offline.
Despite Twitter’s initial creation by white elites, Williams parallels the sense of collectivism on Black Twitter with the racial and ethnic collectivism of the Black community. Black Twitter users create a covert virtual space that protects and empowers them while still giving them access to generic Twitter. Black Twitter users mainly employ language to define boundaries and membership within their community. Williams states, “Black users intentionally code their words and hashtags to convey blackness. This can exclude users who are not familiar with the rituals, language, and syntax of that community.”
While Haber’s article remains predominantly theoretical, Williams conducts a case study of Black viewers who watch the TV show Scandal and codes the language within her interviews. As communities on Twitter are created with hashtags and algorithms, Williams explores language as an act of constructing online and offline Black spaces. Within the study, Williams found that the n-word, used as recognition and camaraderie within Black community, but a slur outside, is often a coded word that creates online and offline spatial boundaries. Williams illustrates how language reinforces community identity, bringing empowerment to its members through a sense of belonging and resistance.
Despite the empirical strength of Williams research, she, unlike Haber, insufficiently investigates the underlying oppressive capitalism within Twitter. The two authors’ discrepancy is most apparent when they discuss Danah Boyd’s research on the 2006-2007 “white flight” of users from the chaotic “ghetto” of MySpace to the regulated “gated community” of Facebook.
According to Haber, Boyd believes that the “urban problems” which caused “white flight” are products of “mismanagement.” Haber criticizes Boyd’s capitalist lens that views marginalized communities as systems for profit instead of people lacking resources. In contrast, Williams mostly focuses on how Boyd’s digital racialized spaces “do not mimic offline racial stereotypes” and are an opportunity to explore alternative concepts of digital racial identity and community. However, by treating these spaces within a vacuum, Williams glosses over the potential real world impact of Twitter’s capitalist algorithm on users of color.
Ultimately, Williams presents a more empowering view of Twitter for Black communities than Haber for queer communities. However, Haber acknowledges capitalism’s role in queer community development on Facebook more than Williams does for Black Twitter. Capitalism consumerism exists on Twitter as class, race, gender, and sexuality exist intersectionally, however Williams does not fully investigate this. What Williams lacks in theoretical methodology she makes up for in empirical data. Therefore, both articles are needed together to provide an intersectional and realistic understanding of online marginalized communities.