Platforming Intersectionality: Brown Girls & Brujos Case Studies

by Aymar Jean Christian, Northwestern University
Social Media & Society, July 2020

This article challenges us to think about leaning into intersectionality as a framework for building solidarity on these platforms that divide us. My co-authors and I use two hit series Brown Girls and Brujos to make the case using more methods than I've ever used in my career: surveys, quantitative social media data and views, interviews, sentiment analysis, close reading of GIFs and tweets, and more. We show the different forms of value on IRL vs. online engagements using interlocking cultural specificities as a lens. In-person engagement was so critical to these culturally complex stories trending online. It's so poignant that this article came out now when it's really not safe to do that. 2020 has been a time of struggling to figure out how to build solidarity online. This essay may help! Lastly, this article challenges scholars to do our research in collaboration with artists and community members. There is so much knowledge outside of the ivory tower and I learned so much from my collaborators.

ABSTRACT

How do historically marginalized narratives spread on social media platforms? Developing research in collaboration with intersectional artists and community, or what we call “platforming intersectionality,” can reveal the promise and limitations of social media for bridging disparate, segregated communities, or “networked solidarity.” Using case studies of indie TV series about historically marginalized communities, we show that intersectionality can spread on corporate social media platforms, but the causes are largely visible outside of platforms, both online and offline. Basic conditions for spreading intersectional narratives may be met when the language used to describe them are simply communicated in ways algorithms and users can quickly understand. However, community members, including artists and publishers who produce for specific communities online and offline, serve as critical, under-appreciated nodes platforms leverage to spread intersectionality. We argue that reconceptualizing platforms as community-based media provides a better framework for understanding the power and limits of social media.

FULL ARTICLE (free)