Pacific identity discourses on Twitter

Constructing cyberspaces of belonging

Bibliographic Data

ID12494591
AuthorsTim Ro (0000-0002-6664-711X, Department of Media and Communication University of Canterbury Christchurch New Zealand, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume18
Issue3
Pages233-251
Publication date2022-10-26
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueKōtuitui New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1177-083X • E-ISSN: 1177-083X
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1177083x.2022.2134043
OpenAlexW4307563769
LanguageEN
References cited54

This article investigates the performance of Pacific identities on Twitter during a high‐profile cultural and sporting event, Tonga and Australia's first‐ever rugby league test match in late 2018. More than 9000 tweets were analysed using quantitative and qualitative methods to map different publics orienting to the event on Twitter, including a Pacific diasporic public that emerged through locative practices of identity and cultural performance. This study finds that Pacific users’ tweets were differentiated by textual and visual cues, including the use of emojis as a paralanguage of Pacificness and a racialised visual discourse of ‘Brownness’, in ways that suggest an emerging Pacific counter‐public. The findings discussed here further demonstrate the ways in which social media affordances enable the construction of race and ethnicity online, and the ways in which marginalised groups are using social media to create alternative public spheres. This study also demonstrates the importance of looking more closely at the different discursive practices within Twitter public to both foreground marginalised groups’ practice and de‐Westernise social media studies

Aesthetics · Affordance · Ethnic group · Event (particle physics · Identity (music · Media studies · Political science · Social group · Social identity theory · Social media · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Digital Communication and Language · Media Studies and Communication · Psychology · Social Media and Politics

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