YouTube Drama in an Atheist Public
A Case Study
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13017491 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robin Isomaa (0000-0002-2472-5239, Åbo Akademi University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Publication date | 2022-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Secularism and Nonreligion (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2053-6712 • E-ISSN: 2053-6712 |
| Publisher | Ubiquity Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.5334/snr.146 |
| OpenAlex | W4285151830 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 14 |
In late March 2019, British atheist YouTuber “Rationality Rules” published a video in which he argued that trans women should be excluded from women’s sports. Accused of transphobia, he was denounced by a prominent atheist organization, which led to intense arguments in Anglophone atheist spaces on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, lasting throughout the year. This article uses the controversy, an instance “YouTube drama,” as an opportunity to investigate the ways in which an imagined “atheist community” is constructed through internal atheist conflict. Through critical discourse analysis of 157 YouTube videos, published between the end of March and the end of November, it identifies six different discursive formations, which affected the development of the drama and offer competing conceptions of the community. By utilizing Michael Warner’s theory of ‘publics’ and ‘counterpublics,’ spaces that exists only for the circulation of discourse, this study approaches the drama not as an interpersonal conflict, but as a battle over the norms of discourse within the atheist community. It suggests that a public lens is useful for understanding contemporary atheism, and that the nature of publics and counterpublics helps explain the dynamics of atheist disagreement on social issues
Art · Drama · Literature · Media studies · Sociology · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Religion and Society Interactions
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From geek masculinity to Gamergate
The Other Closet
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Religious Nones” in the United Kingdom
Atheisms Unbound
Do Atheism and Feminism Go Hand-in-Hand
Faithless
Religion and atheism from a gender perspective
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |