Exploring discourses of whiteness in the Mary Beard Oxfam-Haiti Twitterstorm

Bibliographic Data

ID20509367
AuthorsCeri Ashwell (0000-0002-2806-9611, University of Sheffield), Paul J Reilly (0000-0002-6890-778X, University of Glasgow, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume26
Issue10
Pages1933-1953
Publication date2023-07-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInformation Communication & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1369-118X • E-ISSN: 1468-4462
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1369118x.2022.2050417
OpenAlexW4223907337
LanguageEN
References cited30

Social media may have amplified the Black Lives Matter movement, but companies like Facebook are often accused of not doing enough to address online hate speech. These platforms nevertheless have the potential to facilitate informal learning about the color blind racism through which whites rationalize the inequalities and injustices experienced by People of Color (PoC). This paper adds to the emergent literature in this area by exploring a high-profile Twitterstorm in February 2018 following a tweet from Cambridge University Professor Mary Beard about the sexual misconduct of Oxfam aid workers in Haiti. Academics like Dr Priya Gopal faced much criticism for suggesting the tweet was evidence of the white fragility and privilege to which they were frequently subjected. A qualitative content analysis of 1718 unique tweets containing ‘Mary Beard’, posted between 16 and 20 February 2018, was conducted to assess whether there was much evidence of agonistic debate between critics and supporters of Beard about whiteness. Results indicate that there were twice as many tweets criticizing Beard for her performative white privilege and frailty than those defending her. While the framing of the Twitterstorm was generally agonistic, there was little evidence of informal learning, with PoC conspicuously under-represented. Indeed, the burden of talking about racism and whiteness fell on the few PoC in the corpus, in much the same way as the ‘pre-social media’ era

Aesthetics · Art · Criminology · Criticism · Insider · Media studies · Performative utterance · Police brutality · Political science · Racism · Sociology · White privilege · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · History · Law · Social Media and Politics

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