Disclaimer: Dear white feminists, this post is in keeping with my organizational background. I do an analysis of media organizations and not, say, you and your friends, your individual experiences, or of tweets. You are welcome to conduct that analysis but you will not find it here.
Children are sacred. They are off-limits for behaviors and treatment that are perfectly acceptable for adults. Although this cultural norm is violated frequently enough to make us question how seriously we take the rights of children, it is fairly uncontested that at least in theory our society considers children deserving of special laws, care, and treatment.
So, when The Onion published its now infamous tweet in which it called he Oscar nominated phenom nine-year-old Quvenzhané Willis a c*nt, it raised a few hackles. This has been documented, discussed, and debated. Kirsten West Savali wrote one of the most articulate essays on this issue. It is really a beautifully written essay. In it, West Savali starts from a provocative position that mirrors a conlusion many have drawn: white feminists weren’t nearly as outraged by a gendered slur being lobbed at a black child as they would have been had Quvenzhané been white.
Racism in feminist circles is nothing new. Angela Davis documented the history of racism in the evolution of woman’s suffrage. When Kimberlé Crenshaw coined intersectionality it was a refutation of the ethos that all the blacks are men and all the women are white. This dominant construction of humanity as either raced or gendered effectively erases the lived, structural, and political experiences of black women. As one who watched the debacle unfold live the night of the Oscar’s coverage, I’m inclined to believe West Savili’s reading of the events. But, many are not.
Did white feminists ignore, downplay — or, worst — defend the public degradation of a black little girl?
That struck me as an empirical question. To explore it I did a little content analysis.
I focused on media platforms for several reasons. One, I study organizations. Two, media – both new and traditional – powered the response. The attack was issued via a tweet on a weekend night. As a result the most immediate responses were on social media and online sites, which are generally characterized as a means of responding quickly to current events. Three, there is an observable history of congruence between published blog posts and essays on mainstream white feminist media outlets and current events deemed “feminist”. For example, when Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a slut on February 29, 2012 it was covered by Ms. Magazine on its blog on March 1, 2012. Certainly, feminist organizations then know how to marshal organizational resources like blogs in response to current events. Therefore, it did not seem untoward for me to examine response of the same organizations that responded to Fluke in an analysis of the response to Quvenzhané.
I conducted searches for “feminist magazines” and “feminist blogs” and compiled an initial list of 39 online and print publications recognized as feminist. Then, I surveyed feminist blog carnivals produced over the past year. From those I removed entries of sites that had isolated blog posts about feminism but were not part of a blog or magazine that specifically proclaimed to be feminist in either its title or description. Next, I removed blogs whose focus was so (explicitly) narrow and consistently focused on a specific topic that would preclude the coverage of pop culture or media (for example: Holla Back Girl is narrowly and consistently focused on street harassment). The final list had 50 entries. Round numbers make me nervous in analysis so I went hunting for a few more entries. I included online spaces aimed at women like HuffPo Women. Finally, I went to the website for each link and tossed out entries that were defunct, had not published anything in the last month or appeared to stick to a strict publishing cycle that would preclude it from having responded to an event that happened a week ago.
The final list has 19 entries. It is a mix of independent and corporate publications; blogs and periodicals; online and print-online hybrids. I read coverage within a four day window of the Oscars at each website.
So, what do I think: did mainstream white feminist press ignore Quvenzhané?
Yes, kinda.
The largest, most mainstream feminist sites like Bitch and Bust responded within 24 hours. Establishment feminist publication Ms. Magazine appears to have never even printed Quvenzhané’s name, much less responded to the issue at hand. Content on the online site may be driven by the publication cycle of the print product, precluding responses to recent current events. However, Ms. also issues a daily feminist news alert. I found no mention to Quvenzhané in any of them save a couple of comments to a blog post about the Oscars. (ETA: someone on a listserv points out an article on a Ms. blog on the 26th. It was overlooked because they misspelled Quvenzhané’s name. So that is one mention for Ms.)
What was most common among large publications and/or corporate publications (e.g. Atlantic Sexes) was reporting on the backlash and corporate apology from The Onion, absent of any analysis of race or gender. At most, mainstream and/or corporate media outlets focused on the debate about what constitutes satire.
There was decidedly more action on blog aggregators and independent blogs. If you rely on BlogHer for your feminist news you would know what The Onion said about Quvenzhané and you would know that there is some disagreement about whether calling a child a c*nt constitutes satire. You would also have a nifty defense of free speech. You would be less versed in the racialization that many, including myself, believe made Quvenzhané vulnerable to such a public, mean-spirited attack (of which Seth McFarlane is also guilty, by the way).
Feministe’s coverage is just a comment war in an open-thread about the Oscars. There is no editorial analysis. Jezebel has been a Quvenzhané booster in the past. It posted adorable .gifs of the little Oscar nominee pumping her arms in celebration as the camera panned to her in the audience. There is an essay about the disrespect of clueless media professionals who somehow insist that Quvenzhané is unpronounceable and not worthy of practice or phonetic cue cards. That post ran AFTER the Onion episode, by the way. There is no analysis of The Onion tweet or Seth McFarlane’s dig about Quvenzhané almost being too old for George Clooney save an odd (comedic?) response from two Swedish writers. They are described in the byline as unemployed roommates in an industrial Swedish town. The article is entitled: How To Make Fun of a Nine-Year-Old Without Offending The World.
HuffPo has a whole section dedicated to “Women”, albeit not to feminism. This could explain why there was no coverage of the event on HuffPo Women. There is an essay from AJ Verdelle that directly addresses racism and gender in the vulnerability of Quvenzhané to such an attack and to the virulence of the backlash. It ran on the Black Voices branded section of the website. It should be noted that there is also a post that defended satire against misplaced outrage. A black woman wrote the former and a non-black man wrote the latter.
In the final analysis, the white out on Quvenzhané and The Onion is gradational. Some feminist outlets covered the issue, if only tangentially. The notable exceptions are the biggest brands and the most corporate outlets. What appears to be closest to the truth of what happened, and what feminists of color are arguing, is that white feminists ignored how race made Quvenzhané vulnerable to attack and that race muted the intensity of the response from white feminists.
My intent at the start of this project was to compare the feminist media response to a comparable case. The example of Sandra Fluke has come up more than once. If the issue was about the vulnerability of black women to sexist attacks, I could offer more than a few examples starting with the Rutger’s basketball team.That I could not come up with a single comparable example of a white girl being called a gendered slur by a media organization, in service of humor or not, reinforces the saliency of race.
This analysis underscores the importance of non-mainstream voices, online and off, to push narratives we care about. The Feminist Wire responded swiftly via Facebook, Twitter, and on the main website. The coverage included analysis of race and gender. We were unequivocal in our support and stand-by our full-throated defense of Quvenzhané. So was The Crunk Feminist Collective, also managed by black women voices. We need these spaces to exist.
The Women’s Media Center, an organization dedicated to women’s voices and representation in media culture, presented a case of mainstream organizational support for Quvenzhané. They also point to a weakness of my analysis. Because the event was sparked by a tweet and was driven largely by twitter responses, much of the coverage may have escaped standard blog and print coverage. I watched the WMC twitter feed blaze a trail across its diverse followers in support of Quvenzhané. They did not shy away from talking about race, racism, sexism, or power. That response is not captured on the website where a search reveals no coverage of Quvenzhané or The Onion. However, this does lead to the question: why did twitter outrage not translate into less ephemeral responses on blogs and online media as it has happened for other “feminist” issues in the past?
Despite these limitations, I think there is something to the feeling many of us black feminists/womanists have about the non-response from white feminists to what happened to Quvenzhané. And it is not in the question of if white feminist media ignored what happened but if they responded to what happened with the intensity and intersectional focus it seemed to demand. The wishy-washy response from feminists like Amanda Marcotte belied the severity of the act.
For many black feminists, the extremity of the attack, satirical or not, demanded an equally extreme organizational response. If a movement was ever going to be unequivocal and resolute about anything I would like to think it would be about calling a child a c*nt. The response for me was visceral. The minute I saw The Onion tweet I was nauseated. I was not kidding when I said I was shaking.
I felt that for a host of reasons, I’m sure. She’s brown like my adorable younger cousin Genesis. God knows she has my god-daughter’s impish personality and preternatural confidence. I used to wear my hair like she had hers the night of the Oscars.
She looks like people I care about.
If she doesn’t look like people you care about, I have to wonder where your give-a-damn cuts off.
Being disgusted by sexualized attacks against a defenseless child is a function of a social construction, and likely a hypocritical one at that. Even though our society idealizes children we abuse them individually and structurally every day. Still, there remains a cultural norm that children are off-limits. When that norm is violated and it does not elicit a social response equal to the severity of the violation, it communicates that there are invisible limits to who is included in the greater social contract.
In this instance, being black and being a girl put Quvenzhané just beyond the limits of inclusion.
That is the kind of thing those of us who fight for an intersectional feminism consider a fundamentally feminist issue.
That others who identify as feminists felt differently or, worst, appeared to feel nothing at all lays bare the tensions in big tent feminism. That happens.
But maybe it shouldn’t happen when the subject in question is a little girl with a puppy purse.
Exquisite post. I LOVE the empirical work here. It cuts right to the heart of the matter.
But even so, our feelings on this issue are valid too and are only a glimpse of how many Black feminists/womanists feel unsupported and even attacked by White feminists. Whether the person in question is Michelle Obama, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Willow, Quvenzhané, or unfamous Black women and our issues, the feeling of lack of womanly and feminist support by White women is not a new one for Black women.
I honestly NEVER expect support from White women. While there are a handful of White feminists I’ve engaged with who are truly anti-racists and intesectional feminists, my overall life experience with White women has been highly antagonistic and unsafe. My closest friends are Black women. And, this is not to say that we don’t have our own intraracial issues as women or issues with other women of colour, but as long as the proverbial microphone of feminism is in the hands of cisgender heterosexual able-bodied middle and upper middle class White women who refuse to stand up for anything other than their own personal desires, feminism has a problem. Luckily in the age of social media, Black and other women who are NOT HERE for this degradation of someone like Quvenzhané or ANY girls/women can speak their truth, share their knowledge and raise their voice.
Again, great post.
Reblogged this on Sista Outsider and commented:
On point, as always.
Stunning analysis ~ cogently laying bare what I felt it had to be, reason backing up nausea and gut feeling. It is also one of the best (maybe *the* best) arguments for any group not in bed with the mainstream media to have its own clear voice in social media.
Reblogged this on Beneath the Tin Foil Hat.
Reblogged this on A Black Feminista.
Editorial comment:
Since the first posting of this essay I have received a great deal of feedback via email and social media. The disclaimer and clarification of why I chose to focus on media organizations has been added in response to that feedback. Nothing in the analysis or data collection has been changed or edited since this was first published. Also, I encourage everyone to note my comment policy: https://tressiemc.com/2012/07/19/new-comment-policy-no-country-for-ignorantio-elenchi/
As you can see from the aforementioned edits, I really do engage critique. I do not engage derailing or attacks. All are welcome within those parameters.
All excellent! I hope to come back and offer more substantial engagement with this piece and the next in which you say you may not have energy for this. I totally understand, but I appreciate this work very much.
Thank you…sharing… also a great post by the Rev. Wil Gafney, Ph.D.
http://www.wilgafney.com/2013/02/25/say-my-name-quvenzhene-wallis/
She is Associate Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, and is an Episcopal Priest canonically resident in the Diocese of Pennsylvania.
I agree with you, too about the Onion’s gratuitous attack on Quvenzhané Wallis:
I think that’s a great word, “kyriarchal”, that Kirsten West Savali uses in her article,
I have never heard it before but it is wonderfully descriptive of a complex phenomenon.
I did not know of the bad tweet before today but I am extremely shocked that The Onion took that tone and it was not up to their standard of wit either. I haven’t read their apology yet. But I am curious which person tweeted it and if they were doing a book tour in my city I would ask, “What was that?!”
A lot of white women must be aware that our experience of discrimination is light-years away from the institutional and personal stereotyping of blacks and the tragic legacy of slavery.
I wonder if one of feminism’s huge hurdles is the backbiting among themselves.
Do women hold each other back almost as much as men do but in different ways.
Women of any race fighting each other is a huge problem. And yet again, men make two women feel much more guilty about feuding with each other then they
would two men who have a beef. It’s deemed much more unprofessional. As if
we were all angel-bunnies in the hugh Hefner mansion.
Sometimes we are our own worst enemies and as feminists we really need to get our act together. If we can stop tall the animosity within ourselves, would we then be more sensitive to racism and racial issues.
What did you think of the Onion’s apology?
From Monday, February 25th:
“On behalf of The Onion, I offer my personal apology to Quvenzhané Wallis and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the tweet that was circulated last night during the Oscars,” The Onion’s CEO Steve Hannah said in a statement. “It was crude and offensive – not to mention inconsistent with The Onion’s commitment to parody and satire, however biting. No person should be subjected to such a senseless, humorless comment masquerading as satire.”
Hannah said in the apology that the tweet was removed within an hour of its posting, adding that The Onion has created new policies to prevent such an occurrence from happening again.
“In addition, we are taking immediate steps to discipline those individuals responsible,” Hannah said. “Miss Wallis, you are young and talented and deserve better. All of us at The Onion are deeply sorry.”-
I feel that one of the odd things about the Onion is that most of us have no idea how to talk back to it, let alone suggest a story. So a slur feels doubly oppressive.
This time I guess they really noticed the outrage.
So bravi to those who spoke out.
Tressie…you empirical bad-ass, you. Love that your protective rage (I, too, shake whenever I talk about what happened to this baby) is backed up by careful data analysis + cutting, razor-sharp critique. On point indeed
Part of why this piece is so important is that it demonstrates how much race and gender inflect how straight-forward research is received. The methodology outlined here demonstrates an investment on the author’s part to be as faithful to social science approaches as possible, thereby ensuring that personal feelings do not skew findings. Even Cottom’s seeing grounds for taking Holla Back *out* of the equation shows a determination to avoid making decisions based on what is most likely to prove one’s hypothesis. (To my mind, Holla Back should’ve been even more invested in addressing this, but Cottom put that aside and stayed true to reasoning that was faithful to methodology.) Given these unmistakable truths about the research approach here, people’s ability to make this personal demonstrate the degree to which black women’s intellectual investments become INVISIBLE just because they are black women in a society that so often ignores our ability to produce valuable knowledge. Indeed, it’s a society that makes it easy to ignore our knowledge altogether. It’s the changing same of U.S. culture…but we press on, despite the odds. Excellent work, Tressie McMillan Cottom! I’m grateful that you took the time, but I VERY MUCH support your continual re-assessment of where to give your time and energy. We can’t just make these decisions and coast. We re-calibrate all the time to keep sane and healthy.
Amen @ Trudy!
cg a poor, white, anti racist feminist, it pains me to see upperclass white nototrious racists like Amanda Marcotte at the forefront of the “white feminist movement.” These kinds of not-really-feminist spaces are pandering to white males and it’s not doing the vast majority of feminists any favors.
i’m “white” i guess? (half-Arab, half-white) and this is nuts. i didn’t comment on the boob song from that night at all, the Onion’s tweet at that child got my attention and most of my feminist friend’s attentions irl and online. all types of feminist were talking about it and saying how they have given up on the Onion. you choose to critique a rich and white dominated media here that many of us white women don’t even feel connected to anymore or read for real analysis. as Jezebel goes, i guess the rest of us white women go?
at this point, it’s a cottage industry within Women’s Studies to tear down white women no matter what they do or don’t do. it doesn’t matter than a lot of us aren’t rich and don’t have shit or power to show for most things when compared to our sisters in the movement who aren’t white or straight. it’s sad and all it does is give rise to those who are anti-feminist in general. i can already see the tired attacks coming my way for this response but what a hair-splitting, 20th century article for a 21st century world. most of us interacted online and IRL about this subject, HuffPo doesn’t speak for me or anyone i know but people like you will always look for hate/racism where there might be none bc you have to pay your bills. now, since nothing i just said matters bc i’m a white feminist (and none of the shit i’ve gone through as an Arab-American will ever be recognized by members of your part in the movement) , here’s a reply from an incredible feminist, a WOC too, so i know she’ll actually carry weight with you:
*****************************************************************************************
“It’s interesting the assumptions that have been made about which feminists responded to the Onion tweet and which did not.
Earlier this morning, on Melissa Harris Perry, a show on MSNBC I try to watch on the regular, I was amazed how the meme that “white feminists” have not responded to the Onion controversy made its way to a cable news program. Her “source” for this?
Why, Clutch Magazine, of course! Even though in the very 100+ comments on that blog post, were several presumably black women commenters problematizing the racial assumptions of the author, the way we are on this listserv.
And yet, this one blog post has now circulated into several other blog posts, questioning why “white feminists” haven’t responded to Onion, even though if you really read between the lines, the issue is with Jezebel’s blog dismissing the Onion, which of course translates to “white feminists” not responding to the Onion controversy, which then translates to Ms. not responding since my blog post was overlooked since it circulated with dozens of other stories that came out that day.
This is the problem with Social Media, among other things. It’s why the Onion tweeter made a horrible joke with no context whatsoever and why that publication got into trouble.
It’s the same problem with Social Media, when the hair issue and Gabby Douglas circulated b/c Jezebel linked to a blog post on a black women’s hair blog – highlighting black women’s commentary on hair via Twitter – and then everybody else jumped on the bandwagon.
So, now, we have a bunch of information and misinformation – and NO FACT-CHECKING! – resending, reposting, retweeting, and recreating rumors, gossip, and various claims – all taken out of their original context.
Now, the thing about the Onion is EVERYBODY put Onion on blast. There’s a reason why The Onion issued its very first apology EVER when they realized nobody was laughing. My own response was to try and use its own tools – satire – against it (perhaps clumsily in my satirical employment of a trip to Disney World), but those of us who responded let it be known how totally out of line they were.
If, as some suggest, the issue is that we haven’t mobilized a movement, the way we created “SlutWalk” when a Toronto police officer offended rape survivors by calling them “sluts” or the way we created a protest against Rush Limbaugh when he similarly disparaged Sandra Fluke, perhaps that’s the bigger issue: which women can mobilize us to act?
I think Georgia raises an interesting question about what kind of movement we should be creating. I personally liked the Crunk Feminist Collective’s open letter to Quvenzhane Wallis and all the black and brown girls who need our love in this prevalent misogynistic and racist rape culture, in which anyone could so easily throw the C-word around,
Perhaps because humor, satire, or whatever was the original offense in the case of the Onion, I think our political response has to be rhetorical: fighting rhetoric with rhetoric, and I had appreciated the different blog posts that critiqued, analyzed, and condemned the Onion.
I tell you: the noise online was so fierce, Onion HAD to say something, and if Jezebel didn’t contribute to it, well they’re not the only blog in town (nor the fiercest feminist one for that matter).
I just think, if we’re going to have this conversation, though, that we be honest about WHICH folks we’re referring to and what we mean when we cast around “labels.” Assumptions certainly don’t help.”
Best,
Janell Hobson
Graduate Director
Department of Women’s Studies
http://janellhobson.com
“you choose to critique a rich and white dominated media here that many of us white women don’t even feel connected to anymore or read for real analysis. as Jezebel goes, i guess the rest of us white women go?”
Read the disclaimer….
“at this point, it’s a cottage industry within Women’s Studies to tear down white women no matter what they do or don’t do. it doesn’t matter than a lot of us aren’t rich and don’t have shit or power to show for most things when compared to our sisters in the movement who aren’t white or straight. it’s sad and all it does is give rise to those who are anti-feminist in general.”
Don’t say anything Black women… You’ll ruin it for all of us. Is that your point? You get that White privilege exists in the same realm of Male privilege, right? Or are you as terrible a feminist as you are a human being?
“i can already see the tired attacks coming my way for this response but what a hair-splitting, 20th century article for a 21st century world.”
Yeah, we should stop nitpicking… Media’s response to young Black Girls is about the same to young White Girls… Oh what’s that? The news doesn’t give a shit when tiny Black girls are kidnapped? Large pockets of America don’t care about little Black girls(see hunger games)?This might be important to examine so we can fix it?
“most of us interacted online and IRL about this subject, HuffPo doesn’t speak for me or anyone i know but people like you will always look for hate/racism where there might be none bc you have to pay your bills. now, since nothing i just said matters bc i’m a white feminist (and none of the shit i’ve gone through as an Arab-American will ever be recognized by members of your part in the movement) ,”
Ummmm… I dislike you. Also, read the disclaimer. Checking social media responses to a hostile moment in pop culture directed at a little Black girl isn’t looking for hate/racism… It’s examining existing hate/racism. You simpleton!
“here’s a reply from an incredible feminist, a WOC too, so i know she’ll actually carry weight with you:”
Wow! I dislike you… Do you know that you’re a racist? Or do you hide behind the 1 black friend you have, like you just hid behind this WOC feminist you’ve decided to quote?
Almost 800,000 children are kidnapped every year in the US. The US still has a 70% white population and the news is going to follow whatever stories they get the highest ratings on, period. News media are for profit organizations, not charity. They are in it for the money and they cannot cover over 2,000 kidnappings a day.
Did you know YOU’RE a racist, with a chip on your shoulder and it is very clear that you DESPISE whites and spend all your time obsessing over bullshit and creating more hate and widening the divide between races.
Your hypocritical belief that your racism isn’t racism or that it’s somehow justified is not only sick, it’s even worse than blatant racism, because you won’t admit you’re racist. You’re not a feminist, you are a BLACK feminist and you are bitter, angry & full of hate.- you don’t care about women, you only care about BLACK women OR just hating white women/feminists, proportioning blame and creating an us versus them mentality specifically anybody who is not white versus white. If the onion had said shit about a white child actress, you wouldn’t give a DAMN.
In the meantime, white feminists are the biggest hypocritical bitches on the planet, they don’t give a shit about white women any more than black, they’re neo liberal fascist cunts more concerned with eliminating all reference to gender, changing laws for ‘equality enforcement’ that in many cases HURT women, condemning women who want to live a traditional role staying home & raising children, and proving how little they care about women in general by defending islam over the health & safety of women everywhere.
P.S. I don’t hide behind ‘black friends’ or 1 black friend, and frankly it would be incredibly hypocritical of me to have 1 black friend, so I don’t have any. I’m SICK of listening to people talk about how much they hate my race and expect me to listen because it’s ‘socially acceptable racism’, or laugh uproariously when Jamie Foxx does stand up and talks about how ‘I got to kill all the white folks in that movie, that was great’ CUZ talking about killing white folk, that’s funny, but don’t you fucking laugh at any race related joke if it’s about BLACKS. Cause hypocrisy is king and only people as low as DIRT will not admit the hypocrisy of their own sense of humor. Personally, if a joke is funny, there is no subject I consider off limits, but just saying ‘I got to kill white/black/mexican blah blah folks, that was great’ that’s not funny, that’s not a joke, that is a declaration of racism and hostility, much like the shit you shovel.
You’re sick, your entire life is devoted to spreading hatred towards whites instead of doing anything constructive, and in the meantime you parade around like some kind of martyr, you’re just a racist hate bitch like the rest of them. Tell me WHY in the hell a white feminist would show specific outrage over (something that’s trivial as hell, anyway) something specifically black related, when a bitch like you wouldn’t do the same if the situation/races were reversed. OH, entitlement. it’s okay for black women to be black feminists but not those white bitches, they better start rallying for BLACK women and not be ‘race specific’ like YOU.
OH and by the way, maybe your time would be better spent wondering why black men don’t marry, raise their own kids, support their families, and are the direct cause of the #1 cause of death for black american women aged 14-35, AND are the number 1 perpetrators of domestic violence, making black women the leading victim group of domestic violence (and domestic homicide).
Bitch, you ain’t helpin anybody.
Thank you for mentioning the Rutgers team. We need to go back through recent history via Gwen Ifill – see http://www.momsrising.org/blog/gwen-ifill-for-president/ for a 2007 fan letter I hadn’t seen before but was glad to read.
This network graph shows how the twitterverse responded that night – all mentions of “the Onion.” Maybe another empirical lens with which to view the enusing discussion of the issue? http://nodexlgraphgallery.org/Pages/Graph.aspx?graphID=3069
I actually debated a network analysis of tweets, on twitter no less. It’s an interesting representation of the activity around the issue. It answers a different question, however. More along the lines of “what was the density of social media response to The Onion?” That’s an interesting question; it just wasn’t mine in this instance. And I do some twitter analysis in another paper. One of the things that is difficult is demographics. For example, I cannot parse if “black twitter” drove coverage because twitter accounts aren’t good proxies for demographics. So, again, that changes the question. It’s also something I wish someone could get at with empirical methods. I think big time digital ethnographers like dana boyd have done this kind of work but that’s a big project that requires lots of resources and time. Something people keep forgetting: this is my blog and not a journal. There’s no grant money for side projects on twitter content analysis.
yes and new report by Pew shows how different twitter uses are from the ‘public’
http://www.pewresearch.org/2013/03/04/twitter-reaction-to-events-often-at-odds-with-overall-public-opinion/
Reblogged this on Theblackbutterflychronicles.
Loved this article. And must admit I hinted that after the Oscars when I posted the Onion quote on my FB page. My black friends were first to respond and we were offended but I did note my white friends stayed silent, until I said “notice the only ones affected by that comment!” Then two responded.
Though, today you’ve allowed me to post some food for thought on my FB page,
“She looks like people I care about.
If she doesn’t look like people you care about, I have to wonder where your give-a-damn cuts off.”