Black Squares for Black Lives? Performative Allyship as Credibility Maintenance for Social Media Influencers on Instagram

Wellman, Mariah L.

doi:10.1177/20563051221080473

Cited by 55 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 36 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…There is certainly the perspective that #BlackOutTuesday was performative and did not directly advance the movement. For instance, a recent study found, through 20 interviews of wellness influencers, that sharing of the square was for maintaining credibility with their following base [ 43 ]. However, their work focuses primarily on influencers, users that have achieved a certain level of popularity, and in wellness, which is an even more specific slice of Instagram.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

#JusticeforGeorgeFloyd: How Instagram facilitated the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests

2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We present and analyze a database of 1.13 million public Instagram posts during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, which erupted in response to George Floyd’s public murder by police on May 25. Our aim is to understand the growing role of visual media, focusing on a) the emergent opinion leaders and b) the subsequent press concerns regarding frames of legitimacy. We perform a comprehensive view of the spatial (where) and temporal (when) dynamics, the visual and textual content (what), and the user communities (who) that drove the social movement on Instagram. Results reveal the emergence of non-institutional opinion leaders such as meme groups, independent journalists, and fashion magazines, which contrasts with the institutionally reinforcing nature of Twitter. Visual analysis of 1.69 million photos show symbols of injustice are the most viral coverage, and moreover, actual protest coverage is framed positively, in contrast with combatant frames traditionally found from legacy media. Together, these factors helped facilitate the online movement through three phases, culminating with online international solidarity in #BlackOutTuesday. Through this case study, we demonstrate the precarious nature of protest journalism, and how content creators, journalists, and everyday users co-evolved with social media to shape one of America’s largest-ever human rights movements.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

#JusticeforGeorgeFloyd: How Instagram facilitated the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests

2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Core strands of research on influencers writ large engage with questions of authenticity (Abidin, 2018; Pooley, 2010; Syvertsen & Enli, 2020) and credibility (Bakshy et al, 2011; Riedl et al, 2021; Wellman, 2022). Duffy (2020) has described influencers as “a subset of digital content creators defined by their significant online following, distinctive brand persona, and patterned relationships with commercial sponsors” (p. 1).…”

Section: Defining Political Influencers: Politics Platforms and Influ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Influencers on Social Media: An Introduction

Riedl

Lukito

Woolley

2023

Social Media + Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Influencers are omnipresent on social media platforms. They occupy important digital real estate across a range of topical domains including beauty, fashion, and gaming. While researchers have contributed important work on the respective role that authenticity plays for influencers’ success and have described a burgeoning industry within the larger domain of social media entertainment, comparably little is known about what happens when influencers get involved in politics, when they harness their digital clout to promote political causes and social issues, and thereby become political influencers. This introduction to the special issue on political influencers provides a definition of what makes someone a political influencer. It theoretically locates political influencers within the larger field of media and communication scholarship, and delineates the term from other, related concepts such as that of opinion leader. Building on eight contributions focused across more than six countries and nine platforms, the article showcases important strands of current and future research. It provides the foundation for a more systemic understanding of political influencers on social media, situating them within a media ecology complicated by a diverse array of traditional and nontraditional actors, tactics, and dynamics. The article concludes with recommendations for future research.

show abstract

“…However, researchers also point out that allies tend to engage in empty allyship online through “hashtag activism” whereby people profess support (but rarely follow through) with true self-reflection, genuine attitude change, or behavioral response. This kind of “cosmetic” allyship is common in social media and is used “as a means to an end” to manage one’s own impression, build a brand, or maintain credibility rather than take action to change inequalities in the status quo (Wellman, 2022). Often “there is an element of performance at play when it comes to ally identity” (Bourke, 2020, p. 185), which refers to the notion of those individuals who only want to adopt the ally label as part of their character and so only portray (rather than genuinely enact) cooperative behavior that truly offers solidarity and support to others (see also, Case, 2012).…”

Section: Observers’ Expectations Perceptions and Evaluations Of Offen...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Observer Expectations on Judgments of Anti-Asian Hate Tweets and Online Activism Response

Tong

DeAndrea

2023

Social Media + Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The rise of racial hate speech on social media has raised critical questions for scholars to explore. It is necessary to understand how outside observers passively evaluate (a) online racial hate speech posts on social media and (b) whether those evaluations are related to observers’ subsequent behavior. This study explored how observers evaluate acts of majority-on-minority and minority-on-minority anti-Asian hate tweets on Twitter. In an experiment ( n = 196) informed by expectancy violations theory, we tested how White observers evaluated anti-Asian tweets ostensibly posted by either a White or Black source. Analysis revealed a moderated-mediation pathway in which observers’ political partisanship (Democrat/Republican) affected how they judged the ethnic prototypicality of White and Black sources of racial hate speech; these source prototypicality judgments were in turn associated with observers’ judgments of tweet offensiveness and self-reported intentions to engage in online activism (i.e., signing an online petition). These results contribute to our understanding of outside observers’ differential expectancies regarding online hate speech, and how those expectancies can affect perceptions of and reactions to acts of racism.

show abstract

Black Squares for Black Lives? Performative Allyship as Credibility Maintenance for Social Media Influencers on Instagram

Cited by 55 publications

References 36 publications

#JusticeforGeorgeFloyd: How Instagram facilitated the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests

#JusticeforGeorgeFloyd: How Instagram facilitated the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests

Political Influencers on Social Media: An Introduction

The Effects of Observer Expectations on Judgments of Anti-Asian Hate Tweets and Online Activism Response

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About