This week, Meredith Pruden and her colleagues, Yotam Ophir, Dror Walter, Ayse Lokmanoglu, Catherine Tebaldi, and Rui Wang released an article that gives us a critical insight into how white nationalists discuss abortion online.
The results included the following themes:
White genocide: “Posts expressed worry that ‘low white birth rates exacerbated by economic conditions and abortion on demand’ would result in ‘white genocide.’ Abortion was thus framed as an 'attack on white identity’ that would lead to ‘white extinction’ and foregrounds the white nationalists’ belief that white women’s role is wife and mother.”
White nationalists’ reproductive reasoning: “The same negative sentiment toward abortion was absent when discussing it concerning nonwhites. Users reasoned abortion was an adequate solution to problems, including the urgent need to limit third world populations due to the inferior morality of nonwhites that leads them to so-called excessive childbearing.”
Political: Discussions of abortion in national politics also came up in a number of different ways.
This timely publication calls for a better understanding of the thought processes of white nationalists and their connection to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. As Meredith Pruden summarized, “their strength, unfortunately, is in their ability to not have the popular vote and still have a vice grip on basic human rights in this country.”
Publications and appearances
“The majority opinion in Dobbs argues that it is merely making the right to an abortion a state’s decision. In reality, the justices are making it a corporation’s privilege. A society cannot be held together when half of a population has to rely so heavily on the kindness of strangers to do something as basic as work.” Tressie McMillan Cottom talks about post-Roe in terms of corporations, women’s privacy, and what lies ahead in a new New York Times piece.
“Both [white and male supremacy] misrepresent women as genetically and intellectually inferior and reduce them to reproductive and/or sexual functions.” The 2021 top division paper at the National Communication Association (NCA) by Meredith Pruden, Ayse Lokmanoglu, Anne Peterscheck, and Yannick Veilleux-Lepage discussing the similarities between white supremacists and violent male supremacists is now out!
“Frantic individual efforts to swat away digital intrusions will do little.” Zeynep Tufecki was quoted in an article by Kendra Albert, Maggie Delano, and Emma Weil talking about period trackers as a form of digital evidence.
“Metaverse technologies offer enormous varieties of application and personalization… I worry about dissociation/fragmentation, manipulation, and control by powerful interests and waste of human and environmental resources, but I also believe in individuals and the collective organism of Humanity to adapt and find equilibrium over generations.” Gary Marchionini contributed to a new report about the evolution of the metaverse by the Pew Research Center.
Lorelei Lee reshared the dis/organizing toolkit she and Rachel Kuo co-authored. The toolkit addresses resistance strategies + challenges around money, tech, and labor from communities excluded from platforms, social services, economies, and institutions.
“Instagram and YouTube afford Black women the ability to contest antiblackness and colorism in the beauty industry and practice traditional Black feminist traditions such as self-definition and self-empowerment.” CITAP affiliate Kiara Childs’s new article on how Black women use Instagram and YouTube to contest colorism in the beauty industry is featured in Interrogating Digital Blackness, a special issue from Social Media + Society.
“Latina influencers on the border portray it as a setting that differs from its mainstream representation as a place to avoid. They also strategically deploy Latina identity to market themselves and localize national trends.” Incoming CITAP affiliate Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez explores how the use of props and settings signal identity among Latina influencers.
Coming soon
August 1: Submissions for the Labor Tech Book and Graduate Student Paper Awards are due.
To those of you who are in the Research Triangle area and are looking to explore new topics, the Night School Bar is offering an amazing set of arts & humanities classes, writing workshops, reading groups, and more this summer.
Rest of Web
Our friend Nathan Matias at Cornell’s Citizens and Technology (CAT) Lab brought up an important question this week: how are people planning to handle research ethics post Roe? Read his full Twitter thread for his insights.
The Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics (IDDP) is looking for a new postdoctoral associate!
Daniel Greene has won the 2021 McGannon Book Award for “The Promise of Access: Technology, Inequality, and the Political Economy of Hope.” Last fall, CITAP hosted Daniel and discussed his book in conversation with Tressie McMillan Cottom and Alice Marwick. Congratulations, Daniel!
Calling all music lovers! If you’re in the research triangle area, Deen Freelon created a meetup group called Triangle Popular Music Forum (TPOP), where he hopes to connect with fellow music enthusiasts.