Platform vulnerabilities: harassment and misogynoir in the digital attack on Leslie Jones

ABSTRACT

In the summer of 2016, racist, misogynistic harassers attacked comedienne Leslie Jones on Twitter and on her personal website, which they hacked and flooded with sexist and racist imagery stolen largely from her personal accounts. Through a multiplatform discourse analysis of the Leslie Jones attack, this paper examines the connections between platform vulnerabilities and the vulnerabilities of women of color, as well as the links between the rise of the alt-right and an increase in explicitly racist, misogynistic behaviors. Three key themes emerged from the analysis: messages of support and affirmation; the need for intervention; and the connection between this incident, systemic racism and sexism, and the rise of the alt-right. These themes serve as a bridge between the vulnerabilities of platforms and of women of color in those digital spaces and beyond. The supportive awareness campaigns and calls to action that issue publics launched online attempted to discursively ‘patch’ two perceived vulnerabilities – of Twitter as a platform and of Jones herself. However, in response to these ‘patches,’ members of the alt-right condemned Twitter and mainstream media for marginalizing their conservative voices, using this discourse to bolster their performance of victimization and oppression. Overall, this case study provides insight into the dynamics at work in the rise of the alt-right and online harassment, with particular attention to the significance of digital media, celebrity, and popular feminism in the ongoing political shifts in the United States.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• race
• platforms
• celebrity
• harassment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Caitlin E. Lawson is a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan's Department of Communication Studies. Her research focuses on digital media, celebrity culture, and gender and sexuality. Her dissertation explores the ways online communities use discussions of celebrity culture to debate and define feminist politics. She received a BA in Literary and Cultural Studies from the University of Oklahoma and her MA in Film Studies from the University of Central Oklahoma [email: [email protected]].

Notes

1 By using the term ‘alt-right’ I do not intend to downplay the centrality of far right movements in US politics by labeling them ‘alternative.’ Instead, I use this term because it was the label deployed most frequently in the discourse I analyzed.

2 In total, the data set consists of 2864 media objects. It includes 2500 tweets containing the terms ‘Leslie Jones,’ ‘@lesdoggg’ (Jones's Twitter handle), and ‘#StandWithLeslie’ on 24 and 25 August, the day of and following the hack of her personal website. These tweets include a random sample of 2100 tweets as well as the 400 most retweeted tweets. The rest of the data was drawn from other media objects that were linked on Twitter, as well as searches of the top American newspapers (165 articles), articles from top and Black-owned online news and commentary sites (119 articles), magazine articles (43), and television/YouTube clips (37 videos).