#MeCripple: ableism, microaggressions, and counterspaces on Twitter in Spain

Abstract

Counterspaces are fields of social action and activism in which people organize themselves to change oppressive social structures. Ableism, or discrimination based on disability, is expressed in everyday life. Its expressions may take the form of ableist microaggressions. This paper analyses a Twitter campaign, through a sample of 335 tweets published from August to December 2018 under the hashtag MeCripple, that exposed ableism and the daily microaggressions people with disabilities endure in Spain. It examines exposed ableist microaggressions, tests if the domains of microaggressions proposed by other scholars apply to Spain, and explores whether the campaign generated a space for coping and responding to ableist discrimination. It also shows that practices of online visibility generate heterotopic online counterspaces leading to cooperation and mutual support to counter ableist microaggressions.

Points of interest

• This article analyzes a 2018 Twitter campaign in Spain under the hashtag MeCripple as an offshoot of the MeToo movement.

• Most of the tweets under this hashtag report experiences of discrimination, insults, or contempt towards a person just for having a disability: we call these situations ableist microaggressions.

• The classification of ableist microaggressions used in this study serves to analyze experiences in both the U.S. and Spain.

• Tweets in this campaign expressed the importance of meeting each other on social media websites, such as Twitter, and bringing visibility to the discrimination faced by people with disabilities.

• This article suggests that public exchanges can help people unaware of ableist microaggressions better understand these forms of discrimination and mobilize them to form alliances to counter these aggressions.

Keywords:

• Disability
• discrimination
• ableism
• support networks
• social networks

Acknowledgements

We thank the editor and peer-reviewers for all their work invested in this article throughout the publication process.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.