Facebook Framing of the First Female U.S. Vice President: An Intersectional Approach to Analyzing Memes Depicting Kamala Harris

Abstract

Kamala Harris made political history in 2020 when she was elected vice president of the United States. Our study employs intersectionality to shed light on how people framed Harris in Facebook memes during the 2020 U.S. Presidential Campaign and 2021 Inauguration. While gender and racial pride were strong in many of the memes, our analysis identified both racist and sexist characterizations that built on historical stereotypes of Black women. Harris was the subject of a variety of sexist and racist attacks with Facebook posts/memes framing her using tropes, such as “Jezebel” and “Tragic Mulatto.” Our intersectional analysis of the framing of political candidates provides a rationale for the continued assessment of memes for their ability to promote and spread historical stereotypes and racist narratives. The continued framing of Black women based on both gender and race is an indication society has made little progress in its representations of the group.

Keywords:

• framing
• intersectionality
• Kamala Harris
• memes

Acknowledgements

The authors thank anonymous reviewers for their guidance and feedback on this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

Data availability statement the data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, Dorothy Bland, upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 TIME’S UP Now commissioned Edelman Data & Intelligence to analyze media coverage of the announcement of VP candidate Kamala Harris in 2020 to compare it with the announcements of Mike Pence and Tim Kaine in 2016.