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Twitter, the Public
Sphere, and the
Chaos of Online
Deliberation
Edited by
Gwen Bouvier · Judith E. Rosenbaum
Twitter, the Public Sphere, and the Chaos
of Online Deliberation
Gwen Bouvier • Judith E. Rosenbaum
Editors
Twitter, the Public

Sphere, and the Chaos
of Online Deliberation
Editors
Gwen Bouvier Judith E. Rosenbaum
English Department Department of Communication and
Zhejiang University Journalism
Hangzhou, China University of Maine
Orono, ME, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-41420-7 ISBN 978-3-030-41421-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41421-4
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Contents
1 Communication in the Age of Twitter: The Nature of

Online Deliberation 1
Gwen Bouvier and Judith E. Rosenbaum
Twitter and Democracy 2
Talking Points 13
References 15
Part I Political Contention and Civic Engagement 23
2 Going “Rogue”: National Parks, Discourses of American

Identity and Resistance on Twitter 25
Joanne Marras Tate, Vincent Russell, Rachel Larsen,
and Ellie Busch
Introduction 25
Foucault and Identity Construction 27
The National Park Imaginary and US Identity 28
Twitter Activism and the National Park Service 30
National Identity in Connection to Land on Twitter 32
Methods 33
Findings 35
Discussion 46
Conclusion 48
References 48
v
vi Contents
3 Political Candidates’ Discussions on Twitter During

Election Season: A Network Approach 53
Maurice Vergeer
Introduction 53
The Dutch Electoral System 55
Twitter and Political Communication 56
Reciprocity and Network Homophily 56
Opinion Leadership 58
Preferential Attachment 59
Normalization Versus Equalization 60
Statistical Controls: Populism, Ideology, and Incumbency 61
Data, Measurements, and Analysis 62
Method 64
Results 64
Discussion 72
Conclusion 74
Appendix 75
References 75
4 #PeoplesVoteMarch or #LosersVoteMarch? Tracing the

Collective Identity of a Post-Brexit Referendum
Movement on Twitter 79
Photini Vrikki
Introduction: The Multiple Identities of Brexit 79
The Hostile Environment of a Post-Referendum UK 81
The Brexit Identity Conundrum: Ephemerality in a
Commentary Pit 83
Researching #PeoplesVoteMarch on Twitter 84
Tracing People’s Vote March’s Identities on Twitter 86
Conclusion: Building an Ambiguous Collective Identity 93
References 96
Part II Inside Twitter Communities: Communication

Strategies in Networked Publics 99
Contents vii
5 Civic Debate and Self-Care: Black Women’s Community

Care Online101
Raven Maragh-Lloyd
Description of Study 103
Literature Review 104
Method: Focus Groups 108
Results: Civic Debate on Twitter Defined 110
Conclusion 117
References 118
6 The Voices of Twitter: A Critical Discourse Analysis of

Racial Discourses on Twitter Following the Alt-Right
March on Charlottesville, Virginia121
Sarah J. V. Dyer and Leah Hakkola
Introduction 121
Discourse 123
Public Sphere 124
Counterpublics 125
Post-Racial, Colorblind Racism 126
Resistance: Analyzing Charlottesville 128
Methodology 129
Findings 132
Discussion 143
Conclusion 144
References 146
7 Covert Hate Speech: White Nationalists and Dog

Whistle Communication on Twitter151
Prashanth Bhat and Ofra Klein
Introduction 151
‘Dog Whistle’ as a Discursive Strategy 153
Data and Methods 157
White Supremacist Dog Whistles on Twitter 159
Conclusion and Discussion 165
References 168
viii Contents
Part III The Role and Nature of Affect in Twitter

Interactions 173
8 Patterns of Emotional Tweets: The Case of Brexit After

the Referendum Results175
Catherine Bouko and David Garcia
Emotions, Dialogue, and Social Media 176
Method 185
Results 190
Discussion 195
Conclusion 199
References 200
9 An Exploratory Mixed-Method Analysis of Interpersonal

Arguments on Twitter205
Amy Janan Johnson and Ioana A. Cionea
Interpersonal Arguments Offline and Online 207
Method 213
Results 217
Discussion 223
Conclusion 227
References 227
Part IV The Use of Humor and Popular Culture in Political

Conversations on Twitter 233
10 Bros Before Donald Trump: Resisting and Replicating

Hegemonic Ideologies in the #BROTUS Memes
After the 2016 Election235
Roberta Chevrette and Christopher M. Duerringer
The 2016 U.S. Presidential Election and Memetic Citizenship 237
Social Media, Memetic Citizenship, and Everyday Politics 239
Analyzing Memes: #BROTUS and the 2016 Presidential
Election 241
Methodology 242
Humor and Resistance in the #BROTUS Memes 243
Contents ix
Replicating Gendered and Racial Hegemonies in the

#BROTUS Memes 249
Conclusion 256
References 258
11 #FamilyTravelHacks: Humor and Political Commentary

in Hashtag Hijacking267
Nathan J. Rodriguez
Introduction 267
Situating #FamilyTravelHacks: Public Sphere and Echo
Chambers 269
Government-Citizen Interaction in Online Spaces 270
Networked (Counter)Publics and the Role of Humor 271
@TravelGov 272
Zero-Tolerance Family Separation Policy 274
Methodology 275
Government Twitter Gone Wrong: Interactions and Negative
Comments 276
Affiliative Humor, Interaction, and Counterpublics:
#FamilyTravelHacks Migrates Beyond Twitter 278
Conclusion 281
References 283
12 Women in Horror, Social Activism, and Twitter:

Asia Argento, Anna Biller, and the Soska Sisters291
Ernest Mathijs
Introduction: Blood Ties and Strong Ties 291
Social Media, Social Ties, and Aesthetics 293
Aim and Method 296
Blood Drive: Women in Horror Month 299
American Mary and the Soska Sisters 302
Horror Witches: Aesthetics and Anna Biller 304
Loss of Focus: Asia Argento 307
Conclusion 309
References 311
x Contents
13 Afterword: Twitter and the Democratization of Politics315

The Meaning of Political 317
Dissecting Resistance, Marginalization, and Dialogue 319
Community Formation on Twitter 321
Talking Points: Reconsidering Political Participation 321
References 322
Index325
Notes on Contributors
Prashanth Bhat is a doctoral candidate and a journalism instructor at

Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College
Park. He studies online hate speech, anti-media populism, and conservative
media. Previously, Bhat worked as a journalist for leading news
organizations in India and the USA. He has also served as a short-term
consultant at the World Bank and a research assistant at the Berkman Klein
Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
Catherine Bouko is Assistant Professor of Communication/French in
the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication at
Ghent University, Belgium. Her general research interests lie in
(multimodal) discourses related to citizenship, media, and separatism in
Europe, in (social) media. She has written over 40 research articles,
including Brexit-related articles in Visual Communication (2018) and in
Discourses of Brexit (Routledge 2019) edited by Veronika Koller, Susanne
Kopf, and Marlene Miglbauer.
Gwen Bouvier (PhD, University of Wales) is a Professor (Hundred
Talents Programme) at Zhejiang University, China. Her main areas of
research interest are social media, civic discourse, and news
representation. Professor Bouvier’s publications have focused on
multimodal and critical discourse analysis, social media, fashion as
discourse, and the visual representation of crises in news. She is
Associate Editor for Social Semiotics and Review Editor for the Journal
of Multicultural Discourse. Her latest publications include Bouvier,
G. (Ed.) (2016). Discourse and Social Media. London: Routledge;
xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Chiluwa, I. and Bouvier, G. (Eds.) (2019). Activism, Campaigning

and Political Discourse on Twitter. New York, NY: Nova Science;
Bouvier, G., & Machin, D. (2018). Critical Discourse Analysis and
the Challenge of Social Media: The Case of News Texts. Review of
Communication, 18(3), 178–192 and Bouvier, G. (2019). How
journalists source trending social media feeds: A critical discourse
perspective on Twitter. Journalism Studies, 20(2), 212–231.
Ellie Busch is a researcher, educator, and nonprofit professional whose
interests converge around community, identity, and power. Ellie graduated
from the University of Colorado Boulder with a master’s degree in
Communication, and her forthcoming book chapter on DIY/punk
communities and sexual violence discourse in online settings will be a
part of the third book in the Global Punk series by Intellect Books and
The University of Chicago Press. You can follow her on Twitter @
iamellieokay.
Roberta Chevrette (PhD, Arizona State University) is an Assistant
Professor of Communication Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies
Faculty at Middle Tennessee State University. Chevrette’s critical rhetorical
and qualitative research employs queer, feminist, and postcolonial
frameworks to interrogate gendered and racialized formations of
identity, belonging, and difference. She is the coauthor of the
forthcoming book, Dangerous Dames: Representing Female-Bodied
Empowerment in Postfeminist Media (with Heather Hundley and
Hillary Jones), and has published articles in journals including
Communication Monographs, Communication Theory, Communication
and Critical/Cultural Studies, Feminist Formations, and Frontiers: A
Journal of Women’s Studies.
Ioana A. Cionea is an Associate Professor in the Department of
Communication at the University of Oklahoma. Her research examines
arguing-related phenomena in individuals’ interpersonal relationships or
in public contexts. In addition, she also studies the multifaceted influences
of culture on interpersonal communication processes. Her research has
been published in multiple journals such as Argumentation, Journal of
International and Intercultural Communication, or Journal of Social and
Personal Relationships.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xiii
Christopher M. Duerringer (PhD, Arizona State University, 2011) is

an Associate Professor in the department of Communication Studies at
California State University, Long Beach. His critical research into the
rhetoric of economics, inequality, and dissent has been published in
Communication Theory, Communication Monographs, The Journal of
Communication Inquiry, Argumentation & Advocacy, Review of
Communication, Social Media + Society, The Western Journal of
Communication, The Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, The Howard
Journal of Communications, and The Southern Communication Journal.
He has presented more than forty scholarly works at communication
studies and rhetoric conferences.
Sarah J. V. Dyer is a doctoral candidate at the University of Maine. She
researches diversity, race, and ethnicity within the context of higher
education campuses and Twitter.
David Garcia is a group leader at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna,
where he leads a research group funded by the Vienna Science and
Technology Fund. He holds computer science degrees from Universidad
Autonoma de Madrid (Spain) and ETH Zurich (Switzerland).
Garcia’s research focuses on computational social science, designing
models and analyzing human behavior through digital traces. His
main work revolves around the topics of emotions, privacy, and
political polarization, combining statistical analyses of large datasets
of online interaction with agent-based modeling of individual
behavior.
Leah Hakkola is an Assistant Professor in the Higher Education Program
at the University of Maine. Her scholarship focuses on how discourses of
diversity and equity shape and are informed by educational policies
and practices and how these discourses affect success for faculty,
students, and staff. She has published in a variety of outlets, including
Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, the Journal of
Diversity in Higher Education, the Journal of Student Affairs, and
Innovative Higher Education.
Amy Janan Johnson (PhD, Michigan State University, 1999) is a
Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of
Oklahoma. She conducts research on discourse-dependent families,
interpersonal argument, and relationship maintenance. She has published
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
in such venues as Communication Monographs, Journal of Social and

Personal Relationships, and Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication,
among others.
Ofra Klein is a PhD researcher at the European University Institute in
Florence, Italy, where she works on far-right online mobilization. She
previously served as a research assistant at VU University Amsterdam and
the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. She was also a visiting
fellow at the Weizenbaum Institut in Berlin as well as Sciences Po
in Paris.
Rachel Larsen is finishing up a master’s degree in Communication
Studies at CU Boulder, where she also runs the University’s Restorative
Justice program. Interested in community-building, relational approaches
to justice, and dialogic practices, Rachel plans to continue studying in
higher education to pursue these topics. Most recently, Rachel
developed Restorative Justice curriculum for students at CU who are
interested in becoming RJ practitioners. You can follow her on
Twitter @RachelKayLarsen.
Raven Maragh-Lloyd is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies
at Gonzaga University. Her scholarship makes central the ways that Black
and African American publics tap into long-existing channels of
communication toward the context-specific goals of community,
survival, and visibility. Dr. Maragh-Lloyd’s work has appeared in
Communication, Culture & Critique, Television and New Media, Journal
of Communication Inquiry, and the Handbook of Diasporas, Media, and
Culture.
Ernest Mathijs is Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He specializes in
audience and reception research on what is commonly called genre cinema
and cult movies. His most recent project is a study of activist and feminist
actress Delphine Seyrig.
Nathan J. Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication
and Public Relations at Weber State University. His research examines the
process of meaning-making in online spaces, and his work has been pub-
lished in books and journals including Qualitative Inquiry and Journalism
Practice.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv
Judith E. Rosenbaum (PhD, Radboud University Nijmegen) is an

Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism
at the University of Maine. Her research focuses on the impact of digital
media on daily life, political dialogue and meaning making on social media
platforms, media selection and enjoyment, and media and health
literacy. Her work has appeared in publications such as Media
Psychology, Communication Research, Psychology of Popular Media Culture,
Communication Teacher, and Journal of Media Psychology. She published
her first book Constructing Digital Cultures: Tweets, Trends, Race, and
Gender with Lexington in 2018.
Vincent Russell is a doctoral candidate in the Department of
Communication at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research
emphasizes communication activism for social justice, applied communi-
cation, and community-based research methods. His academic writings
can be found in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Annals
of the International Communication Association, and Communication
Education. You can follow him on Twitter @vincent_russell.
Joanne Marras Tate studies Environmental Communication at the
University of Colorado Boulder in the Department of Communication.
Her current work is in Brazil looking at aquariums. She also investigates
and learns from indigenous epistemologies on environmental conservation,
public engagement of science, virtual reality, and participates on scientific
research on microplastics. You can follow her on Twitter @
Jo_Marras.
Maurice Vergeer is an Assistant Professor at the Department of
Communication Science, Behavioural Science Institute of the Radboud
University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. His research interests range from
social media use by politicians and citizens during election campaigns,
cross-cultural differences in use of social media, to news production in the
digital age, and computational social sciences. His research is published in
journals such as Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, New
Media and Society, and Information, Communication and Society.
Photini Vrikki (PhD, Digital Culture and Society, King’s College
London) is a Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture at King’s College
London. Her work focuses on the links between social and digital
inequalities, power and data, and algorithmic culture. By combining
multidisciplinary approaches with concepts and theories drawn from
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
sociology, political economy, and cultural theory, her work explores

how digital media can be used to both reinforce and challenge racism,
inequality, and oppression; and the questions of power, agency, and
ideology within the digital, cultural, and creative economies.
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Tweet shared by @AltYelloNatPark account on February 9th,

2017. “Yellowstone Geyser Rainbow,” photo credit: Larry
Gerbrandt. https://www.flickr.com/photos/
larrygerbrandt/292124275. All rights reserved 36
Fig. 2.2 Tweet shared by @BadHombreNPS account on February 1st,
2017. “Tilted ice, rosy sunrise,” photo credit: Steven Bratman.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkdenver/6971654379.
Some rights reserved 37
Fig. 2.3 Tweet shared by @BadHombreNPS account on February 1st,
2017. “Roosevelt and Muir at Glacier Point,” National Park
Services. https://www.nps.gov/media/photo/gallery-item.
htm?pg=0&id=B15B62A7-155D-4519-3EF7442B3F6E7AF8
&gid=B17BC4E5-155D-4519-3EC6B73FCE2806A8. Public
domain38
Fig. 2.4 Tweet shared by @BadHombreNPS account on February 7th,
2017. “Western Meadowlark,” photo credit: Rick Bohn.
Author: USFWS Mountain-Prairie. https://www.flickr.com/
photos/usfwsmtnprairie/25404358384/. Some rights reserved 42
Fig. 2.5 Tweet shared by @BadHombreNPS account on January 27th,
2017. “Raptor,” photo credit: Jean Beaufort. https://www.
publicdomainpictures.net/es/view-image.php?image=232818&
picture=raptor. Some rights reserved 43
Fig. 2.6 Tweet shared by @AltMtRainier account on January 27th, 2017 44
Fig. 3.1 Political candidate communication network
Note: the aggregated network is directed, includes loops, and
the layout is Fruchterman-Reingold force-directed. Nodes size
(weight) represents communication indegree 64
xvii
xviii List of Figures
Fig. 3.2 Political party communication network

Note: the aggregated communication network is directed, the
layout is Fruchterman-Rheingold. Nodes size represents
communication outdegree 65
Fig. 3.3 Candidate communication indegree and communication
outdegree homophily, the assortativity index by political party
Note: Dots represent candidates; Boxes are 1.5 IQR below and
above the mean; political parties are ordered by ballot position.
Candidates with an indegree or outdegree higher than 250 are
labeled; R2indegree = 6.4%, R2outdegree = 16.6% 67
Fig. 3.4 Level of mutuality by political party
Note: Dots represent candidates; Boxes are 1.5 IQR below
and above the mean; Political parties are ordered by ballot
position; Candidates with more than 25 mutual relations are
labeled; R2 = 15.1% 69
Fig. 6.1 Building tasks and tools of inquiry protocol. (Gee, 2011;
Hakkola, 2015) 131
Fig. 6.2 Interactions and convergences of Discourses 133
List of Tables
Table 3.1 Network centrality 66

Table 3.2 Level of assortativity for specific candidate attributes 68
Table 3.3 Multilevel negative binomial regression analysis of
communicative indegree and communicative outdegree 70
Table 8.1 Frequency of each type of interpersonal functions in our
corpus of tweets (N = 2162)191
Table 8.2 Frequency of each type of writer in our corpus of tweets with
inter-coder agreement (N = 1171)191
Table 8.3 Frequency of each type of speech function in our corpus of
tweets with inter-coder agreement (N = 1136)192
Table 8.4 Frequency of each type of layers of emotion in our corpus of
tweets with inter-coder agreement on all types of layers of
emotion (N = 1125)192
Table 8.5 Frequency of each type of criterion when supported emotion
in our corpus of tweets with inter-coder agreement about the
layers of emotion and about each criterion (N = 1001)193
Table 8.6 Frequency of each type of valence patterns in our corpus of
tweets with inter-coder agreement on the types of layers of
emotion and on the types of valence patterns (N = 1067)193
Table 8.7 Associations of layers of emotion in our corpus of tweets with
inter-coder agreement about all types of layers of emotion
(N = 1125)195
Table 8.8 Associations of inscribed and supported emotions with types
of writers in our corpus of tweets with inter-coder agreement
about all types of layers of emotion and types of writers
(N = 1104)196
xix
CHAPTER 1
Communication in the Age of Twitter:

The Nature of Online Deliberation
Politicians who tweet their pending decisions on major political issues, a

prime minister who is called out about racist behaviors from his past,
weather service organizations that tweet about approaching winter storms,
social movements that are created, blossom, and whither: in the past
decade, Twitter has deftly moved beyond the “what’s happening” prompt
that led early critics to describe the platform’s content as banal and self-
involved. While it is still the platform where people go to share the best
cup of coffee they ever had, it has also become the space where politicians,
activists, and regular citizens voice their opinions, seek out like-minded
others, and spar with those on the other side of the aisle. It is the platform
that unleashed the voices that stood against media giants such as Harvey
G. Bouvier (*)
English Department, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
e-mail: gwen.bouvier@zju.edu.cn
J. E. Rosenbaum
Department of Communication and Journalism, University of Maine,
Orono, ME, USA
e-mail: Judith.rosenbaumandre@maine.edu
© The Author(s) 2020 1

G. Bouvier, J. E. Rosenbaum (eds.), Twitter, the Public Sphere, and
the Chaos of Online Deliberation,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41421-4_1
2 G. BOUVIER AND J. E. ROSENBAUM
Weinstein in the form of #MeToo, and the space that facilitated and helped
grow #Blacklivesmatter into an internationally known phenomenon
(Jackson, Bailey, & Foucault Welles, 2020). Hashtags such as these have
shaped lives, futures, as well as national, and international history. And it
is hashtags such as these that have reinvigorated the debate about the
nature of civic dialogue in a Web 2.0 world.
The argument regarding Twitter’s role in contemporary democracies
has been carried out in both academic and popular circles and connects
back to the decades-old debate regarding the quality of political conversa-
tions. The arrival of new media, especially of Web 2.0 platforms like
Twitter, has reinvigorated this debate. Utilizing Habermas’ oft-cited work
(e.g., 1987), scholars have debated whether Twitter represents a public
space where people come together to discuss issues relevant to society at
large. Most research on Twitter as a political forum to date has either
taken a techno-optimistic (e.g., Rosenbaum, 2018) or a far more techno-
skeptic approach (e.g., Bouvier, 2015), conducting research from the
assumption that Twitter is either the start of a new era in democracy, or
the platform that will mark the end of democracy as we know it.
This leaves the question at the heart of this debate unanswered though:
how do people utilize Twitter to communicate and what insight does the
nature and quality of this communication provide into whether and how
Twitter can function as a public sphere? This volume will address this
question and more by taking a closer look at the nature of Twitter-based
communication. In the remainder of this introduction, we will provide a
brief overview of the various facets of this debate and introduce the con-
tent of this book. In contrast to many of the more recent, high-profile
books on Twitter and political action (e.g., Florini, 2019; Jackson et al.,
2020; Tufekci, 2017) that present a mostly positive view of the platform’s
potential, this book presents a much more cautious view, one related to
the increasing fragmentation of politics and the rise of populism, symbol-
ism, the affective, and incivility.
Twitter and Democracy

It didn’t take long for scholars and popular commentators alike to point
to Twitter as either a site of a revitalization of political dialogue or a space
that did little to enhance Western democracies. According to some,
Twitter is a place where those formerly excluded from public dialogue may
be heard beyond the boundaries of their immediate communities, creating
1 COMMUNICATION IN THE AGE OF TWITTER: THE NATURE OF ONLINE… 3
huge potential for the sharing of ideas, points of view, and interests (e.g.,
Castells, 2015; Tufekci, 2017). Others argue, however, that Twitter, with
its 280-character messages, its tendency to create clusters of like-minded
people, and its ever-shifting focus, does little to create the kind of dialogue
needed to bolster contemporary democracy (e.g., Al-Tahmazi, 2015;
Gerbaudo, 2012; Hall Jamieson & Cappella, 2008; Pariser, 2011).
Twitter Revolutions and Radicals

When making the case that Twitter has revitalized democracy, some schol-
ars will point at the most obvious examples wherein people’s ability to
communicate using the platform led to actual, tangible outcomes and, in
some case, real change. Twitter has played a role in many recent political
uprisings, with users relying on the platform to organize and mobilize out
of reach of state surveillance and/or censorship (e.g., Penney & Dadas,
2013; Poell & Borra, 2012; Poell & Van Dijck, 2015). Twitter and other
social media have also been pointed to as key elements in the Arab Spring
and other protests across the Middle East (e.g., Bruns, Highfield, &
Burgess, 2013; Jansen, 2010). Moreover, research has looked into
Twitter’s role in social movements in the Ukraine (Ronzhyn, 2014),
mobilizations against the government in Turkey (Gerbaudo, 2012;
Tufekci, 2017), and how in China, localized forms of Twitter are a way for
people to negotiate state control and surveillance (Yang, 2014). In all
these cases, Twitter is seen as the conduit to a more open and inclusive
democracy.
But were these events the outcome of communication via Twitter? Or
did social media platforms merely facilitate the communication amongst
activists and were the revolutions now commonly referred to as the Arab
Spring the result of geopolitical events, not the tools that activists hap-
pened to use (e.g., Rane & Salem, 2012)? Scholars who are less optimistic
about Twitter’s democratizing potential would argue in favor of the latter,
claiming, among other things, that social media as a whole and Twitter in
particular can be harnessed and colonized by undemocratic interests and
authoritarian regimes (Creemers, 2017; MacKinnon, 2011; Morozov,
2011). Furthermore, the forms of activism that Twitter has been used to
mobilize may not always be democratic at heart, but instead be associated
with radicalization and promote extremist or even violent aims (Gentleman,
2011; Huey, 2015).
These are, obviously, extreme cases. Twitter revolutions, if they can be

called that, happen very rarely. What about all those other movements that
were born on Twitter? Movements such as #BlackLivesMatter and
#MeToo, which might not be directly connected to a physical outcome
such as a revolution but that do reflect on political issues. Are these little
more than clicktivism or slacktivism (Karpf, 2010), that is, tweets that
require very little engagement and subsequently have minimal coherent
impact (Morozov, 2011)? Or is it possible that even this kind of political
engagement might, as Enli (2017a) put it, “be important and meaningful
for the individuals and [qualify as] legitimate political acts” (p. 221)? To
answer these questions, it is imperative to dive into the political talk seen
on Twitter.
Twitter and Political Communication

When considering how people use Twitter to discuss issues that are rele-
vant to society at large, one notion that comes up frequently is the idea
that the platform has taken on a Fifth Estate role: it has leveled the playing
field by allowing citizens to hold politicians more accountable and offer-
ing a potential for ongoing dialogue and open communication (e.g.,
Dutton, 2009; Lilliker & Jackson, 2010; Tromble, 2018). Research on
this topic is far from unequivocal, though. Some has found that politicians
still mainly engage with other politicians and not with regular citizens,
suggesting that despite its democratizing potential, Twitter remains highly
hierarchical and exclusive (e.g., Bruns & Highfield, 2013; Graham,
Broersma, Hazelhoff, & van’t Haar 2013). At the same time, politicians
have been shown to use Twitter to engage with citizens in actual dialogue
(e.g., Graham, Jackson, & Broersma, 2016; Larsson & Ihlen, 2015;
Tromble, 2018), although not always with the desired, deliberative effects
(Theocharis, Barberá, Fazekas, Popa, & Parnet, 2016), suggesting that in
some cases Twitter can serve to decrease the distance between citizens and
their leaders.
The notion of Twitter as the ‘great equalizer’ is also often linked to the
platform’s most famous affordance: the hashtag. The hashtag allows peo-
ple from all walks of life to connect on shared concerns and issues (e.g.,
Rosenbaum, 2018). In the case of some hashtags, such as #MeToo, this
capacity to hold the powerful accountable certainly seems evident.
However, rather than encouraging open debate, hashtags can also become
a kind of “framing contest” (Enli & Simonsen, 2018, p.1085) where
those who create them seek to shape events with associations and mean-
ings that support their own interests (Rambukkana, 2015a). Hashtags
have also been argued to misrepresent movements (Papacharissi, 2016)
and can be the source of friction between activists and outsiders such as
advertising companies, mainstream media, or even politicians who seek to
manipulate the hashtag’s meaning to their own benefit (Rambukkana,
2015a, 2015b). And crucially, hashtags, at least those that gain more
posts, are rarely ‘bottom-up’ but are generated by elite users, journalists,
influencers, and celebrities (e.g., Bruns et al., 2013; Enli & Simonsen,
2018), the same elite users who get re-tweeted, often by each other, and
who understand the processes that drive trending (Hermida, Lewis, &
Zamith, 2014; Page, 2012; Papacharissi & de Fatima Oliveira, 2012;
Siapera, Hunt, & Lynn, 2015).
The power of social media’s algorithms in determining who sees which
posts, and consequently which hashtags, should also not be underesti-
mated when discussing Twitter’s potential to level the playing field. As
Rambukkana (2015b) argues, profit-driven algorithms determine what
each user’s timeline looks like, thus impacting to a large degree which
hashtags gain traction and which do not. Bouvier (2019) has shown how
it is elite users, and those who are highly media literate, who form a key
characteristic of what drives Twitter feeds. In other words, it is important
to be realistic as to the elite nature of access to, and use of, Twitter (cf. Van
Laer & Van Aelst, 2010).
In a similar vein, Twitter has been described as affording interaction
between a wide variety of people. Twitter has been compellingly cele-
brated for how it allows marginalized groups, especially those who share
similar political concerns, to connect outside their physical community
and build what has been described as networks of dissent (e.g., Jackson
et al., 2020), which can then be used to mobilize physical collective action
(e.g., Tufekci, 2017). However, previous work into the nature of interac-
tions on Twitter has shown that Twitter tends to function as an echo
chamber with users associating mainly with like-minded individuals, seek-
ing encouragement rather than reaching out for cross-ideological conver-
sations or even engagement (e.g., Del Valle & Borge Bravo, 2018;
Guerrero-Solé, 2018; Guo, Rhode, & Wu, 2018). While social media can
indeed provide a voice to ideologies not formerly carried by traditional
top-down media, such voices tend to remain limited to clusters, that is,
individuals connected on Twitter who share similar interests and points of
view (e.g., Himelboim et al., 2016, p. 1382). Repeated interaction with
others holding similar points of view can lead to a strengthening of these

ideas, something Borgatti and Foster (2003, p. 1005) refer to as contagion
(cf. Bartlett, 2014). Rather than fostering wider civic debate, these clus-
ters enable opinions that tend to become hardened in the absence of alter-
native views or evidence and render the circulation of alternative ideas
even more unlikely (Baumgaertner, Tyson, & Krone, 2016; Jacobs &
Spierings, 2018).
At the same time, some studies suggest that Twitter might not be as
much of an echo chamber as one might expect—users do encounter more
diverse political points of view and new kinds of information on Twitter
(Colleoni, Rozza, & Arvidsson, 2014; Zuiderveen Borgesius, Trilling,
Möller, Bodó, de Vreese, & Helberger, 2016). Work on the Swiss referen-
dum on the Nuclear Withdrawal Initiative, for example, found that while
the various opinions and interests solidified into different communities,
there was robust cross-community dialogue on Twitter (Arlt, Rauchfleisch,
& Schäfer, 2019). There is, in other words, simply the need for more
research to investigate these issues—research that considers more diverse
political systems, situations, and events.
When considering political communication on Twitter, it is vital to look
beyond who talks with whom, and to consider the nature of these conver-
sations as well. Habermas (e.g., 2006, see also Flynn, 2004) noted that
the public sphere, that is, the public space where people come together to
discuss issues relevant to society at large, is characterized by communica-
tive action, the kind of everyday talk that helps people understand one
another, create relationships, and make decisions. It is this specific kind of
talk that produces the communicative rationality needed for deliberative
democracy (Flynn, 2004; Kim & Kim, 2008). When discussing communi-
cative action, however, it is important to consider Habermas’ critics. As
Horowitz (2013) writes, the notion that everyday talk can take place out-
side existing power structures, that it will involve participants who are all
able to “voice their opinions freely and honestly”, and may result in an
“unselfish” consideration of the optimal solution (pp. 2344–5) has been
deemed unrealistic by many. She points to Mouffe’s (1999, 2000) agonis-
tic pluralism as a much more viable alternative. According to this point of
view, disagreements, conflict, and arguments are not just a part of every-
day life and everyday talk, but a driving force in contemporary Western
democracies. A question for further research, however, is whether this is
the case if these disagreements take place isolated from each other in echo
chambers. After all, it is possible that these agonistic conversations are

limited to their own insular networks, simply stoking their own uncivility,
rather than participating in any civic process.
Funny, Banal, and Highly Personal: Citizenship on Twitter

Even though Habermas has argued that the modern public sphere has
been irrevocably altered due to the mass media, some have argued that it
can be brought back to life through speech communities that rely on com-
municative action (Kruse, Norris, & Flinchum, 2018). While Kruse et al.’s
exploratory qualitative examination appears to indicate that social media
do not create these speech communities because users do not utilize these
spaces for political interactions, this foregoes the question whether com-
munication has to be manifestly “political” to be considered communica-
tive action.
Everyday talk is Twitter’s core business. But whether it qualifies as
communicative action or even agonistic pluralism depends on the nature
of the talk and requires that scholars think outside of what is commonly
seen as political conversations. A difficult task since opinions diverge on
what qualifies as political talk. Drawing a comparison to Neil Postman’s
Amusing Ourselves to Death, published in 1985, Ott (2017) questions
whether Twitter actually allows for political debates. Like television, most
of the content on Twitter is pretty trivial, Ott posits, pointing to several
studies that have made these claims. And in accordance with what Postman
(1985) said about television, Ott argues it is not the high level of banality
or the trivial nature of most of what is posted on Twitter that is the prob-
lem, but the fact that when conversations on Twitter do engage with
social, political, and moral issues, Twitter “…promotes public discourse
that is simple, impetuous, and frequently denigrating” (2017, p. 60).
Following similar concerns, Krzyěanowski and Ledin (2017) suggest that
the nature of political conversations in today’s Web 2.0 era has seen a fun-
damental shift away from more concrete discussions to simplified exchanges
based on buzzwords and symbolism. The affordances of the short posts,
Twitter’s fast-moving nature, and the need to attract likes to be visible,
means Twitter favors emotionally charged posts that simplify ongoing
events without any eye for nuance or complexity (e.g., Enli, 2017b;
Engesser, Ernst, Esser, & Büchel, 2016). The platform encourages encour-
age self-promotionalism (Page, 2012) with a large number of tweets
focusing on impression management and self-branding (Enli, 2015;

Kreiss, 2016; Page, 2012).
The question this raises then is whether this simplified, emotion-driven,
and mostly ‘trivial’ content is indeed meaningless. The case has been made
that some forms of this kind of self-expression can be seen as a form of
political engagement too. When people talk about and engage with popu-
lar culture, leisure activities, and other factors of everyday life, this, some
argue, can be seen as a form of citizenship, cultural citizenship to be spe-
cific (e.g., Müller & Hermes, 2010). In fact, viewing the public sphere and
constructive dialogue as connected to political and civic discussions only,
is a narrow and exclusive view, one that particularly disadvantages groups
commonly excluded from the mainstream public sphere (Burgess, Foth, &
Klaebe, 2006). Conversely, cultural citizenship holds that citizen engage-
ment can take multiple forms and occur across “multiple modes of dis-
course, including affect and pleasure” (Burgess et al., 2006, p. 3).
Cultural citizenship is about the creation of bonds between people, and
the cultural public sphere is commonly said to have a “cross-ethnic reach”
(Müller & Hermes, 2010, p. 194), connecting people through shared
experiences and identities that can be cognitive as well as highly affective
(McGuian, 2005; Müller & Hermes, 2010). As Papacharissi (2009) points
out, while these kinds of expressions and interactions may appear highly
self-absorbed and even narcissistic, they can still be seen as moving the
democratic process along, precisely because of their ability to bring per-
sonal issues into the public domain. Unlike Habermas’ approach to dia-
logic pluralism, or even Mouffe’s (1999, 2000) agonistic pluralism, these
expressions center on communication rather than outcome, forming the
speech communities that Kruse et al. (2018) talked about as the solution
to the faltering traditional public sphere.
It is essential to note this view of citizenship does not necessarily con-
tradict Habermas’ view of the public sphere. Habermas viewed everyday
talk as an inexorable part of political communication (2006) and described
the communicative rationality that forms the basis for the public sphere as
occurring inside people’s “lifeworlds” (McGuian, 2005, p. 434), implying
that even ‘trivial’ talk can be political. As Dahlgren (2018) points out, the
political doesn’t just refer to interactions with formal institutions, but to
the struggle inherent to all relationships and settings, from the personal to
the official. But, this leaves the question: what kind of democratic contri-
bution do the conversations characterized by buzzwords, symbolism,
simplified narratives, and at times the seemingly highly trivial, offer, espe-
cially if these take place inside echo chambers?
Affective Connectivity and Emotions on Twitter

While people commonly view politics and public dialogue as cognitive in
nature, it is not accurate to exclude affect as irrational or counterproduc-
tive to this kind of dialogue. Reason and passion go hand-in-hand, and are
an integral part of people’s everyday lived experiences that constitute the
public sphere. In fact, it is only through emotional involvement that peo-
ple become engaged with politics (Dahlgren, 2018) and it is through
affect that people experience empathy and actively consider ways in which
to bring change to society at large (Horowitz, 2013; McGuian, 2005;
Papacharissi, 2016).
Recently, media scholars have worked to apply this principle to social
media. Papacharissi (2016) examines how many of the social-media-based
discussions surrounding the Egyptian revolution were comprised of affect
rather than the rational, producing a continual sense of movement and
change even when there were no new developments. The “emotive”
nature of the tweets “helped to frame the movement as a revolution well
before it had resulted in regime reversal” (p. 313). Bouvier (2020) makes
a similar argument with the example of #MeToo, observing that the
Twitter feed itself contained little in the form of coherent rational state-
ments. Rather, it was comprised of floods of affect, communicated in dif-
ferent ways, where different posts often had highly different agendas and
where posts were far from logically engaged with any core set of ideas in
the thread.
Social media’s affordances don’t just allow but promote emotional
expressions and responses as a form of participation (Wahl-Jorgensen,
2018). The “storytelling infrastructure” (Papacharissi, 2014, p. 4) that
underpins social media expressions and exchanges creates a sense of pres-
ence and immediacy that has rendered emotional displays of engagement
an integral part of the formation of networked publics and the creation of
change. The platforms’ affordances allow for the melding of politics, news,
and the personal and affective, effectively erasing the divide between ratio
and emotion. Considering that social media are some of the most popular
ways to obtain news and participate in political discussions and the fact
that these same platforms have been designed to put users’ emotions at
the forefront impacts the nature of contemporary political debate,
implying that emotion can no longer be ignored as an element of civic

dialogue (cf. Wahl-Jorgensen, 2018).
Moreover, using “emotive expressions” on social media allows for the
creation of affective networked publics: connections between users founded
on the sharing of emotions about a particular issue or event (Papacharissi,
2016, p. 320). These affective networks can lead to political and social
movements that may bring about change. But even if they don’t,
Papacharissi (2016) argues, this affective participation may still be able to
bring about wider shifts in attitudes and grant a sense of agency to those
participating in the feed. She calls this connective action. Here she empha-
sizes that people are able to connect and raise a particular kind of issue that
can have ideological relevance, even though it may lack any clear sense of
having a rational and clear argument, solution, or plan.
However, Bouvier (2020) raises the issue that if the actual concrete
nature of the problem and the ongoing events becomes unclear in the flow
of affect, then it may lose the power of communicative rationality (cf.
Habermas, 1987). As Dahlgren (2018) states: just because people are
emotionally involved does not guarantee they will actually engage in polit-
ical action. In fact, he argues that the same affordances that make it so easy
to become emotionally engaged, the speed and ephemerality of social
media platforms, are those that facilitate keeping one’s political engage-
ment limited to a single affective response. Although, again, other work
has provided compelling evidence that there are clear links between social
media activity and social mobilization, particularly in the case of disenfran-
chised groups (e.g., Jackson et al., 2020).
Concerns about the emotive nature of many Twitter expressions are not
just limited to their potential impact. Scholars have also expressed concern
about the ease with which one can send out a tweet, and what this means
for the quality of those tweets (Ott, 2017). In fact, research has shown that
Twitter creates an environment wherein tweeting is impulsive and driven
by feelings rather than the result of a deliberate thought process (Wang,
Zhou, Jin, Fang, & Lee, 2017). As a result, “tweets are often sparked by an
affective charge” (Ott, 2017, p. 61), and, more importantly, it is often the
most emotional tweets that will receive the most retweets, rendering those
who post emotional tweets more likely to gain influence (Stieglitz & Dang-
Xuan, 2013; see also Ott, 2017). Even when conversations start as rational
debate, one snark comment left by a user who then withdraws from the
conversation can cause these interactions to degenerate into insults
(Bouvier, 2015). The brevity of tweets and the speed with which conversa-
tions evolve and disappear have also been pointed to as reasons for the
normalization of hateful terms and attitudes and why Twitter is seen as the
ideal platform for “politics of outrage, scapegoating, hatred, and attack”
(Fuchs, 2017, p. 54; cf. Foxman & Wolf, 2013).
Community Building, Inclusion, and Marginalization

One of the main critiques of the Habermasian public sphere is its failure to
account for the exclusion of suppressed groups from the conversations
inside the public sphere. In response, these groups have created their own
so-
called counterpublics; spaces wherein members connect to create
shared understandings of their own identities and needs that counter
dominant narratives (Fraser, 1992). These counterpublics were commonly
created away from public view and were thus limited in their reach and
ability to influence mainstream ideas (e.g., Schofield Clark, 2016). With
the arrival of social media platforms such as Twitter, however, this has
changed.
As numerous scholars (e.g., Jackson & Foucault Welles, 2015, Kuo,
2018) have shown, one of Twitter’s defining affordances is its ability to
connect diverse groups of people into a networked (counter)public.
Scholars have pointed at Black Twitter, that is, African Americans’ use of
the platform to perform their racial identity (e.g., Brock, 2012; Florini,
2014) as well as the feminist movement (Sills et al., 2016) as prime exam-
ples. Connected to the fact that Twitter has been especially heralded for its
ability to give voice to groups that have been historically marginalized
from the mainstream media (Pew Research Center, 2018), it is no surprise
that marginalized communities have been found to utilize the platform to
strengthen their own identities and be heard outside their own social net-
works, from women of color challenging the whiteness inherent in most
feminism (Jackson & Banaszczyk, 2016; Kuo, 2018), to social justice
activists undermining a New York City Police Department PR campaign
(Jackson & Foucault Welles, 2015).
This connectivity has mainly been attributed to the hashtag. As men-
tioned above, the hashtag allows people from a variety of backgrounds and
locations to find each other over a shared interest, as the hashtag renders
conversations visible across groups (e.g., Kuo, 2018; Rambukkana,
2015b). It also allows people to use hashtags to find posts with which they
disagree and comment on those, or use a hashtag counter to its intended
meaning, so-called “content injection” (Conover, Ratkiewicz, Gonçales,
Flammmini, & Menczer, 2011, p. 94). This effectively creates “interdis-

cursive contestation” (Dahlberg, 2007, p. 16) wherein marginalized
groups counter dominant discourses (cf. Chan, 2018). Conversely, it also
allows for the insertion of a dominant narrative into a countercultural
discourse and hashtag (e.g., Carney, 2016).
On the flipside, the affordances that render Twitter such an effective
place for marginalized groups to connect also provide opportunities for
extremist groups commonly excluded from the mainstream public sphere
to unite and attempt to influence dominant narratives (cf. Neumayer &
Valtysson, 2013). As Rosenbaum (2018) found in her analysis of Trump
supporters on Twitter, it is the perception of marginalization, not actual
marginalization, coupled with the platform’s promotion of networked
connections that prompts people to take to Twitter. In her analysis, Trump
supporters indicated feeling excluded from and ridiculed by the main-
stream media, and used Twitter to seek like-minded individuals and recog-
nition. The Alt-right has actively used social media, especially sites like
Reddit, 4chan, and 8chan, but also Twitter, to promote and gain wider
acceptance of their ideas and attack people of color and other minorities
(Heikkilä, 2017). The Far Left has also taken to Twitter, and the rhetoric
that has emerged from the clashes between the two has not only been
pointed to as a reason behind the increasing polarization in US politics,
but has also raised concerns about causing actual physical damage
(Klein, 2019).
When discussing Twitter counterpublics, it is important, as Brunner
(2017) explained, to move to thinking about these as wild public networks.
This entails prioritizing the connections between people as the main focus
of research and acknowledging that online publics are never stable but
continually changing, characterized by “growing, shifting, and messy rela-
tionships” (p. 669). Affect is an integral part of wild public networks,
which are conceptualized as unpredictable, mediated, and “forged and
maintained by banal communication” (p. 671) or “affective pleas” that
can include memes, funny videos, or GIFs (Dawson & Brunner,
2019, p. 4).
The tactical network dynamics of social media should also be consid-
ered when discussing the communities and networks created by Twitter.
While it is tempting to point to the creation of networks as a move driven
by a desire for social change, users can also deliberately opt to network
strategically in order to develop and foster “structural capital” (Kane,
Alavi, Labianca, & Borgatti, 2014, p. 290). In this case, users carefully
consider who they link to and organize ties with to create a network that
may be of strategical advantage for themselves. Page (2012) has looked at
social media as a kind of “linguistic marketplace” (p. 181), wherein users
utilize language to gain attention and, in some cases, social and economic
capital. From that perspective, a platform like Twitter is as much about
tactical self-branding through “synthetic personalization” (Page, 2012,
p. 198) as it is about communication and advancing social change.
Talking Points
As is evident from the discussion so far, the jury is still out when it comes
to the nature of communication on Twitter. Specifically, questions remain
about the nature of the everyday talk that makes up most of the commu-
nication on Twitter. What kinds of conversations unfold on the platform,
and do these contribute to, or even qualify as, civic debate? What does
political dialogue on Twitter look like? What discursive strategies do
Twitter users employ and how do these foreground or background spe-
cific voices? And, finally, can Twitter be said to function as a modern-day
public sphere? In the body of research on Twitter so far, it is clear that
there are instances that create a positive case for its democratic potential.
But there is enough scholarship that suggests we need to ask more ques-
tions, specifically ones that focus on a wide range of domains and issues.
This collection takes a step toward answering these questions, but at the
same time offers, perhaps uniquely (at least at the time of publication), a
message of caution about the role of Twitter in contemporary democracy.
This volume looks at the role of Twitter in civic debate and participa-
tion through a series of empirical case studies. These case studies all
approach Twitter from a communication-centered perspective, taking a
social scientific approach, rather than one founded in computational or
information science. The case studies, however, do take a variety of theo-
retical perspectives, addressing a broad selection of topics through a
diverse array of methodological approaches.
The first section “Political Contention and Civic Engagement” focuses
on how Twitter is used for the kind of communication action that
Habermas had in mind when conceptualizing the public sphere: everyday
talk centered on political issues. The three chapters in this section show
how the communicative rationality advocated by Habermas can be messy
and contradictory, with various actors engaging with and countering
dominant narratives in rational and emotional as well as humorous and
sarcastic ways. In Chapter 2, Joanne Marras Tate, Vincent Russell, Rachel

Larsen, and Ellie Busch examine how alternate National Park Service
accounts utilize Twitter as a space to resist the Trump administration while
still promoting dominant and romanticized understandings of US national
identity. In Chapter 3, Maurice Vergeer uses a communication network
approach to investigate how politicians interact on Twitter. Photini Vrikki
uses Narrative Thematic Analysis to provide insight into how Twitter users
employed the #PeoplesVoteMarch hashtag to create a community with
shared understandings regarding Brexit and the future of the UK in
Chapter 4.
The second section looks at the nature of communication within and
between networked counterpublics. As a platform that has been heralded
for its ability to bring marginalized people together, it is relevant to under-
stand what communication inside these networks looks like. In Chapter 5,
Raven Maragh-Lloyd provides insight into the strategies of care that Black
women utilize to be able to participate in online conversations. Her work
reveals the nature and extent of the labor it takes for Black women to be
heard and assert themselves in online spaces. Sarah Dyer and Leah
Hakkola, in Chapter 6, examine the responses to the 2017 Alt-right march
held in Charlottesville, Virginia for evidence of cross-public dialogue.
Their findings underscore the prevalence of the colorblind discourse in
conversations about race and highlight how the lack of interaction appears
to feed the current political polarization. Prashanth Bhat and Ofra Klein
examine how White Nationalists communicate on Twitter using a tactic
known as dog whistling in Chapter 7. Their work offers a more profound
understanding of how extremist counterpublics work to convey their ide-
ologies while circumventing Twitter’s hate speech policies.
The third section of this volume examines the role played by emotion
in everyday talk on Twitter. As discussed above, research is divided on
whether emotions are an irrelevant or even undesirable component of
political communication. What is known is that they are an inexorable part
of how people communicate about politics, especially on Twitter.
Therefore, understanding how they work within political communication
is paramount. In Chapter 8, Catherine Bouko and David Garcia analyze
responses to the outcome of the Brexit referendum. Using a text-based
quantitative content analysis, they find that tweets often combine affect,
appreciation, and judgment, doing little to promote deliberative interac-
tion, and reflecting extant polarization on the topic of the UK leaving the
EU. Chapter 9, authored by Amy Janan Johnson and Ioana Cionea, looks
specifically at the nature of arguments on Twitter. Using results from a

survey among Twitter users, Johnson and Cionea find that in most cases,
arguments on Twitter are brief and superficial. Users tend to withdraw
from online exchanges rather than engage in in-depth conversations.
The final section of this book presents three chapters that look at how
humor and popular culture, that is, the ‘banal’ referenced above, form
drivers of political conversations on Twitter. Roberta Chevrette and
Christopher Duerringer present the results from a rhetorical analysis of the
#BROTUS memes in Chapter 10. Their research shows that the memes,
through their use of humor and affect, created space for resistance against
the Trump administration, while also replicating some of its values and
beliefs. In Chapter 11, Nathan Rodriguez examines the backlash gener-
ated in response to the US Department of State’s #TravelHacks campaign.
His grounded theory approach reveals that the backlash led to the cre-
ation of an online counterpublic, that in spite of the extensive engagement
between its members, did little more than serve as an echo chamber.
Chapter 12 features Ernest Mathijs’ work into how the online feminist
communities around cult horror film use cultural capital and social ties to
engender social change. His research compares the larger, fluctuating
communities on Twitter to the smaller online communities on Facebook
in terms of the role they play in creating and maintaining social movements.
In the final chapter, Chapter 13, we circle back and consider what all of
this means in terms of the talk on Twitter and how this contributes to or
detracts from Twitter’s ability to function as a public sphere. We delineate
what the various contributions have added to extant theoretical work on
the public sphere, counterpublics, affective connectivity, and role of emo-
tions in political communication.
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PART I
Political Contention and Civic

Engagement
CHAPTER 2
Going “Rogue”: National Parks, Discourses

of American Identity and Resistance
on Twitter
Joanne Marras Tate, Vincent Russell, Rachel Larsen,

and Ellie Busch
Introduction
Shortly after the inauguration of President Donald Trump, his administra-
tion directed several federal agencies, including the Environmental
Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of
Health and Human Services, and the Department of the Interior, which
oversees the National Park Service (NPS), to limit contact with the public
(Davis, 2017; Perez, 2017). In defiance, the Badlands National Park offi-
cial Twitter account issued a series of tweets on January 24, 2017 about
climate change that quickly went viral. The tweets were later deleted, and
the public acknowledged this action as censorship of discussions about
J. Marras Tate (*) • V. Russell • R. Larsen • E. Busch

Department of Communication, University of Colorado Boulder,
Boulder, CO, USA
e-mail: Joanne.MarrasTate@colorado.edu; Vincent.Russell@colorado.edu;
Rachel.Larsen@colorado.edu; Ellie.Busch@colorado.edu
© The Author(s) 2020 25

G. Bouvier, J. E. Rosenbaum (eds.), Twitter, the Public Sphere, and
the Chaos of Online Deliberation,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41421-4_2
26 J. MARRAS TATE ET AL.
climate change by the new administration (Diaz, 2017). By January 26,

2017, less than a week after the inauguration, more than ten “rogue”
national park Twitter accounts (including @AltUSNatParkService, @
BadHombreNPS, and @AltYellowStone) sprung up in response to this
censorship (Noe, 2017). In this paper, we argue that these alternative or
rogue national park Twitter accounts functioned as a digital site of discur-
sive resistance to the Trump administration’s communication agenda. We
discuss how three accounts that were covertly created and managed by
National Park government employees drew on discourses of US national
identity to construct identities of resistance, while situating themselves
within larger historical discourses of national parks and American
symbolism.
National parks are an important signifier of national identity (Burns,
2009; Runte, 2010; Tyrrell, 2012) and as such constitute a significant
component of the nationalistic rhetoric associated with place-myths
(Rennie, 2006; Runte, 2010). Hence, we begin this chapter with a histori-
cal overview of the NPS, wherein we discuss how parks have embodied
democratic ideals (Frome, 2015; Ross-Bryant, 2005; Runte, 2010). Next,
we present the findings from our Critical Discourse Analysis into what has,
in some places, become a part of the everydayness of talk (Tracy & Robles,
2013): the practice of tweeting. We identify how rogue National Park
Twitter accounts evoked nationalism, resisted government, and strove to
uphold democratic values.
Our research centers on the rogue national park Twitter accounts, as
they became an exemplar of how tweets have become part of the process
through which social values are constructed. Moreover, these accounts
serve as a case study for examining civic participation on Twitter, allowing
us to investigate how Twitter works as a public communicative space that
encourages public engagement through a networked public sphere
(Ausserhofer & Maireder, 2013; Chen, Tu, & Zheng, 2017). Conducting
an analysis of discourses created by these rogue accounts is a way to fur-
ther understand how this networked public sphere helps shape the mean-
ings associated with the US national parks, providing an in-depth
understanding of the nature of the US national identity constructed on
Twitter. This investigation provides insight into how these constructs cir-
culate and evolve on Twitter, allowing for the examination of Twitter’s
potential as a public sphere.
2 GOING “ROGUE”: NATIONAL PARKS, DISCOURSES OF AMERICAN… 27
Foucault and Identity Construction

This chapter, with its focus on the ways in which rogue accounts construct
American identity through the use of historical symbols, relies on
Foucault’s The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972). Foucault provides a
framework that allows us to understand how the selected rogue Twitter
accounts socially construct the national parks’ symbolic identity within
significant historical contexts, with the idea of the “document” (p. 6) used
here to describe history construction in the form of tweeting as a historical
discourse. Because Foucault emphasizes examining nondominant dis-
courses as a way to bring them to the forefront, we use Critical Discourse
Analysis (CDA) to investigate discourses happening on a platform that,
although public, does not always align with mainstream societal discourse.
CDA enables us to highlight societal struggles and gaps in values by assess-
ing “what exists, what might exist and what should exist” (Fairclough,
2013, p. 7). CDA connects to the idea of archaeology as well by serving
as a means to investigate the general histories present in the discourses
created to represent the national parks, which are embedded within its
constructed nationalistic history. Foucault (1972) points out that:
“[This] history in its traditional form, undertook to ‘memorize’ the monu-

ments of the past, transform them into documents, and lend speech to those
traces which, in themselves, are often not verbal, or which say in silence
something other than what they actually say; in our time, history is that
which transforms documents into monuments.” (p. 7, emphasis added)
In a similar manner, the digital platform of Twitter works to bring histori-

cal significance to the US NPS by allowing for the creation of these rogue
Twitter accounts and hosting the subsequent discourse constructed on
Twitter. The Twitter platform is a unique, dynamic document that works
to change and uphold the historical stories of the NPS.
In examining nondominant discourses, Foucault (1972) argues that a
discursively oriented methodology “makes it possible to rethink the dis-
persion of history in the form of the same” (p. 21) and “to master time
through a perpetually reversible relation between an origin and a term that
are never given, but are always at work” (p. 22). Discursive practices show-
cased as alternative enact, through language, the various power struggles
at play. The sociopolitical context of the tweets makes these struggles
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matalassa metsänlaitaisessa männikössä asustava jänönen ehtinyt
täällä saakka käydä. Tuossa on aterioimaan asettunut — lunta on
penkonut ja mustuneiden apilaanlehtien joukosta jotain
mehevämpääkin syötävää löytänyt — — —. Sinne tänne on
kuukkinut, tasaisesti pylkähdellyt, ei näy — jälistä päättäen —
mikään vaara uhanneen. Päätän varovasti seurata noita jälkiä, jotka
kirkkaassa kuutamossa sinertävinä minua houkuttelevat, jospa jussi
itsekin vielä minulle, aseettomalle, näyttäytyisi!
Ojaan näkyy hetkeksi levolle laskeneen, kolme »pyöreätä» on

siihen jättänyt. Päättäväisesti on sitten sijaltaan lähtenyt, pitkän
harppauksen kedolle loikannut — jokohan lie minua pelästynyt! Ei
kumminkaan niin näy olevan, koska taas on syöntiään jatkanut ja
ristiin rastiin jälkiään lumeen »templaillut».
Mutta nyt kai on minun jo kaukaa huomannut, koska joelle päin on

ruvennut painamaan. Alas ahdetta on laukannut, vinoon yli joen
vilittänyt ja vasta tuolla puolen rauhoittunut, pajupensaita maistellut.
Sirosti on mestari oksia leikellyt, kuin puukolla varpuja viistoon poikki
pannut ja niitä hangelle siroitellut — — — ja tästä minua paeten
suoraa tietä läheiseen viidakkoon kuukkinut.
En aukealla kedollakaan saattanut jänöäni nähdä, vaikka varmaan

monastikin lienen sitä lähellä ollut. Suojaksi vihollista vastaan se
näkyy talvista valkoturkkiaan kantavan. Ja kotimatkalla kuutamossa
kävellessäni koetan mielessäni kuvata, miten jussit sekä nuo muut
talvella valkopukuiset ovat suojelevan värinsä saaneet.
Taakse tuhansien kertaa tuhansien vuosien ajatukseni liitelevät —

— ‒.
Aina harmajat, ruskeat tahi maanväriset olivat kaiketi tertiääriajan
lopulla nekin maamme eläimet, jotka nykyään valkean talviturkin
päälleen pukevat. Tummaa kesäpukuaan jänis, kärppä, lumikko,
metsäkana, kiiruna ja naali silloisina lämpiminä aikoina aina
kantoivat.
Läheni sitten vuosituhansien vieriessä vähitellen kylmempi aika,

tuli kolkko jääkausi yhä lähemmäksi. Ei antanutkaan enään taivas
virvoittavaa sadetta, lunta alkoi seuloa seuduille, missä se tähän
saakka oli tuntematonta. Tulivat pakkaset yhä pitemmät, kesät yhä
kylmemmät, levenivät vähitellen napaseudun jäät aina Etelä-
Englantiin, Hartsvuoristoon ja Keski-Venäjälle saakka — — —.
Helposti vihollinen nyt huomasi harmajan jussiparan, huonosti

onnistui maanvärisen jäniksen lumeen piiloutuminen. Vaikea oli
ruskean, vaikka kuinkakin nopean kärpän saaliin niskaan sen
huomaamatta hyökätä. Ja sama oli laita metsäkanan ja naalin,
lumikon ja kiirunan. Ken pukunsa tähden ruuatta jäi, ken taas
samasta syystä henkensä menetti.
Ei heillä ollut voimia, kuten sudella ja ahmalla, ei kasvanut äly,

kuten ketulla, eivät keksineet talvilevon keinoa, kuten karhu ja
mäyrä, ei käynyt lumen alla eläminen, kuten myyrien ja sopulin.
Siirtyminen uusille metsästysmaille, pakeneminen rauhaisemmille
ruokapaikoille lie ollut edessä.
Mutta silloin tuli aina avulias luonto tuon kuuluisan

muuntelevaisuuden lain muodossa pulassa oleville avuksi.
Sattuipa jollekulle jussille kesäkarvan luotua kasvamaan hieman

vaaleampi, hiukan hallavampi talvikarva kuin muille jänöille.
Suuremmat olivat jo mahdollisuudet sille jänikselle lumessakin
säilyä, vähemmän vaaranalainen oli sille ruuan hankkiminen. Ei
joutunut vaaleampi jänis niin helposti petojen saaliiksi. Ja kun tämä
jussi sitten perheelliseksi rupesi, saivat lapsetkin perinnöllisyyden
kautta saman ominaisuuden. Sattui tässä sukupolvessa löytymään
sellainenkin poikanen, joka ensimmäisen kesäkarvan luotua sai
uuden talviturkin vieläkin vaaleamman kuin isänsä oli. Paremmin jo
tämän talven yli säilyi ja seuraavana keväänä jo perheelliseksi rupesi
— — ‒.
Surman suuhun joutuivat useammat talviharmaat jänikset, pois

vetäytyivät kukatiesi jälelle jääneet harmaaturkkiset lumettomampiin
seutuihin. Mutta talveksi vaalenevat paikkansa jäätiköiden
läheisyydessä pitivät ja — säilyivät olemassa olemisen taistelussa.
Ja kuta kauvemmin luonnollinen valinta — joka määrää soveliaat
elämään, epäsoveliaat kuolemaan — ehti vaikuttaa, sitä valkeampi
kasvoi talvikarva jokaiselle uudelle sukupolvelle.
Näin mielestäni muodostui vähitellen vuosituhansien kuluessa tuo

meidän kesällä harmajata maata matkiva, talvella lumenväriä
tavoitteleva jänömme. Ja sama lienee ollut laita noitten muidenkin,
jotka talvella valkoista pukua kantavat.
Loppui sitten vähitellen kolkko jääaika, lauhtui ilma, ja nykyiset

ilmastosuhteet tulivat vallitseviksi. Katosivat lumet ja jäät Keski-
Euroopan tasangoilta, säilyen ympäri vuoden ainoastaan Alppien,
Pyreneitten, Kaukasusvuorten huipuilla. Pohjoista kohti vetäysi
ikuinen jää, sulaen leveysaste leveysasteelta, pysähtyäkseen
napaseutuihin siellä hallitsemaan.
Jälkeen lähtivät kylmään ja lumeen tottuneet eläimet. Suojelevaa

yhtäläisyyttä hakien osa ylös vuoristoihin vetäysi, Alppien ylärinteille
siirtyi, osa taas pohjoisiin napaseutuihin pakeni — — —.
*****
Mutta Keski-Euroopan vähälumisille tasangoille tuli uudelleen tuo

ympäri vuoden harmaja rusakkojänis. Eihän täällä esim.
lumikkokaan enään pukeudu talviseen valkoturkkiin — ruskeana se
läpi vuoden elelee. Ei käy Keski-Euroopan oravakaan kylmän
vuodenajan tullessa harmajaksi kuten meillä, missä sen talviturkki
naavakuusikon väriä onnistuneesti matkii. Ei muutu metsäkanakaan
Brittein saarilla — kirjavaa pukua se siellä aina kantaa.
KOIRALLENI
Sinä tuuheakarvainen kippurahäntäinen ystäväni, suippokuonoinen

ja vinosilmäinen keltainen pystykorvani. Nyt on talvi ja nyt on isäntäsi
sairas. Kovasti sairas on hän, joka muinoin haukkumasi linnun
sinulle pudotti. Eikä tiedä isäntäsi, etkä tiedä sinä, paraneeko hän
enään milloinkaan — — —.
Mutta elämänhaluni sinä ylläpidät, jokapäiväisen yksitoikkoisuuden

lievennät ja väsyneet kasvoni kirkastumaan saat.
Sentähden sinusta pidän.
Kun talvi käy kovin kamalaksi, kun tuntuu lumi voittavan ja kylät,
metsät, järvet pyryilmaan katoavat, silloin tuntuu mieleni
masentuvan. Mutta samassa näen sinut, joka mukavasti lattialla
loikoelet ja ikäänkuin pyryilmaan ikävystyneenä syvään huokaelet.
Katselen, miten nukkuessasi käpäliä liikuttelet — kai uniesi
utulehtoja, riistarikkaita sinisaloja juoksentelet. Hymähdän sinulle,
kun tuontuostakin unissasi urahtelet — varmaankin lintua puuhun
olet haukkuvinasi — — —.
Heti paremmalle tuulelle tulen, uutta elämäntoivoa saan, sillä

menneen kesän muistot heräävät, sydän iloisesti sykähtää ja pahat
ajatukset kauvas kaikkoavat.
Kun taas toisina päivinä tauti ahdistaa, ja huoneessa olo käy

raskaaksi, kun tuntuu toivottomalta kaikki, ja miltei itsemurhaa
ajattelen, silloin ratokseni rupeat, vinoa silmää vilkutellen polveani
hyväilet ja villahäntää heilutellen ikäänkuin kysyt: »miltäs tuntuivat
viime syksyn suloiset aamut, kun yhdessä korven hakolintuja
haimme, kun kahden ahomaiden teeriä ahdistelimme?»
— Ettetkö jaksaisi elää tulevaan syksyyn! Hehei! Jo on maaliskuu

ensimmäisen kevätsateen antanut ja leivosta sekä peippoa
odotamme joka hetki! Tunnen turkissani, että kevät kohta on käsissä
ja nyt toivottomaksi rupeaisit! Hyvä tulee lintuvuosi, riistaa vilisevät
vanhat, autuaat metsämaamme ja silloin taas yhdessä käymme —
— —.
Näin kuulen sinun puhelevan ja tulevan syksyn linturetkistä alan

uneksua. Syliini halli hypähtää ja sen mustaa kylmää kuonoa
poskeani vastaan painaen sille iloisena lavertelen, huoletonna
pakinoin — — —.
»Niin, tuothan minulle taas ensi syksynä riistaa, tuot kun tuotkin!
Haukut linnut varmasti, juosta laukkaat aamusta iltaan aina uuvuksiin
saakka ja parastasi koetat — sen tiedän. Ei sinua silloin liika
lihavuus haittaa. Keveä olet kuin höyhen kämmenellä eikä ryteikkö,
ei murrokko eikä korkea kivi juoksusi nopeutta estä. Ylitse kiidät kuin
tuulispää ja metson siiven äänen kuulet, tiedät mihin puuhun
koppelon poika kuhahtaa, kun pystyt korvasi kuunteluun teroitat.
Herätäthän sitten taas minut niinkuin viime syksynäkin, jos

laiskaksi heittäydyn, mutta sinun tekee mieli aamuhämyiseen
metsään. Tulet ja pyydät, käsket — ennen auringon nousua vuoteeni
laidalle nouset, käpälälläsi raapaiset, kättäni nuolaiset: »lähdetään
jo, johan päivä koittaa ja linnut valveentuvat — —.»
Ja yhdessä rupeamme kuvittelemaan, miten metsovanhus

raikkaassa hakolinnassaan herää ja sieltä ruokamailleen lähtee.
Matalan männyn mukavalle oksalle lyykistyneenä on ukko yönsä
nukkunut, mutta päivän koittaessa se kohottautuu, ojentelee vuoroin
oikeaa, vuoroin vasenta jalkaa ja siipeä, aukoo kellanvihreää käyrää
nokkaa ja haukottelee. Sitten se pörhistelee pukuaan, liikuttelee
leukahöyheniään, että ne partana seisovat, pudistaa itseään ja
järjestää höyhenensä. Valkenee päivä vähitellen ja koillisen
kellertävä valoviiva alkaa yhä kirkkaammaksi käydä.
Tarkkaan kuuntelee kokenut vanhus, kuuntelee, katselee — — —.
Lentoon lähtee iso lintu, kuuluu kovia siiven läimäyksiä ja viistoon

alas nevanlaitaiseen kuusikkoon metso kuhahtaa, muurainlehtien
ympäröimälle mättäälle pysähtyy. Nuokkuvin päin, selkä kyyryssä
ukko kävelee ja kolmiliuskaisia varpaanjälkiä kosteaan
valkosammaleen painaa — — —.
Mutta silloin olet sinä jäljillä, mäntyseen korven kukko kohoaa ja

kohta haukkumaan rupeat. Istuen haukut, ettei lintu arkeentuisi,
varovasti alotat ja tuon tuostakin minua läheneväksi odotat. Ja puun
vastaiselle puolelle siirryt, kun kuulet mistä päin tulen.
Jo on muhkea lintu omanamme!
Kas tällaisia muistoja sinä herätät ja minun eteenpäin elämään

houkuttelet — enkö siis sinusta pitäisi!
ALLEJA AMPUMASSA
Kun talvi alkaa tehdä tuloaan ja ensimmäiset syyskylmät Lapin ja

Kuolan niemimaan tunturijärvet riitteeseen vetävät, kun soiden
saraheinä kellastuu ja vaivaiskoivun lehti lakastuen punottaa, silloin
alkavat Pohjolan lyhyttä kesää viettäneet allit vähitellen muuttaa
etelää kohti. Pienemmissä parvissa linnut pitkin maamme
sisävesistöjä merensaaristoon saapuvat, suuremmissa seurueissa
ne poikki Karjalan kannaksen Suomenlahden lainehille ilmestyvät. Ja
täällä, maamme etelärannikon edustalla, levähtävät linnut
viikkomääriä.
Ne tulevat tavallisesti noin lokakuun keskivaiheilla, tuohon aikaan,

jolloin syksy »täällä etelässä» vielä voi olla viehättävimmillään.
Lukuisampina kuin mitkään muut vesilinnut ne sadottain, tuhansittain
ympäri merenpartaan karien ja kallioiden iloisina parveilevat.
Silloin on paras allin-ammunnan aika. Yksinäisten tunturijärvien

vesillä kasvaneina, kesän kuluessa tuskin ihmisolentoa nähneinä, ne
eivät ole kokeneet metsästäjän viekkautta ja pahaa aavistamatta
luottavaisesti petollisten kuvien luo laskeutuvat.
*****
Noin tunnin matkan päässä höyrylaivalla kaakkoon
pääkaupungista kohoaa merestä kuin yhtenäisenä suunnattomana
graniittikappaleena Öster Tokan'in kallio. Tuo karu muodostus, johon
avara, voimallinen meri on luonnonomaisen leimansa painanut,
miellyttää kumminkin kaikessa kolkkoudessaan. Sillä maata
matelevien kuusien ja tuulen pieksämien katajapensaiden keskellä
seisoo jäkäläisen kallioseinän suojassa sievä lintumiesten mökki. Ja
siinä mökissä ovat allinampujat monta iloista päivää viettäneet — —
—.
*****
Oltiin lokakuun keskipaikoilla, allit saapuivat parhaillaan, vedet

Öster Tokan'in ympärillä vilisivät noita pohjoisia lintuja ja matka sinne
päätettiin. Nelimiehisenä seurueena aioimme tuolla merenpartaalla
elää jonkun päivän oikeata saarelais-metsästäjän elämää.
Kohta on metsäinen sisäsaaristo takanamme, viimeiset alastomat

luodot sivuutetaan ja nyt huomaamme edessämme Öster Tokan'in
kohottavan totiset piirteensä yli tuon hivushienon viivan, joka
muodostuu tuolla kaukana, kaukana, missä meri ja taivas yhtyvät.
Aaltojen yhä hurjemmin heitellessä pienehköä höyryalustamme
lähenemme tasaisesti, yhä selvemmin eroitamme yksityiskohdat —
mökin, rannan vierinkivet, tummanruskean rakkolevävyöhykkeen
veden rajaa vähän ylempänä — — — jo aluksemme pysähtyy aivan
lähelle jyrkkää, tuulen alla olevaa kallioseinää. Allinkuvat, pyssyt,
muonavarat, polttopuut ja kirves saatetaan kelluvaan ruuheemme ja
vaivoin, mutta onnellisesti kumminkin, pääsemme kovassa
aallokossa maihin.
Huuto ei kuulu mainingin kohinassa, vaan lakeilla ja käsillä

viitomme jäähyväisiämme höyryalukselle, joka juuri kääntää
keulansa kaupunkia kohti. Ja niin on — pientä ruuhtamme
lukuunottamatta — viimeinen side muun maailman kanssa katkaistu,
olemme jätetyt oman onnemme nojaan. Mutta — ei hätääkään!
Ruuhi vedetään korkealle yli vedenrajan — jos meri sattuisi yöllä
nousemaan — tavarat kannetaan alle turvallisen tuvan katon ja
alamme kotiutua.
Aurinko laski. Suurena ja kellertävänä se tuuma tuumalta katosi

läntiseen mereen ja hiljalleen leveni hämärän harmaja harso yli
meren ja maan. Kaukaiset mannersaaret katosivat, tähdet tuikkivat
yhä kirkkaampina ja aina selvempänä vilahteli Söderskärin majakka
suuresta pimeästä milloin kirkkaana, milloin himmeänä, ikäänkuin
silmää salaperäisesti vilkutellen. Mutta majassamme paukkuu iloinen
takkavalkea, sanomattomasti enentäen kodikkuuden tunnetta. Ja
hauskasti kuluu yhä musteneva syysilta kuviamme ja pyssyjämme
takkavalkean ääressä järjestäessämme ja illallista valmistaessa.
Hiiltyy takkavalkea, kynttilät sammutetaan ja makuulavitsoille

vetäytyneinä koetamme nukkua. Mutta — unta ei kuulu! Katselen
ulos tuikkivaan äärettömyyteen ja korvani kuuntelee ilman ja veden
salaperäisiä ääniä, luonnon mahtavaa musiikkia, tuulen ja mainingin
kummallista kohinaa. Katselen huvitettuna, miten hiljaisen
huoneemme takaseinä väliin valkenee, väliin pimenee kaukaisen
majakan vilkkuvasta valosta. Yksinäisyys, pimeys ja meren uhkaava
ääni, kaikki vaikuttavat tuon sanomattoman, puoleksi peloittavan,
puoleksi viehättävän vapauden ja riippumattomuuden tunteen, josta
kahleissa oleva kaupunkilainen nauttii sanomattomasti.
Ensimmäisessä aamuhämärässä, miltei puolipimeässä

ankkuroimme pulskat kuvamme jonkun sylen päähän tuulen alla
olevasta itärannasta ja kun asettelemme kivenvärisiksi maalatut,
vaatteiset ampumasuojuksemme rantakivien väliin, niin voimme töin
tuskin eroittaa mustantummia alliparvia, jotka lähellä vedenpintaa jo
tuon tuostakin ohitse liitelevät. Eikä odottaa huolikaan, ennenkuin tuli
välkähtää ja ensimmäinen paukaus kuuluu, osottaen, että linnut
hämärässäkin täytetyt toverinsa huomaavat ja kuvillemme osaavat.
Aamu kirkastuu. Raskaat pilvet vierivät kohti päivännousua ja niitä

seuraavat keskitaivaalla pienet, valoisat cirrus-hattarat, kaunista
ilmaa luvaten. Jo pilkistelee itäinen aurinko kultareunaisista lomista
ja, samalla juoksee väräjävä, punervankeltainen valojuova yli meren
aivan jalkaimme juureen saakka.
Pamaus seuraa toista, sillä päivän noustessa allit tulevat

tiheimmin. Milloin parittain, milloin yksinään, milloin kolme, neljä, viisi
tahi useampikin kerrallaan ne lentäen saapuvat kuviemme luo ja
lintuja tervehditään kaikuvilla kunnialaukauksilla, jolloin aina joku,
välistä useakin heistä jää paikalle. Mutta äänettöminä allit näin
syksyiseen aikaan useinkin kuville saapuvat. Heidän iloisia
klarinettiääniään, tuota miellyttävää »kolmisointua duurissa», ei
kuule läheskään niin usein kuin keväällä. Silloin tällöin lentää joku
iso parvi ohitse, mutta pienet parvet ja yksinäiset linnut tulevat
säännöllisesti petetyiksi. Lakkaamatta jymähtää laukaus toisensa
perästä, pöllähtää savupilvi veden pinnalle, kulkee kauvemmas
ulapalle, harvenee ja katoaa. On noutajalla, jonka tointa toverit
vuoroon hoitavat, täysi työ soudellessa esiin piilopaikastaan
pelastamaan ammutut linnut, jotteivät joutuisi tuulen ja aaltojen
ajeltaviksi. On väliin työtä niin, että pyssynpiiput lämpenevät etkä
ehdi edes silmäykselläkään kimaltelevaa merta ihailla.
Aika kuluu kuin siivillä lentäen. Jo on aurinko korkealle kohonnut,

harvemmaksi alkavat käydä laukaukset ja odotuksen hetket
pitenevät. Mutta on tuo odottaminenkin ja linnun tulevaksi toivominen
jotain sanomattoman hauskaa — — — annat silmäsi liidellä yli
välkkyvän vesilakeuden, yli avaran meren, jonka kasvot alituisesti
vaihtelevat, muuttuen milloin synkän syysharmajiksi —
pilvenhattaran peittäessä auringon —, milloin taas heleänvihreiksi
valkeine vaahtoineen, kun aurinko loistaa täydeltä terältä. Ja aivan
jalkasi juuressa kuulet aaltojen loiskeen, kun ne paljastavat ja taas
peittävät sileät paadet, joiden ympärillä kellertävän ruskea
rakkolevämetsä vihreässä syvyydessä taipuen nuokkuu — — —
sointuisa on laineiden laulu, aina yksitoikkoista, mutta kuitenkin
viehättävän suloista, rauhoittava kuin kehtolaulu.
Keskipäivä lähenee. Vielä tulee joku nuori lintu uiden kuvillemme,

mutta useimmat ovat lyöttäytyneet suuriksi parviksi, jotka kaukana
rannasta ahkerasti sukeltaen hakevat ruokaa. Ei kannata enään
odottaa ja vatsassa tuntuu niin oudolta — ruokaa, niin ruokaa! Märät
kuvat nostetaan ruuheen ja tälle päivälle on ammunta lopetettu.
Haahtemme, jonka pohja ja penkit ovat kirjavina alleista — upeita
pitkäpyrstöisiä, mustan- ja valkeankirjavia »kukkoja», vanhoja
ruskeita naaraita, harmajia kesällisiä nuoria lintuja — vedetään taas
korkealle ylös maalle ja kantamus riistaa jokaisella astumme
kanervikossa kiemurtelevaa kivistä polkua pitkin majallemme.
Kotiaskareet alkavat. Hakataan puita, ja kohta on potaattipata

tulella. Kuvat asetetaan lieden ääreen kuivamaan, parittain
ripustetaan riista sitävarten varattuihin nauloihin etehiseen. Pyssyt
puhdistetaan. Pöytä katetaan ja hillitsemättömästi syömme,
tupakoimme ja syömme taas — — —.
Mutta hilpein mielin ja kylläisinä kahvin ääressä muistelemme

aamullisia seikkailuja, lintuparit luetaan, ohitse menneet laukaukset
ja »räätälit» s.o. haavoitetut linnut lasketaan, syyt siihen tahi siihen
huonoon laukaukseen selitetään ja puhetta piisaa loppumattomiin.
Ruokalevolla ollessamme epäilemme, löytyykö meitä

onnellisempia olentoja, laiskempia ja vapaampia — — ‒ hermot
sopusoinnussa, suolaista meri-ilmaa keuhkoissa, tyytyväisyyden
tunne koko olennossamme.
MATEITA PYYTÄMÄSSÄ
Kun talvi on lumiaan siihen määrin seulonut, että ainoastaan

aidanseipään nipukka pehmeästä valkopeitteestä pilkistää, kun
pureva pohjoinen yöt päivät rimpuilee tahi kaakkoistuuli kinoksia yhä
korkeammiksi kohottaa, silloin ovat kesäiset kalaretket, suloiset
syysmetsästykset muistoja ainoastaan.
Jo kuukausia sitten kalaveneesi kumoon kallistettuna talviteloillaan

lepää. Jäniskoirakin on vapaaksi päässyt, mutta nurpeana se vain
ajoteitä astelee, polkuja pitkin juoksentelee. Ei edes koetakkaan
pujahtaa syksyisille jänismaille, missä koivut kaariksi taipuneina,
lepät luokiksi vääntyneinä, männyn oksat lumen painosta
katkeamaisillaan metsämatkan mahdottomaksi tekevät.
Eivät nouse enään teiretkään mäkilöille kuviasi katselemaan,

tekolintujasi tervehtimään. Tuolla tasaisilla niittymailla vain viihtyvät,
vihdiköissä kulkevat urpuja ahmimassa — — —.
Jos olet metsämies ylen onnellisissa oloissa, voit mahdollisesti

kontion pesäänsä kaataa, iloksesi ilveksen puusta pudottaa. Tahi jos
metsäpolulla olet vanha ja kokenut, voit hiihdellen ketunrautoja
virittää, joihin Mikko mielevä käpälin käpsähtää.
Mutta — vähän on meillä enään sellaisia, jotka karhunkaadantaan
osallisiksi osuvat tahi ketunrautojen virittämistä huvikseen
harjoittavat.
Jää siis meille maalaisille ainoaksi talvihuviksemme hiihtäminen!
Mutta — ei paljas hiihtäminenkään kalamiehen kaihoa,

metsämiehen mieltä viihdytä. »Kalalle kala vetääpi, lintu linnun
soitimelle!»
Oletko käynyt madekoukkuja kokemassa — — ‒?
Kun pyry-ilma parhaillaan valkopilviään vasten akkunoitasi

tupruttaa, silloin koukkusi, siimasi, syöttisi sekä muut asiaan kuuluvat
kalut järjestelet. Ja kun tuisku vihdoin on tauonnut ja hidas
talviaurinko metsänlatvojen yli kohonnut, asetat lapion, tuuran sekä
kalastustarpeet sisältävän laukun keveälle kelkallesi. Nouset
suksillesi, pistät kelkannuoran silmukan kainalojen alle, sauvan
kumpaiseen käteen, pieksunkärjen varpaalliseen ja potkaiset — —
— että suksi ladulla loksahtaa.
Kohta oletkin ison järven jäällä, joka viittatien kaksoisviivan

halkaisemana aina yhtä puhtaana ja valkeana, yhtä tuoreena ja
tasaisena peninkulmittain eteesi aukenee.
Lähellä olevan metsäisen niemen kärjestä leikkaat itsellesi

katajoita koukkuviitoiksi, sidot ne yhteen, ahdat ne kelkkaasi ja
hiihdät hiljalleen ulos ulapalle aukealle, suuntaat suksesi selkäsaaria
kohti.
Haet vedenalaista harjannetta, missä kalat kauniit kuljeksivat,

mahaisat mateet oleksivat, ja tunnustellen tutkit tuttuja, järveä

Twitter The Public Sphere and The Chaos of Online Deliberation 1St Ed Edition Gwen Bouvier All Chapter

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Twitter The Public Sphere and The Chaos of Online Deliberation 1St Ed Edition Gwen Bouvier All Chapter

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Available Formats

Twitter, the Public Sphere, and the

Chaos of Online Deliberation 1st ed.

Twitter, the Public

ISBN 978-3-030-41420-7 ISBN 978-3-030-41421-4 (eBook)

Cover illustration: Alex Linch shutterstock.com

1 Communication in the Age of Twitter: The Nature of

Part I Political Contention and Civic Engagement 23

2 Going “Rogue”: National Parks, Discourses of American

3 Political Candidates’ Discussions on Twitter During

4 #PeoplesVoteMarch or #LosersVoteMarch? Tracing the

Part II Inside Twitter Communities: Communication

5 Civic Debate and Self-Care: Black Women’s Community

6 The Voices of Twitter: A Critical Discourse Analysis of

7 Covert Hate Speech: White Nationalists and Dog

Part III The Role and Nature of Affect in Twitter

8 Patterns of Emotional Tweets: The Case of Brexit After

9 An Exploratory Mixed-Method Analysis of Interpersonal

Part IV The Use of Humor and Popular Culture in Political

10 Bros Before Donald Trump: Resisting and Replicating

Replicating Gendered and Racial Hegemonies in the

11 #FamilyTravelHacks: Humor and Political Commentary

12 Women in Horror, Social Activism, and Twitter:

13 Afterword: Twitter and the Democratization of Politics315

Prashanth Bhat is a doctoral candidate and a journalism instructor at

Chiluwa, I. and Bouvier, G. (Eds.) (2019). Activism, Campaigning

Christopher M. Duerringer (PhD, Arizona State University, 2011) is

in such venues as Communication Monographs, Journal of Social and

Judith E. Rosenbaum (PhD, Radboud University Nijmegen) is an

sociology, political economy, and cultural theory, her work explores

Fig. 2.1 Tweet shared by @AltYelloNatPark account on February 9th,

Fig. 3.2 Political party communication network

Table 3.1 Network centrality 66

Communication in the Age of Twitter:

Gwen Bouvier and Judith E. Rosenbaum

Politicians who tweet their pending decisions on major political issues, a

© The Author(s) 2020 1

Twitter and Democracy

Twitter Revolutions and Radicals

These are, obviously, extreme cases. Twitter revolutions, if they can be

Twitter and Political Communication

others holding similar points of view can lead to a strengthening of these

chambers. After all, it is possible that these agonistic conversations are

Funny, Banal, and Highly Personal: Citizenship on Twitter

focusing on impression management and self-branding (Enli, 2015;

Affective Connectivity and Emotions on Twitter

implying that emotion can no longer be ignored as an element of civic

Community Building, Inclusion, and Marginalization

Flammmini, & Menczer, 2011, p. 94). This effectively creates “interdis-

sarcastic ways. In Chapter 2, Joanne Marras Tate, Vincent Russell, Rachel

specifically at the nature of arguments on Twitter. Using results from a

Baumgaertner, B. O., Tyson, R. C., & Krone, S. M. (2016). Opinion strength

Creemers, R. (2017). Cyber China: Upgrading propaganda, public opinion work

Jackson, S. J., Bailey, M., & Foucault Welles, B. (2020). #HashtagActivism:

Mouffe, C. (1999). Deliberative democracy or agonistic pluralism? Social Research,

Political Contention and Civic

Going “Rogue”: National Parks, Discourses

Joanne Marras Tate, Vincent Russell, Rachel Larsen,

J. Marras Tate (*) • V. Russell • R. Larsen • E. Busch

© The Author(s) 2020 25

climate change by the new administration (Diaz, 2017). By January 26,

Foucault and Identity Construction

“[This] history in its traditional form, undertook to ‘memorize’ the monu-

In a similar manner, the digital platform of Twitter works to bring histori-

1 Communication in the Age of Twitter: The Nature of

Part I Political Contention and Civic Engagement 23

2 Going “Rogue”: National Parks, Discourses of American

3 Political Candidates’ Discussions on Twitter During

4 #PeoplesVoteMarch or #LosersVoteMarch? Tracing the

Part II Inside Twitter Communities: Communication

5 Civic Debate and Self-Care: Black Women’s Community

6 The Voices of Twitter: A Critical Discourse Analysis of

7 Covert Hate Speech: White Nationalists and Dog

Part III The Role and Nature of Affect in Twitter

8 Patterns of Emotional Tweets: The Case of Brexit After

9 An Exploratory Mixed-Method Analysis of Interpersonal

Part IV The Use of Humor and Popular Culture in Political

10 Bros Before Donald Trump: Resisting and Replicating

11 #FamilyTravelHacks: Humor and Political Commentary

12 Women in Horror, Social Activism, and Twitter:

13 Afterword: Twitter and the Democratization of Politics315

Table 3.1 Network centrality 66