"Watching My Freedom": Tracing the Microgenesis of Queer and Trans Critical Literacies on Social Media

• In Event: Digital Queerness: Leveraging Mobile Technologies and Social Media for Practices of Resistance and Reimagination

Abstract

Objectives: The political turn in sociocultural learning sciences scholarship invites research on learning as non-dominant communities challenge intersecting systems of oppression and organize for justice (Gutiérrez et al., 2017; Vossoughi & Booker, 2017; Jurow & Shea, 2015; Zavala & Golden, 2016). This turn holds promise to expand theory on the range of potential for transformation, yet scholarship to date has underexplored learning in collective action of LGBTQ+ communities. In part, this absence may arise in the lack of methodologies to observe digital spaces. This paper contributes to closing the scholarly gap on learning in LGBTQ+ collective action by drawing on methodologies from literacy studies to trace the microgenesis of queer and trans critical literacies in LGBTQ+ digital culture.

Theoretical Framing: This paper is framed by sociocultural theory that holds learning takes place in purpose-driven activities mediated by social relationships and cultural artifacts (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1991; Cole, 1998). I also build on scholarship that employs queer of color critique and queer theory to frame literate activities of LGBTQ+ youth (Author, 2011, 2013; Blackburn, 2005; Love, 2017; Wargo, 2015, 2018). Queer theory makes visible the critical practices of and toward disidentification (Muñoz, 1999), queer futurity (Muñoz, 2009), and camp (Newton, 1993; Roman, 1993).

Methods and Data Sources: I examine commentary on three LGBTQ+ YouTube reaction videos to trace 1) the ways in which commenters construct ideological stances (Philip et al., 2017) through microanalytic interaction with the video and other commenters, and 2) the ways, if any, in which these microanalytic interactions and stances are assembled into practices of critical literacies. In LGBTQ+ reaction videos, video makers watch and respond to media clips that reflect dominant ideologies, thereby enacting critical literacies to identify and disrupt structures of power. This study is situated in a virtual ethnography (Hine, 2000; Lammers, 2013; Black, 2008) of LGBTQ+ reaction video channels on YouTube.
The data sources are commentary on three videos from LGBTQ+ content creators on YouTube selected via eight criteria established by Raun (2016). These videos have 13.2 million views as of June 2019. To narrow the corpus, I select popular commentary threads (comments with more than 30 likes and two responses) sorted by threads that use terms responding to a significant moment in the video, producing 40 threads.

Results: I find that commentary threads follow a patterned arch of ideological stance-taking through interaction with the video and other commenters, and that commenters assemble these stances into practices of queered critical literacies to disidentify (Muñoz, 2009) with the dominant present and prefigure queer futures (Muñoz, 2009) through parodical humor (Newton, 1993; Roman, 1993).

Scholarly Significance: This study has purchase to close the gap in scholarship on learning in LGBTQ+ collection action and carve paths forward in research with LGBTQ+ communities by examining the digital spaces that LGBTQ+ youth construct and the activities that are consequential to queer and trans worldmaking. This paper aims to nurture keen, humanizing attention to activities in LGBTQ+ digital culture with possibilities to transform how organizational stakeholders affirm LGBTQ+ youth.

Author

• Addie Shrodes, Northwestern University