Margins to Mainstream: Evolutions in Transgender Discourse on Twitter, 2010-2019

• In Event: Platformed Belonging: Identity, Visibility, and Exclusion in Digital Spaces

Abstract

How does a discursive field transform as an issue moves from the margins to the mainstream? While visibility is often treated as a pathway to institutional change for social movements, we show that it can also reorganize the sociopolitical terrain, enabling opponents to weaponize an issue. Drawing on a representative sample of 8.3 million tweets mentioning “transgender” between 2010 and 2019, this article examines how mainstream visibility restructured the actors and priorities at the center of the discursive field of transgender identity. Using large-scale network and computational text analyses, we trace the evolution of gender discourse on Twitter from an early counterpublic space dominated by advocacy organizations to a polarized field structured by partisan conflict. As conservative politicians, commentators, and media organizations entered the network, they increasingly accrued centrality and mobilized divisive frames, transforming transgender identity into a wedge issue. This mainstreaming process not only introduced new actors but also displaced earlier discursive priorities: formerly central advocacy organizations shifted their focus from community-building and remembrance toward wedge-adjacent topics such as sports, bathrooms, and scientific legitimacy. By theorizing mainstream visibility as a structural force that reorganizes discursive fields, this study advances research on social movements, political partisanship, and gender and sexuality for the social media age, and introduces a methodological innovation for analyzing influence in rapidly changing social media networks.

Authors

• Vineet Xie-Gupta, Northwestern University

• Tara Marie Gonsalves, Columbia University