Going Rogue: The National Park Service’s “Alt” Twitter and the Reinforcement of Settler Ecology

• In Event: Digital Dissent

Abstract

In the wake of President Trump’s response to Badlands National Park’s tweets on climate change research, “rogue” twitter accounts have emerged as a way to evade federal oversight of social media. Having gained hundreds of thousands of followers within their first week, these accounts have the potential to not just respond to federal policy, but actively disrupt longstanding environmental narratives. However, created as responses to President Trump’s actions, can these accounts transcend their reactive origins to truly reinterpret the hegemonic environment narrative? This paper analyzed social media representations of the environment presented by federal employees in both official and unofficial capacities. I argue that while “rogue” and employees' personal accounts present vital dissenting narratives to current federal policy, they are still entrenched in the same Euro-American conceptions of land and ecology, limiting intersectional critiques of space especially around indigenous ecology and resource conflicts. Drawing on my digital-ethnographic work in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA), managed by the U.S. Forest Service, and Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, I critically examine the sites’ official social media outlets, including Twitter and Instagram, “rogue” accounts - @altvolcanoes_NP and @AltForestServ – which may or may not be run by actual employees, and the personal accounts of on-site employees to understand to what extent federal employees can navigate gaps between federal environmental policy and personal conviction. Freed from the constraints of the federal government, these accounts have already become sites of dissent, advocating for scientifically based climate change research and environmentally responsible political appointments. However, they have also been largely reactive, representing the parks from within a settler-colonial ideology and failing to address the conflicts between indigenous people and the federal government that have been central to the political landscapes of both the BWCA and Hawaii Volcanoes since their creations. Personal employee accounts similarly frame a binary environmental debate, which ignores indigenous presence. Through these case studies, I attempt to address the limits of social media as a truly democratic site of dissent and complicate the conservative versus liberal framework that has thus far structured the debate.

Author

• Joseph Whitson, University of Minnesota Twin Cities