Twitter and Topoi

This week's article "I Am #ActuallyAutistic, Hear Me Tweet" by Ruth Osorio highlighted an essential part of the activism process- fighting against a dominant narrative (or topoi.) Not only has social media become one of the most robust tools of outreach in social movements, but it has also evolved into an archive of its history. The common saying is that "the internet lasts for every" and in many ways it does. Data is stored on not only the words and images themselves but also the hashtags and tags that are used. Many social media have trending pages that indicate the topics that are the most popular and the easiest way to get something onto this trending page is through the use of a hashtag. Osorio's article focused on the way that the autism advocacy movement challenged the topoi that had existed long before the invention of the Internet. She examined the use of the hashtag #actuallyautistic and how it was used in a variety of ways to bring across the new topoi- that autism is not something that should be feared and stigmatized.

In my chosen social movement, the food sustainability movement, the dominant narrative as not been quite as harmful. This week I found a post under the #antivegan hashtag on Instagram that was a great example of fighting against the dominant narrative. In this case, the author was fighting against the idea that vegans claim to have some sort of moral superiority over others. In reality, this is not the case and many view it as a personal choice to not consume animal products. My movement seems to get lumped in with the veganism movement, which already has a built-in troll/hater base because there can be some "conversionist" vegans and vegetarians that try to bully people into aligning with their beliefs. In my work this semester, I want to make sure that I am focusing on the aspects of food sustainability that are not just stopping meat consumption.