Weeks 12-13 Blog Post

The reading these weeks was a chapter of a book written by Jennifer Nish. It concerned genres, a topic previously explored in readings, but from a different perspective – that of uptake. Using the examples of the #ChallengeAccepted and #WomenSupportingWomen social media challenges, Nish described the process of uptake – the way in which, in reaction to a specific genre, a reader (or in this case, user) interprets and responds to it. Focusing on a few sticky uptakes, which were common uptakes that came to be stuck on the social media trend, Nish explores how the ultimately inaccurate labels of “slacktivism” and “selfie” came to define the challenge in the heads of many social media users. Similarly, she focuses on ways in which users subverted the genre, an action called a counteruptake. The two highlighted counteruptakes were the use of the trend to highlight femicide in Turkey and call attention to the police murdering Breonna Taylor. Through the concept of uptakes and their variants, Nish demonstrates a way in which the extend the framework of genre in an interesting and helpful way.

This concept of uptake can be used to examine social media posting around the recently concluded United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP27. From a brief examination of the #COP27 tag on Twitter, I can broadly define 3 common uptakes. One is to deride the conference as being held to solve a non-issue and is based off of a rejection of climate science. Another is to share news of the conference with an optimistic tone and to present it as a useful platform from which to work to combat climate change. The final frequent uptake is to criticize the conference as a way to take on the appearance of combatting climate change while in actuality doing very little, and pointing to, for instance, the presence of fossil fuel lobbyists.