Situating Representation As a Form of Erasure: #OscarsSoWhite, Black Twitter, and Latinx Twitter

Abstract

This article explores how Latinxs have responded to the visibility of campaigns and movements such as #OscarsSoWhite. It outlines the discourses Latinxs have deployed on Twitter to justify their demands for inclusion in the media industries and how notions of competition, coalition building, and solidarity operate between various ethnoracial groups in digital media activism. The article theorizes “Latinx Twitter” and its anti-Blackness and explores the clashes this counterpublic has had with Black Twitter by analyzing the discourses surrounding the hashtags #OscarsSoWhite, #NotYourMule, and #OscarsSoWhiteAndBlack. It advances the notion of competing ethnoracialized counterpublics to explore how race and ethnicity operate relationally in the U.S. and how competition among marginalized groups impacts media activism.