“They Got Filters”: Indigenous Social Media, the Settler Gaze, and a Politics of Hope

Abstract

Social media technologies have had ambivalent political implications for Indigenous peoples and communities. On one hand, they constitute new horizons toward which settler colonial forces of marginalization, disenfranchisement, and elimination can extend and strengthen their power. On the other hand, social media have also offered opportunities to resist and reject the violence of colonization and its ideological counterparts of domination and racial superiority, and work toward imagining and realizing alternative futures. In this article, we draw on insights from settler colonial studies and affect theory to chart the politics of “affect” through the stories of Indigenous Australian social media users. We first argue that the online practices of Indigenous social media users are often mediated by an awareness of the ‘settler gaze’—that is, a latent audience of non-Indigenous others observing in bad faith. We then outline two responses to this presence described by participants: policing the online behaviors of friends and family, and circulating hopeful, inspiring, and positive content. If “policing” is about delimiting the things of which online bodies are capable, then an affective politics of hope is about expanding a body’s capacity to act and imagining other possible futures for Indigenous people.

Introduction: Marginality and Social Media

“…From the beginning, the researcher had an advisory group of indigenous community leaders to articulate research goals prior to beginning fieldwork. Similarly, Carlson and Frazer’s (this issue) study was guided by principles specific to indigenous research ethics and analyzed using an indigenous research methodological framework, all with a goal to elevate indigenous perspectives. Lupien (this issue) and Carlson and Frazer’s (this issue) approaches speak to what Clark-Parsons and Lingel (this issue) articulate in their piece on “margins as methods,” in which they offer a set of guiding questions as they urge researchers of marginalization to enhance their reflexivity and continuously consider the consequences of their methodological choices for the participants themselves.…”

“…Every article in this collection focuses on a population that is significantly under-represented in scholarly research more generally. Populations of study include people of color (Davis, this issue; Smith et al, this issue), refugees (Udwan et al, this issue), LGBTQ + people (Birnholtz et al, this issue), people with disabilities (Trevisan, this issue), indigenous people (Carlson & Frazer, this issue; Lupien, this issue; Richez et al, this issue), and people from the Global South (Birnholtz et al, this issue; Soriano & Cabañes, this issue). Although social media have many limitations (centralized corporate control, limited reach to some parts of the world, and financial barriers to entry, to name just a few), the possibility to expand populations of study through techniques like observation, asynchronous participation, and flexible interview scheduling was embraced by most in this collection.…”

“…In this special issue, it is notable that the majority of manuscripts employ qualitative methods, including interviews (Birnholtz et al, this issue; Carlson & Frazer, this issue; Lupien, this issue; Soriano & Cabañes, this issue; Udwan et al, this issue; focus groups [Trevisan, this issue], and discourse analysis [Davis, this issue]). Qualitative methods have long been the dominant method used in the study of marginalized groups (Barron, 1999), partially because of the nature of questions of marginality as well as the possibility of elevating voices of the marginalized.…”

“…For example, Lupien (this issue) contextualizes findings from community-based participatory research with Latin American indigenous activists in political opportunity theory . Carlson and Frazer (this issue) use Bennett and Segerberg’s (2012) construct of connective action and Papacharissi’s (2016) affective publics as lenses for exploring how indigenous groups navigate online spaces. Linking new work on marginalization to existing theoretical constructs helps better ground these new insights and ensure their long-term impact.…”

“That makes all the difference”: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health‐seeking on social media

“…Through remaining upbeat, joyful and hopeful online, these users sought to sustain a positive health practices through difficult life circumstances. 53 He had recently gotten into an active fitness regime and by sharing his journey on Facebook, he hoped to provide encouragement to others while also keeping himself accountable to them: I like to go jogging in the mornings at sunrise, so I sometimes put that up. Just a nice picture of the sunrise.…”