<p>This project investigates the
network structure and political importance of the popular Appalachian culture
and politics page @queerappalachia. Promising users a feed filled with
“community.content.culture,” @queerappalachia serves as a digital hub for
anyone interested in queer perspectives on Appalachian politics and culture,
regardless of their geographic location. The page’s over 3,000 posts include
memes about Appalachian culture; celebrations of queer rurality
(#saturdaynightinthecountry, #ruralresistance); references to big trucks,
Mountain Dew, and The Trailer Park Boys; posts about opioid addiction, needle
exchanges, and #harmreduction; jokes about communism and anarchism; calls for
establishing #mutualaid drives; and signal boosts which highlight ongoing
activist efforts in the region, including the Mountain Valley Pipeline protests
and the Kentucky miner’s strikes. The page’s recalcitrant and
anti-establishment content has attracted a surprisingly large following of
around 230,000. But what does this expansive online network mean for
Appalachian and Southern queer people?</p>
<p>Rural queer people often have
limited access to offline political organizing due to their geographic
location, but online political communities may be a way of increasing rural
political engagement. However, the usefulness of social networking sites like
Instagram for political organizing is contested. To better understand what
@queerappalachia is and how it is being used, I have created a multidimensional
network of the page, mapping how users interact with posts, hashtags, and each
other. In particular, this study provides evidence for how the collective
action concepts of “brokerage,” “diffusion,” “identification,” and
“deliberation” are being organized and enacted within the @queerappalachia
community. I have also conducted interviews with followers of @queerappalachia
who have been identified as central by the network study. The interviews
provide evidence of how people within the @queerappalachia network
conceptualize their political identities in relation to the page and how users
utilize the affordances of Instagram communities for political action. </p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:purdue.edu/oai:figshare.com:article/12743264 |
| Date | 31 July 2020 |
| Creators | Rachel Barton (9188840) |
| Source Sets | Purdue University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis |
| Rights | CC BY 4.0 |
| Relation | https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/POLITICAL_DELIBERATION_BROKERAGE_DIFFUSION_AND_CONNECTIVE_ACTION_ON_QUEERAPPALACHIA/12743264 |
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