Twitter Fingers and Echo Chambers: Exploring Expressions and Experiences of Online Racism Using Twitter
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Twitter Fingers and Echo Chambers: Exploring Expressions and Experiences of Online Racism Using Twitter Shaniece Criss 1
&
Eli K. Michaels 2 & Kamra Solomon 1 & Amani M. Allen 2,3 & Thu T. Nguyen 4
Received: 29 July 2020 / Revised: 2 October 2020 / Accepted: 6 October 2020 # W. Montague Cobb-NMA Health Institute 2020
Abstract Social media sites, such as Twitter, represent a growing setting in which racism and related stress may manifest. The aims of this exploratory qualitative study were to (1) understand the essence of Twitter users’ lived experience with and response to content about race and racism on the platform, and (2) explore their perceptions of how discussions about race and racism on Twitter may impact health and well-being. We conducted six focus groups and four interviews with adult Twitter users (n = 27) from Berkeley, California, and Greenville, South Carolina. We managed the data with NVivo and conducted an interpretative phenomenological analysis to identify themes. Participants described Twitter content as displaying both overt and subtle expressions of racism, particularly for Black and Latinx people, and serving as an echo chamber where similar viewpoints are amplified. Participants described how Twitter users may feel emboldened to type offensive tweets based on the perception of anonymity, and that these tweets were sometimes met with community disapproval used to provide a collective calibration to restore the social norms of the online space. Participants perceived harmful mental, emotional, and physical health impacts of exposure to racist content on Twitter. Our participants responded to harmful race-related content through blocking users and following others in order to curate their Twitter feeds, actively engaging in addressing content, and reducing Twitter use. Twitter users reported witnessing racism on the platform and have found ways to protect their mental health and cope with discussions of race and racism in this social media environment. Keywords Twitter . Coping . Race . Ethnicity . Focus groups
Introduction Racism is recognized as a fundamental cause of adverse health outcomes [1–5] and has been associated with numerous adverse mental [6–8] and physical health outcomes among racial/ethnic minoritized groups [9, 10]. One mechanism through which racism is hypothesized to impact health is repeated behavioral and physiologic adaptation to psychosocial stress, which over time, increases the risk of multiple chronic * Shaniece Criss [email protected] 1
Department of Health Sciences, Furman University, Greenville, SC, USA
2
Division of Epidemiology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
3
Division of Community Health Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
4
Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
disease outcomes [11–13]. Racism operates at internalized, personally mediated, and institutional levels [14]. Personally mediated racism can be experienced directly through racial discrimination,
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