In the article "#GirlsLikeUs: Trans advocacy and community building online," Jackson, Bailey, and Welles discuss how trans women use online platforms, particularly Twitter, to advocate for trans issues, discuss representation, and build community.
For your response, first reflect on what you found most striking and/or unclear about the authors' analysis of the #GirlsLikeUs network, drawing on specific examples from the article to support your points. What role do the affordances of Twitter play in this network? What do you notice about how the authors discuss the impact of #GirlsLikeUs?
Next, connect that reflection to what you think Jackson, Bailey, and Welles, as well as the #GirlsLikeUs community, have to teach us about activism in online spaces. Speak to how you will draw on those lessons or take them in a new direction in your own ideas for the final project. Feel free to draw on multimodal approaches beyond the textual (audio recordings, video, concept maps, outlines, etc.) for this response if that helps you to order your thoughts.
Optional: You can also choose to use the space of this response to start brainstorming for your Ethnography of a Political Community if you choose. One way to approach this would be to apply Jackson, Bailey, and Welles' concepts to a hashtag of your choice, or to discuss what you notice about the discourse of your chosen community, or how you envision that community as a counterpublic.
Response due November 19 at 9:30am. Upload to your individual website.
