Abstract

The accessibility and democratization of online media has allowed voices to emerge around issues with low visibility. In this study we are looking at the trans community. Whereas publics are generated in mainstream media, counterpublics emerge from the margins, generating alternative spaces for debate and discussion. YouTube has emerged as a space for collaborative learning and participation, breaking the boundaries between public/private and collective/personal. Taking Elsa Ruiz Cómica and Alejandro P. E.’s YouTube channels as a case study, we intend to understand how their respective counter-publics are configured, and to analyze their strategies of technological appropriation and activism. Thanks to the debate generated by their videos, these trans youtubers manage to transfer innovative concepts to a wider audience, contributing to the recognition of diverse (sexual) identities, and to the questioning of gender binarism.

Abstract

Transsexuality has found a place in both the Spanish collective mindset and media. To analyze the portrayal of this type of sexual diversity in the media, we evaluated its presence in cybermedia, its preeminence in journalistic texts, and the issues addressed in its media coverage. A quantitative content analysis (N = 24,363) of the journalistic texts published during the period 2000–2020 by 13 generalist Spanish cybermedia was carried out, using both rule-based classification and unsupervised topic modeling. The results highlight an increase in journalistic texts about transsexuality, in which three inflection points and four phases or distribution changes can be distinguished. The preeminence of this topic within the analyzed pieces has also increased, and the issues covered have diversified over the years. Overall, these data confirm the newsworthiness that this type of sexual diversity achieved throughout the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Media attention especially highlights the newsworthiness of aspects such as conflict, the protagonist’s notoriety, or periodicity through anniversary journalism. Likewise, the results also suggest that the media offer an increasingly complex portrayal that favors both the visibility and the understanding of the different dimensions and characteristics that intersect in these realities.

Abstract

This article is focused on the reproduction of ideologically charged messages whose origins or interests remain hidden from public opinion. There is an urgent need for transparency regarding polarised debates that deform, impede or distort the critical approach that any society should be able to construct concerning issues of great social interest, especially on social media platforms and networks. Research has shown that hostility has colonised digital communication through misogynist, homophobic, transphobic or xenophobic messages, among others, and that, for the most part, these are not spontaneous or individual interactions. In the virtual space, there are forces that, although invisible outside it, construct narratives, generate disinformation and feed generally regressive ideological approaches. Thus, in the name of transparency and social justice, there is an urgent need to investigate these types of messages, as well as their possible destabilising interests at a time of special presence and reputation of discourses such as the feminist one, which is currently experiencing a significant reactionary response. This paper investigates the origin and characteristics of the conversation on the social network Twitter concerning gender and sexual identities. To this end, we studied a significant sample of tweets (>1 million) related to women’s rights, the LGBTIQ+ collective and trans people, for a full year. Computerised methodologies by means of machine learning techniques, natural language processing (NLP), determination of bots, geolocation, and the application of network theories were used to carry out the study. The results include the highly interrelated presence of groups without clear referents, as well as the existence of what appear to be coordinated networks aimed at causing harm and provoking confrontation.