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Datafication--through which many aspects of social life are transformed into data--is usually equated with a more efficient use of resources and improved state--citizen relations. But it can have negative consequences on those at the margins of society, such as refugees, racialized individuals, gig workers, and citizens of countries with scant respect for human rights. How can we understand the ways in which the disempowered are impacted by and resist datafication? This essay presents an analytical matrix to study data at the margins. The matrix identifies three components of data at the margins: (1) infrastructure, emphasizing the material dimension; (2) practices, pinpointing agency in people's encounters with datafication; and (3) imaginaries, that is, the cultural and symbolic facets of data at the margins. The matrix offers also three lenses of interpretation through which to observe the components: (1) decoloniality and race, (2) intersectionality and feminism, and (3) the "pluriverse." Together, they help in questioning datafication and why certain social groups are oppressed while uncovering pathways toward justice and equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we reflect on the bodies of fat women who manifest themselves on Instagram as they disrupt media regulation and standardization by using the aforementioned platform as a mobilization tool. The theoretical framework is organized from an intersectional perspective in connection with studies on the body, the ‘place of speech’ and the concepts of ‘semiosphere’ and semiotic ‘explosion’. The proposed method for investigating the profiles of three digital influencers is based on the semiotics of culture in relation to intersectionality and the place of speech. In this scenario, we find an important and insurgent movement of resignifying the body in the media and expressing the active subjectivities of subalternized fat women who impose cultural and political issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text is more of presentation for this issue. Our intention here is not to guide or to guard the reading experience, it’s quite the opposite: to share the challenge of building and providing a dialogue between so many texts that, in some level, get together in the midst of “avenues of oppression” and at the intersections with the platforms. Some of the most discussed intersections were precisely the ones that opened the intersectional debate about gender and race, but also elements about sexuality, corporeities, territory, class, origin, among others, mark these crossroads between podcasts, streamings and social networks. Next, we present a brief debate on the construction of these concepts and how these empirical snippets connect with and from theories and, at the end, we highlight some (self)criticisms about this process of construction of research in Communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to analyze the podcast Ondas da Resistência, a two-season program produced by black women from traditional peoples and communities in Brazil, in the face of the violation of the rights of their territories through environmental crimes and the Covid-19 pandemic, in the period 2020 and 2021. The podcast is recognized as a community communication initiative, that identifies its condition of production in contexts of denial of rights arising from the interaction of racism, sexism, and the consequences of predatory development projects in the territories, in an intersectional view (Crenshaw, 2002; Akotirene, 2020), elaborated in the context of strategies to vindicate the right to territory and communication. The lived experience of black, indigenous, and traditional women in their territories guided the conception, production, and distribution of the audio content. Principles such as those of matricomunidades (Ribeiro, 2020), biointeração (Bispo, 2015), ancestral technologies and territories as a space for a living (Santos, 2001) were called to build alliances and plan the occupation of digital platforms, aiming at the constitution/recapture of digital territorialities (Bargas, 2018). Recognizing their limits of business models and infrastructures (Van Djick, 2013; Ejik el al., 2015; DeGryse, 2016; Intervozes, 2018), the podcas “Ondas da Resistência” acted upon at the frontier to build alternatives to combat racism and sexism in the intersections of digital and ancestral territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perspective of intersectional studies has produced important tensions in the human, social and health sciences when considering the crossings of the structures of oppression. Such structures of oppression cross the processes of subjectivation, producing ways of being and places that can be transited and occupied in society. In this scenario, the present work discusses the processes of subjectivation forged in the visibility and surveillance devices from statements of (r)existences of black transgender people. This work seeks to understand the resonances of contemporary social practices in the modes of subjectivation. To this end, in line with the cartographic orientation, we seek to develop practices for monitoring processes by, initially, 141 Vol. discussing modes of subjectivation produced from the mapped narratives; to problematize the transversalities between social practices and modes of subjectivation. During the research, we identified emerging scenarios where discursive constructions about gender, sexuality and trans bodies are forged, based on the specificities studied in the identified scenarios and, finally, we discuss the implications of these discursive constructions in the modes of subjectivation. The tensions stated in social networks, as well as the places claimed by black and trans people in these visibility devices, suggest the opening of possibilities for the recognition of these people as influencers, reference people, expert knowledge and voices of truth capable of producing reallocations of people. bodies by the subversion of place of abjection and occupation of spaces in networks that end up also reverberating in social practices outside them, such as the growing occupation of political representation, and, mainly, in the processes of subjectivation constituted in the intersectionalities of gender, race and the like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article has as objective to observe how the algorithm present on twitch’s homepage, which defines streamers to highlight in a carousel format, perpetuate or not intersectional oppressions. For this, we initially conceptualize and contextualize the streaming of games, the dynamics of oppression in the game culture, and the Twitch platform to in a second moment ascertain this through an analysis of content produced from the one-month collection of data from the platform’s homepage. The result showed that the dynamics of oppression (male hegemony, heteronormativity, gender and race violence, meritocracy, and toxic culture) are reproduced by the algorithm in the choice of streamers, which prioritizes disseminating male, white and heterosexual streamers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth and development of technology behind social networks, associated with the neoliberal culture that makes man an entrepreneur of himself and makes everyday life monetizable, are popularizing work through digital platforms. Based on the understanding that social issues in the offline world are reproduced in the online environment, this article aims to analyze the strategies used by black digital influencers to exist as entrepreneurs in the virtual world, more specifically on Instagram. To carry out this analysis, three influencers were chosen from different states and regions of Brazil and also physically different from each other. The option for this corpus is in an attempt to observe how the three professionals, who work in a sexist society, and which currently recognize their structural racism, use their profiles to give tips on beauty, fashion and behavior, each with their vocabulary, aesthetic standard and own cut, achieving an interaction index acceptable by the market, measured by the amount of likes and comments in your posts. There is no point in making a continuous and profound comparison with white influencers here. The objective is to know if these Black women can build a minimally solid career and what strategies they use based on the understanding of the influential advertising market and how platform work is done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On YouTube, transition vlogs can be incredibly helpful for folks curious about or currently undergoing a gender transition process, contributing to affective counterpublics on the platform. However, the visibility created by transition vlogs also contribute to stereotypes that presents gender transition as a linear process that begins in one gender and ends in another, reinforcing binary gender stereotypes and medical transition as both achievable and accessible to all. Despite extensive literature on gender transition vlogs on YouTube, there remains a gap in understanding how trans YouTubers’ everyday lived experiences are depicted in vlogs. Against this backdrop, this paper investigates YouTuber Kat Blaque’s series “True Tea” as contributing to a disruption of transnormativity on the platform. Considering much remains unknown about QTBIPOC creators on YouTube, this study highlights how Blaque’s vlogs address both subversive and mundane aspects of intersectional identities. Drawing on a Critical Feminist Discourse Analysis of 10 videos selected from Blaque’s series “True Tea”, I show how vlogs about topics other than transition by trans YouTubers contribute to dissipating stereotypes about trans folks’ lived experiences by decentering medicalizing discourses. Themes in her videos relating to passing and transnormativity; pronouns and woke culture; and romance and sexual attraction reveal that Kat Blaque’s vlogs contribute to a decentering of transnormativity. These findings are significant to the literature of trans vlogs on YouTube, as they highlight the diverse and intersectional nature of Black trans womens’ lived experiences. This study finds that increased attention into the intersectional identities of trans YouTubers aids in resisting the notion of neoliberal logic of the individual by situating their experiences as singular and contributing to the trans creative vernacular of the platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The algorithmic curatorship of social media platforms establishes, in relation to intersectional lesbianities, a logic that, in one hand it enables a circulation of content that is absent in other media environments, but, in the other hand, limits this same circulation to people who already browse the subject. Even among the audiences related to lesbianities, the bodies that show themselves, in their majority, of white, thin, young women, without disabilities and that perform femininity. There is an accumulation of algorithmic biases that makes lesbian women little visible as a whole, but, within this set, it reserves even less visibility to lesbians that are black, defeminized, not young, with disabilities. This hierarchy responds to gender norms, daily reaffirmed by the rich get richer algorithmic logic, making content that reflects standards more widely accepted tending to have its expanded circulation - and dissident content, reduced circulation. But the lesbian visibility itself can be taken as also composed by resistance, even though the algorithmic mediation of social media platforms amplifies the hegemonic traits that compose itself. Therefore, the same networks that deprive us from expanded circulation are tools for the publication of politicized discussions by black, peripheral, fat lesbians who are not young, with disabilities. Starting from these discussions, this article turns to the profiles Dedilhadas and Sapatão Amiga (YouTube); @pretacaminhao and @vanessagrao (Instagram) to analyze lesbian resistance at various intersections on social media platforms. The profiles were selected, from the historical research of the authors, having as central criterion the visibility and the engagement achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From a socio-technical perspective, this paper proposes to study how the concept of intersectionality emerges in social networks. It is based on a double observation. First, the platforms allow the narrative construction of categories of the population that do not recognize themselves in media and cultural industry productions. Second, they enable the meeting (and grouping) of individuals based on social experiences that are common to them or on a common interpretation of these experiences. This paper aims to answer the following question: What is the result of the encounter between the performative power of intersectionality and the performative power of digital platforms? For this purpose, the text is organized into two parts. The first one is focused on the presentation of the data analyzed during the field research to demonstrate that the actors attribute a particular meaning to intersectionality, from which they produce alternative media objects and favor the construction of a community of action. The second part concerns the analysis of the political, material, and technical conditions of the emergence of this discourse on digital platforms. This research is part of a doctoral thesis in progress. It mobilizes classical techniques of the ethnographic method and digital tools that facilitate data collection and database construction. The analysis is based on a qualitative approach and on the articulation of different materials: presentation text and statistics (number of followers, likes, shares); notes taken in the field research notebook; 23 semi-structured interviews; and the analysis of multimedia content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we present the persona Nath Finanças, a project by the administration student and financial educator Nathália Rodrigues, to produce financial education content about low-income people on social networks, started in February 2019. We understand digital presence and performance as a interactional device (BRAGA, 2020) insofar as it organizes frames of meaning and ways of life. This year (2020), the Nath Finanças project went through an episode in which it was the victim of scorn, led by journalist Luis Nassif. The criticisms, which were supported by other anonymous internet users, questioned the boundary between self-worth and promoting precariousness. Such an issue has become the central problem of this article. Thus, we developed it from the concepts of biopower (PELBART, 2002) and intersectionality (CRENSHAW, 1989). We conclude that the attack only reflects a social refusal to hermeneutics that considers the social markers of differences as crucial to understanding interactions and promoting social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the music video Mandume (Emicida feat. Drik Barbosa, Amiri, Rico Dalasam, Muzzike and Raphão Alaafin, directed by Gabi Jacob, 2016), grounded by the theoretical and methodological basis of intersectionality. This approach is evoked by the rappers themselves on the music video, by narrating their experiences of the crossroads of their social identities as axes of oppression, exclusion and epistemic violence. For this, we present a brief investigation on the elaboration of intersectionality in the context of social movements and its later incorporation into academic knowledge, relating the American Black feminists' contributions to the Brazilian production on this matter. On that basis, we discuss the rappers' witness accounts, allowing intersectionality to show its potentiality and the contradictions on the music video as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]