A Tale of Two Hashtags: More Than Absolute Opposition in an Affinity Space Formed by Sexual Harassment

Digital activism on social media has a strong relationship with hashtags and this activism on social media tends to produce multiple protest and counter-protest hashtags. This case study explores the discursive constructions across competing hashtags (#KickVic and #IStandWithVic) that represent the protest and counter-protest surrounding the sexual harassment allegations of Vic Mignogna. Through the synergized approaches of corpus linguistics and critical discourse studies, I investigate the perpetuation of patriarchal ideologies within this affinity space. I constructed three tweet-based corpora for analysis: #KickVic, #IStandWithVic, and mixed. Keywords, semantic themes, and discursive constructions of women demonstrate that these hashtags subvert and perpetuate a patriarchal social order. While the perpetuation of these ideologies is more present within the #IStandWithVic corpus and the mixed corpus, tweeters also use #KickVic to perpetuate them. Discussion and contributions to affinity spaces and discursive constructions of these digital activism hashtags are included in this investigation.