CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 28Social Media and PoliticsGender, Feminism, and MediaMedia and Digital Communication

‘It’s Twitter, a bear pit, not a debating society’: A qualitative analysis of contrasting attitudes towards social media blocklists

Open access
Wheatley, Dawn, Vatnoey, Eirik·2020·New Media & Society
DOI 10.1177/1461444819858278
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

This study of tweets ( n = 2247) explores discussions about a pro-choice blocklist (@Repeal_Shield) used during the 2018 Irish abortion referendum campaign, capturing conflicting interpretations of engagement and political participation. Although qualitative Twitter studies bring methodological challenges, deep readings were needed to analyse arguments in favour and against the blocklist, and to consider what we can learn about users’ expectations of Twitter. Through deductive and inductive coding, opposing perspectives emerge on whether such lists are useful, democratic or regressive, but both sides share normative aspirations for Twitter to serve as a space for healthy debate, even if there is clear tension in how that is best achieved. Blocklists are traditionally cited as a harassment solution, facilitating participation from otherwise-excluded counterpublics. However, @Repeal_Shield demonstrates how this affordance has evolved towards omitting broad spectrums of undesired content, while using blocklists – and being listed – can be a bold political statement in itself.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1177/1461444819858278

Cites

38 of 38 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

We couldn’t retrieve this paper’s full text, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The formerly open API on Twitter supported a network of third-party blocklists designed to help users manage harassment or curate their exposure to political speech.

    “The formerly open API on the platform formerly known as Twitter used to support a network of third-party blocklists designed to, for example, help users manage harassment (Geiger, 2016) or curate their exposure to political speech (Wheatley & Vatnoey, 2020).”

    From Stuck in the middleware with you: the challenges of capitalizing a market-oriented approach to platform governance (2025) · cites this paper as Wheatley & Vatnoey, 2020

  • Previous research on Twitter blocklists found that some users who had been added to blocklists did not understand why they were there, were not able to change their status, and suffered reputational harms.

    “previous research on Twitter blocklists found that some users who had been added to blocklists didn't understand why they were there, were not able to change their status, and suffered reputational harms (Jhaver et al., 2018;Wheatley & Vatnoey, 2020)”

    From Stuck in the middleware with you: the challenges of capitalizing a market-oriented approach to platform governance (2025) · cites this paper as Wheatley & Vatnoey, 2020

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Wheatley, D., & Vatnoey, E.
Affiliations
  • Dublin City University (IE)
  • University of Oslo, Norway
Corresponding author
Wheatley, Dawn
ORCID
Wheatley, Dawn
Venue
New Media & Society
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2019-07-05
Volume
22
Issue
1
Pages
5-25
ISSN
  • 1461-4448 (ISSN-L)
  • 1461-7315
DOI
10.1177/1461444819858278
OpenAlex
W2954760563
Cited by
28
References
38
Citations by year
2025: 5 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 1 · 2020: 2
FWCI
1.59
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • New Media & Society (publishedVersion)
  • Dublin City University Open Access Institutional Repository (Dublin City University) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
  • Arrow@dit (Dublin Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
  • NORA - Norwegian Open Research Archives (submittedVersion, other-oa)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
  • Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender, Feminism, and Media
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Media and Digital Communication
Keywords
Twitter, abortion referendum, pro-choice movement, political participation, online harassment, counterpublics, democratic participation, political debate

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review