‘Your Very Existence Goes Against Our Community Guidelines’: Interrogating norms of contributorship through poetic speech acts on Instagram

Platform organizing does not unfold in a neutral realm. While interconnected communicative acts such as posts, shares, or likes constitute organizing on social media platforms, platform organizations condition how such platform organizing unfolds through content moderation. This study engages with t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Organization studies Vol. 45; no. 12; pp. 1795 - 1821
Main Authors: Nadegger, Monica, Leybold, Milena, Kenney, Sean C.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.12.2024
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects:
Authorization
Communication
Computer mediated communication
Content management
Embodiment
Mass media
Moderation
Norms
Nudity
Organization theory
Qualitative research
Sexuality
Social media
Speech
Speech acts
platform organizing
nudity
communicative constitution of organizations (CCO)
norms of contributorship
queer theory
resistance
ISSN:0170-8406, 1741-3044
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Platform organizing does not unfold in a neutral realm. While interconnected communicative acts such as posts, shares, or likes constitute organizing on social media platforms, platform organizations condition how such platform organizing unfolds through content moderation. This study engages with the concept of contributorship, which is anchored in communication constitutes organization (CCO) scholarship, and theorizes content moderation as a process of authorization based on ‘norms of contributorship’. Applying queer theorizing to engage with norms as a site of power vis-a-vis embodied difference, we investigate poetic speech acts as queering endeavours that interrogate norms of contributorship in the constitution of platform organizing. Drawing upon a qualitative analysis of Instagram posts that challenge content moderation related to nudity as embodied difference, the findings reveal three practices of poetic speech – playfully altering, juxtaposing wor(l)ds and satirical challenging. Such practices skilfully repoliticize the entanglement of communication, control and normativity, and lay the foundation for collectively queering norms of contributorship in platform organizing. Building upon these insights, we highlight how organizational theory and practice are always implicated in normative regimes and underscore the need for attending to the existence of organizational subjects at and beyond the margins through queering organizing writ large.
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ISSN:0170-8406
1741-3044
DOI:10.1177/01708406241282128