Black Lives Matter and MeToo, two social movements that went viral around the globe, have been actively supporting each other. This paper studies what kind of grievances and demands become prominent at the intersection of these movements. Building on the intersectionality theory (Crenshaw, 1990), we seek to uncover whether the most salient demands relate to broad themes on which more people concur or specific grievances and demands of intersectional groups (such as Black transgender women), which sound divisive to some. Building on Laclau (2007), we expect to find broader and vaguer themes to dominate the more specific themes related to intersectionality. The broader and vaguer a theme, the wider the audience with which it resonates. We test this hypothesis on a large tweet dataset from Jan. 2020 to Dec. 2021 we compiled using Twitter’s API. We applied network analysis and topic modeling to these data to identify the most salient themes and frames that activists use. Our preliminary findings support our hypothesis. The most salient themes concern racial equality, sexual abuse, and police violence.

GLODEM proudly presents the final seminar of Spring 2022 AI & CSS Seminar Series with Başak Taraktaş’s talk on May 26th. GLODEM AI & CSS Seminar Series brings together practitioners working on AI usage in various fields and scholars specializing in computational social sciences. The seminar series is moderated by MA-CSSL, which is an interdisciplinary research laboratory at Koç University, established with the purpose of conducting cutting-edge research on the applications of computational methods to social science questions.

Speaker: Basak Taraktas

Moderator: Merih Angin, Koç University

Title: When Race Meets Gender: A Study of Intersectionality on the Black Lives Matter and MeToo Movements