Representing Indigenous Protest on Twitter: Examining the Social Media Dialogue that Accompanied a Single Image of the DAPL Protests at Standing Rock

Abstract

This paper assesses the role of social media in public representations of Indigenous protest and justice issues. We employ an ethnographic content analysis (ECA) of the social media commentary that accompanied a single, widely shared image taken from the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) protests. The image features a solitary individual on horseback gazing across an improvised barrier at a line of law enforcement officers who are flanked by military-style vehicles, and was widely shared within a few days of its first appearance on Twitter. Our primary argument is that the dialogue accompanying this photograph (i.e., captions) carry colonial undertones shaped by archetypal “media packaging.” These representations may divert public discussion away from the justice issues that catalyzed the protests by focussing narrative elsewhere. Our methodology used reverse-image search technologies to locate relevant dialogue. A total of 148 tweets were analyzed, identifying archetypal labelling; paternalistic discourse; good/evil dualities; and subjective decentring as persistent themes. These outcomes align with previous studies on media representation of criminalized Indigenous activism, and in this paper are framed in the context of “media packaging” in alignment with the “Dead Indian” simulacrum. Our paper concludes with discussion about the potential consequences of disingenuous representations.