Same-Sex Marriage and Social Media

How Online Networks Accelerated the Marriage Equality Movement

Rhonda Gibson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138894853
• eBook ISBN: 9781351717359
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

According to polls, from the early noughties to now, public support for same-sex marriage has increased dramatically. Same-Sex Marriage and Social Media asks how such a rate of attitude change came about and, more specifically, what role social media played.

Digital platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have proved to be useful outlets for political expression, and Rhonda Gibson explores how this came to benefit the marriage equality movement. Drawing on a wealth of movement-related discourse, the book looks at:

• how marriage equality was framed by news companies online and in print;
• the digital strategies deployed by LGBT+ rights organizations and their opponents to gain support;
• the corporate response to the same-sex marriage debate;
• the effect of perceived public opinion and the concept of social identity on how the debate evolved online.

This book seeks to demonstrate how the unique ability of social networks to share personal stories on a mass scale, connect like-minded individuals regardless of geography, and leverage the bandwagon effect of viral content contributed to a seismic shift in visibility and public opinion around the issue of marriage equality. Students and researchers will find this a timely and accessible introduction to the impact of online networks on LGBTQ rights.

1

Social media, social networking, and social movements

It may seem that our personal and professional lives have always been filled with social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube, but networked sociality is, historically speaking, a relatively new phenomenon. Since the first commercially produced computers were made available to the public in the mid-twentieth century, users have sought ways to create computer networks that served professional – and eventually social – needs. However, it wasn’t until the turn of the millennium with the development of Web 2.0 that networked communication evolved into what noted Dutch social media scholar Jose van Dijck (2013) refers to as “platformed sociality.” Numerous social movements have taken advantage of these tools to promote ideas, mobilize participants, and influence public opinion and policy, with the U.S. same-sex marriage movement among the most successful. Before we examine the role of social media in the marriage equality movement specifically, this chapter will explore more broadly the evolution of social media and social networking sites (SNSs) and their place in social movements.

History of social media

Looking back, it is clear that computer networks were destined to become social networks. As early as 1978, public dial-up bulletin board systems allowed users to download files or games and post messages. Frequented by thousands of hobbyists and others looking for cyberfriends with similar interests, these online meeting places may seem primitive by today’s standards, but they were revolutionary nonetheless, representing “the original home-brewed Internet” (Gilbertson, 2010). At about the same time, the United States’ first major online service provider, CompuServe, gave subscribers the ability to send messages through electronic mail and participate in real-time virtual chats, and by the early 1980s, systems such as UseNet allowed individuals to interact through moderated computer news groups.

The 1990s saw the emergence of blogging sites such as Open Diary and LiveJournal, as well as the creation of more narrowly targeted affinity portals such as Gay.com, which served as both a community space for queer users as well as a ready-made online audience for advertisers (Campbell, 2007). SixDegrees.com, widely considered to be the first truly SNS (Kirkpatrick, 2010), premiered just before the new millennium. Unlike other social media sites that were oriented primarily toward special interest groups, SixDegrees focused on helping users identify and build broader social networks (Madej, 2016). Founded in 1997, it was named after the “six degrees of separation” concept that suggests all people in the world are six or fewer personal connections away from each other. SixDegrees allowed its members to upload a profile and list family, friends, and casual acquaintances on the site. Users could send messages and post bulletin board items to people in their closest “degrees” and see their connections to any other user on the site. SixDegrees folded in 2001, in part because of overly aggressive membership drives, but it was quickly followed by more commercially successful SNSs such as Friendster and Myspace.

Friendster was created in 2002 and capitalized upon the degree-of-separation concept popularized by SixDegrees in addition to technology that allowed users to see one another’s profiles. The key selling point of Friendster, however, was its constantly updated and wide-ranging network: “Every time a homepage loaded, Friendster’s servers calculated a single user’s connection to other users within four degrees of separation, which could mean hundreds of thousands of individuals,” giving users an immediate understanding of how they fit into their own social groups as well as into a larger community (Chafkin, 2007). Within a year of its launch, Friendster had more than three million registered members, but technology- and management-related troubles frustrated users, who eventually migrated to one of the many other SNSs that were popping up in the early 2000s (Madej, 2016). Myspace was one of those sites. Developed in 2003 by former Friendster employees and rooted in Southern California’s music scene, Myspace was designed to be hipper than previous sites, allowing friends and music fans to connect with one another, as well as with their favorite artists (Cuthbertson et al., 2015). Myspace was immediately and immensely popular among the all-important young adult demographic, drawing user and media attention to the emerging social function of the Internet. It wasn’t long until a Fortune magazine senior editor for technology noted the shift, suggesting “There may be a new kind of Internet emerging – one more about connecting people to people than people to websites” (Kirkpatrick, 2003).

From 2005 to 2009, Myspace was the king of social networking, even with the launch of Facebook in 2004 at Harvard University. Facebook remained campus-oriented for its first two years before opening to the public in 2006. With its insistence that users’ profiles feature their real names and its increasingly business-friendly policies, Facebook soon became the darling of technology writers – as well as advertisers clamoring to gain access to its user base – and by April 2008, Facebook dethroned Myspace in the number of unique worldwide visitors and by May 2009 in the number of unique U.S. visitors. Quick to adapt to “fourth screen” mobile technology, Facebook made social media one of the most popular functions of the Internet and now stands as the undisputed global king of SNSs, available to users throughout the world (Cuthbertson et al., 2015). Joined in 2006 by micro-blogging site Twitter and later by niche SNSs such as Tumblr, Spotify, and Pinterest, Facebook has capitalized on the growing capabilities of smartphones. Other photo- and video-sharing applications such as the wildly popular Snapchat and Instagram exist almost entirely on mobile. The same is true for applications such as Foursquare, which allows users to check into various locations around the world through their smartphones, and the dozens of online matchmaking services.

Categories of social media

Given the vast number of online social platforms with a dizzying array of features, it is important to clarify some terminology and examine the difference between social media and social networking. Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, which says the term was first used in 2004, defines social media as “forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos).” Applying this definition, we can see that it is possible to use social media without actually networking – by simply posting messages, photos, or videos without overtly trying to make connections and interact with others. Social networking, a term that can be traced back to 1998, is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the creation and maintenance of personal and business relationships especially online.” In their seminal article on the history of social networking, boyd and Ellison (2008) provide a more detailed definition of SNSs as “web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (p. 211).

Social scientists Christakis and Fowler (2009), who have long studied humans’ tendencies toward sociability, suggest that in the most basic sense, a social network consists of people and their connections. Some of these connections are formally organized, whereas others “evolve organically from the natural tendency of each person to seek out and make many or few friends, to have large or small families, to work in personable or anonymous workplaces” (p. 13). At their core, SNSs reflect offline interactions, allowing individuals to maintain contact with people they are otherwise tied to – some strongly and some weakly – but not organized around the introduction of strangers. Christakis and Fowler (2009) argue that people’s inclinations to form social networks have ancient genetic roots: “The tendency to form social unions beyond reproductive ones is biologically encoded in humans; we seek out friends, not just mates” (p. 232). Their conclusion stems from research that analyzed the social networks of more than 1,000 twins drawn from a sample of 90,115 adolescents. They determined that genetic factors accounted for 46 percent of the variance in how popular – in terms of social connections – the children were.

Van Dijck (2013) has provided a useful typology for distinguishing among types of social media. In her book The Culture of Connectivity (2013), van Dijck puts SNSs such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter into their own category, suggesting that their primary purpose is to promote interpersonal, professional, and/or geographic connections – but relatively weak ties – between individuals or groups. She separates these from sites that feature user-generated content (UGC), arguing that the primary purposes of sites such as YouTube, Flickr, and Wikipedia are to support creativity, focus on cultural activity, and promote the exchange of content. A third category includes trading and marketing sites (TMSs) – think Amazon, Groupon, and eBay – that allow users to exchange products or sell them. Her final category consists of play and game sites (PGS), a genre with popular games such as Angry Birds and Candy Crush.

Regardless of which specific platforms are included in the discussion, it is clear that online SNSs have radically altered the ways that social networks form and interact. Christakis and Fowler (2009) have identified four major areas of influence: first is in their enormity, vastly increasing the size and scale of social networks; second is in communality, broadening the ability of members to share information and contribute to collective efforts; third is in their specificity, allowing users to be more particular in the connections they make; and lastly, in their virtuality, affording members the ability to assume virtual identities (p. 275). Of course, these influences of SNSs happen only for those individuals who venture online for networking purposes. It may seem as though everyone is on Facebook or Twitter, but that is not actually the case – not yet, at least.

Who uses social media?

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has collected data about social media users for more than a decade. A 2016 Pew national survey of more than 1,500 adults showed that 86 percent of Americans reported using the Internet for some purpose (Greenwood et al., 2016). Online statistical portal Statista (2017) reports that in 2016, 78 percent of the U.S. population had some sort of social media profile, a figure that has continued to climb every year since it began collecting data in 2008. The Pew survey identified Facebook as by far the most popular SNS in the U.S.: Nearly four-fifths of Americans who use the Internet are on Facebook (79 percent), which is more than double the number who use Twitter (24 percent), Pinterest (31 percent), Instagram (32 percent), or LinkedIn (29 percent) (Greenwood et al., 2016). Facebook use continues to increase, with 2016 figures showing a seven-percentage-point jump over the previous year. As of mid-2017, Facebook had 2 billion active users worldwide.

While young adults continue to be the heaviest users of Facebook, older adults are increasingly attracted to the site (Greenwood et al., 2016). In 2016, 88 percent of online adults age 18–29 were Facebook adopters, whereas 62 percent of Internet users age 65 and up reported being on Facebook, a whopping 14-point jump in one year. Women use Facebook at higher rates than men: 83 percent of female Internet users and 75 percent of male Internet users are on Facebook. Facebook remains the most popular social media platform, with its users visiting the site more regularly than users of other social media sites. Roughly three-quarters (76 percent) of Facebook users report that they visit the site daily – with a whopping 55 percent of those visiting several times a day.

Only about one-fourth of online adults (24 percent) use Twitter, statistically unchanged from a survey conducted in 2015 (23 percent) (Greenwood et al., 2016). Younger Americans are more likely than older ones to be on Twitter; 36 percent of online adults ages 18–29 are on the microblogging site, compared to 10 percent of online adults age 65 and older who are Twitter users. Twitter is also more popular with those who have higher levels of education. About 30 percent of Internet users with college degrees use Twitter, compared with 20 percent of those with a high school degree or less. According to Pew, Twitter is joined by mobile photo-sharing platform Instagram in the “middle tier” of social media sites in terms of the share of users who log in daily. Roughly half (51 percent) of Instagram users access it on a daily basis, with 35 percent saying they do so several times a day, whereas 42 percent of Twitter users indicate that they are daily visitors, with 23 percent saying they visit more than once a day.

Sexual minorities and social media

Gays and lesbians have been heavier-than-normal social media users from the very beginning; in fact media and sexuality scholar Larry Gross suggests that “queers were among the first to realize the potential” of the Internet and social media (2007, p. ix). From the early days of chat rooms, news groups, and affinity portals such as Gay.com, sexual minorities have connected with like-minded individuals online and used social media platforms to develop communities and participate in civic engagement activities (Campbell, 2007; Wakeford, 2002). The urban queer community was among the original groups that populated Friendster and helped to define that site’s culture (boyd, 2008). Gay men commonly perceived Friendster as a queer dating site and invited other gay men to join. Likewise, queer youth who may not have access to a supportive geographically local community have found that social media allow them to develop a sense of community with people they have met online (Wakeford, 2002). LGBT+ individuals who participated in the early online groups related to sexual identity felt less socially isolated and more accepted (McKenna & Bargh, 1998). Similarly, the Internet has been attractive to sexuality and gender nonconformists as a medium “where sex and gender can lose their meaning” and not be limited to a male/female dichotomy (Laukkanen, 2007, p. 81).

Although Pew’s annual surveys of Internet and social media usage do not segment LGBT+ users, there is survey evidence to suggest that sexual minorities are among the heaviest users. A 2010 Harris Interactive national online survey of 2,412 U.S. adults – 271 of whom self-identified as gay or lesbian – found that LGBT+ adults choose to connect online through SNSs more often than their heterosexual counterparts. According to the survey (Harris Interactive, 2010), 73 percent of LGBT+ adults reported using Facebook, compared to 65 percent of heterosexual adults. When it comes to the business-oriented SNS LinkedIn, 22 percent of LGBT+ respondents reported being members, while 16 percent of heterosexual adults were. Almost twice the number of gay male and lesbian respondents (29 percent) than heterosexual respondents (15 percent) used Twitter. In addition, 55 percent of gay men and lesbians said they visit SNSs at least once a day, compared to only 41 percent of heterosexual adults. As Bob Witeck, CEO of a communications company that aided Harris Interactive in conducting the study, noted: “Over this past decade, through many comparative measures – we see first-hand that online media consumption for gays and lesbians is strong and growing stronger” (Harris Interactive, 2010). Witeck referred to blogging and SNSs as “the virtual, new gay community centers and marketplace,” a claim that is supported by survey data showing that more than half of U.S. gay, lesbian, and bisexual Internet users have “liked” a business page on Facebook, and four in five have clicked on a Facebook ad (Bennett, 2014).

Facebook appears to be the platform of choice for sexual minorities in the United States. A June 2014 poll by Community Marketing Inc. (Bennett, 2014) found that 88 percent of lesbian and bisexual female Internet users and 79 percent of gay and bisexual males used Facebook. These groups were far more likely to have interacted with business pages on Facebook than on Twitter, with 55 percent of lesbian/bisexual females and 51 percent of gay/bisexual men having “liked” a brand’s Facebook Page, which finished first of all the digital interactions in the poll. Clicking on a Facebook ad finished second, cited by 36 percent of lesbian/bisexual females and 45 percent of gay/bisexual men. Conversely, only one in 10 respondents to the survey had tweeted during a TV show or tuned into a TV show after seeing related tweets. Although LGBT+ use of Facebook is high, some queer users may feel constrained by the limited anonymity afforded by the SNS. Specifically, those users who are not fully out about their sexual orientation with members of their networks do not feel comfortable posting information about their identity or support for LGBT+ issues on Facebook (Fox & Warber, 2015).

Social networking sites, civic engagement, and social movements

Since the notion of a virtual public sphere emerged in the late twentieth century (Hague & Loader, 1999), scholars have debated the role of digital media in civic engagement and social movements. Early models included Blumler and Gurevitch’s ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgments
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Social media, social networking, and social movements
• 2. The history of marriage in the United States
• 3. Inside the newsroom: shifting attitudes about how to cover same-sex marriage
• 4. Media framing of the marriage debate
• 5. The proponents: making the case for marriage equality
• 6. The opponents: the religious right fights to save traditional marriage
• 7. The opponents within: queer resistance to the marriage movement
• 8. From pariah to cause célèbre: corporate evolution on the issue of same-sex marriage
• 9. Social media and the inevitability of same-sex marriage
• Index