How sexist, racist attacks on Kamala Harris have spread online -- a case study

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

How sexist, racist attacks on Kamala Harris have spread online — a case study

By Karen Tumulty, Kate Woodsome, Sergio Peçanha
OCTOBER 7, 2020

Former vice president Joe Biden’s history-making pick of a woman of color to share the Democratic ticket has been a popular decision. A Post-ABC News poll taken in the days after his selection of his former rival Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) found that a solid 54 percent of Americans approved, while only 29 percent had a negative opinion.

But in the fetid corners of the Internet, a different set of plotlines took hold. A racist trope questioned whether Harris, a daughter of immigrants who was born in the United States, is constitutionally eligible to be vice president. Another suggested her heritage, which is Jamaican and Indian, disqualifies her from claiming she is Black.

One pernicious line of attack on Harris is as old as misogyny itself. It claims that a woman who has served as San Francisco district attorney, California attorney general and U.S. senator slept her way into those positions.

In the first week after Harris was named to the ticket, the sexualized hashtag #heelsupharris appeared 35,479 times in Twitter posts, according to an analysis by the media intelligence platform Zignal Labs. It also found that, immediately following the running-mate announcement, false claims about Harris were being shared at least 3,000 times an hour on Twitter.

Raw numbers, however, do not get to the roots of these lies. So we have looked into one example. In this case, what started as an offensive post on one man’s personal Facebook page was seized upon and expanded by malicious actors, then blasted across the Internet. Ultimately, it would be seen more than 630,000 times on Twitter alone, adding fuel to sexist attacks being made on Harris by leading right-wing figures and even the president of the United States.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/07/kamala-harris-sexist-racist-attacks-spread-online/

[Aristus]

1. They don't have thirty years of lies and defaming attacks like they did with Hillary.

But they have social media now. The shit rolls a lot faster...