What does it mean when people call a place a shithole? Understanding a discourse of denigration in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.

Butler, Alice; Schafran, Alex; Carpenter, Georgina

Abstract

This paper investigates what people mean when they engage in the discourse of denigration. Building on existing literature on territorial stigmatisation that either focuses on macro-scale uses and effects of territorial stigmatisation or micro-scale ethnographic studies of effects, we develop a novel approach that captures the diverse voices that engage in the discourse of denigration by tracing the use of the word and hashtag 'shithole' on the social media platform Twitter in order to examine who is engaged in the stigmatising discourse, the types of place that are stigmatised and the responses to stigmatised places. Using a robust data set, we highlight two key findings. First, the majority of tweets were aimed at places where the tweeter was not from, a form of othering consistent with how territories are stigmatised by those in positions of power such as policymakers, politicians and journalists. Second, we note that an important and gendered minority of tweets can be characterised by a 'cry for help' and powerlessness, where the stigma is aimed at their own places. We offer an interpretive lens through which to understand and frame these minoritarian voices by engaging with theories of abjection that allow us to see how minoritarian voices relate to place.

Citation

BUTLER, A., SCHAFRAN, A. and CARPENTER, G. 2018. What does it mean when people call a place a shithole? Understanding a discourse of denigration in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Transactions of the institute of British Geographers [online], 43(3), pages 496-510. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12247

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 15, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Apr 15, 2018
• Publication Date: Sep 30, 2018
• Deposit Date: Feb 21, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 21, 2022
• Journal: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
• Print ISSN: 0020-2754
• Electronic ISSN: 1475-5661
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 43
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 496-510
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12247
• Keywords: Abjection; Denigration; Minoritarian voices; Territorial stigmatisation; Twitter
• Public URL: https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/983842