Celebrity Latinidad on Twitter

Why Digital Media?

            Digital media has become an important platform for representation because of the ability to reach millions of people through the Internet. In Frances Negrón-Muntaner’s article “The Gang’s Not All Here” statistical evidence is provided to show the lack of representation of Latino/as in the media as well as the prevalence of stereotypes in the limited instances of representation. The article cites that although Latino/as constituted 16.7% of the US population in 2010, none of the leads in the top-rated shows of 2010-2013 were Latino/as and there were no Latino/as news anchors on prime-time shows in 2013. Shows on television often portray Latino/as as stereotyped characters, such as criminals or sexy maids, making their limited representation on screen more harmful than helpful.
            However, there are other forms of digital media that put more representational power in the hands of Latinas, such as social media platforms. On a platform like Twitter, any average person can tweet about being Latina and have their tweets be read by thousands or millions of people across the US. This powerful outreach of Twitter makes it the perfect platform to study representation of Latinas; a celebrity could write a tweet with the hashtag #latinaequalpay and have it viewed instantly by millions of people across the US, bringing issues associated with latinidad into public view.
 

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