Critical Postdigital Literacies as Resistance Against Platform Governance on Twitter

The postdigital turn is one that has prompted scholars to reconsider their conceptualizations of digital literacies. Crucially, as contemporary life has become inundated with digital technologies, everyday understandings of the digital have become more complex and more nuanced. Digital literacies have since transformed into more-than-digital literacies, wherein users employ meaning-making strategies in addition to their skill-based competencies in order to navigate dynamic platform structures. This paper thus advances the notion of critical postdigital literacies by examining how Twitter users leverage their platform literacies as a means of resistance and pushback against platform governance enacted by Elon Musk. As Musk implements new features, anti-Musk users continually engage with these in (often playfully) antagonistic ways and create novel uses and meanings out of new platform structures. By employing their postdigital awareness and understandings of governance both on and beyond platforms, Twitter users demonstrate their critical digital literacy skills as they carve out new cultural and ideological boundaries from site functions and weaponize Musk’s own features against him, his followers, and his reign.