Applied Ethics Forum: Eleonore Neufeld & Elise Woodard

‘On subtweeting’
Eleonore Neufeld (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) & Elise Woodard (University of Michigan)
Friday 05 November 2021  •  1:00pm–3:00pm  •  zoom link

Abstract: This talk explores some of the distinctive philosophical questions that arise from the phenomenon of subtweeting. We show that, far from always being harmless, subtweeting can be both ethically and linguistically fraught. In paradigmatic cases of subtweeting, one Twitter user critically or mockingly tweets about another Twitter user without mentioning their username or their name. We propose that the distinctive harmfulness of subtweets has its source in two related, essential features of subtweets—their deniability and their indefiniteness—and discuss three ethical problems posed by the practice of subtweeting that arise from these features: gaslighting, normative passing, and public complicity.