MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

In early 2019 the knitting community realized it had a racism problem. Or, more to the point, the supermajority of well-to-do, middle-aged white women knitters were made aware of the many race-based biases in the knitting world. In response to this wake-up call, knitters felt compelled to announce their anti-racist beliefs. This vocal anti-racism took on a number of forms but typically materialized as social media posts. Indeed, many of these conversations began and ended on Instagram where white knitters pointed toward the expert voices of their BIPOC knitting friends. Others though, doubled down on their racist agendas and demanded others in the community #ShutUpAndKnit.

In this paper we explore Ravelry, a niche social media site with approximately eight million users worldwide run by a four-person team, and the choices made to censor content. We compare these decisions to those of Instagram, through the consideration of the 1996 Telecommunications Act that, in part, protects websites by labeling them “open public forums.” Despite Ravelry’s blanket legal protection from liability for content produced by its users, in June 2019 the site banned all content supporting the Trump presidency. In announcing the immediate policy change the site declared “we cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy.” Many users loudly left Ravelry for other spaces on the internet voicing their decision to #MakeKnittingFunAgain. By analyzing race and platform norms through affordance theory, we discuss the presumed agency that the ability to flag posts and report content gives most users, and the disruption of this belief generated by Ravelry’s team, revealing the power discrepancy present in all social media.