You can’t really ‘untag’: The Material Addressability of X and the Undermining of Journalistic Authority

Social media’s attention-based economy and design allegedly spur mistrust and attacks against media workers. X (formerly “Twitter”) facilitates a discursive climate that is divisive and polarized. We present research on platform-afforded tagging practices as infrastructures that enact ‘subtle’ undermining of journalistic authority through piggybacking on press-critique. X does not allow effective “untagging” from other people’s tweets. This creates material addressability, amplifying harassment. The case zooms in on repetitive questioning of whether BBC journalist Laura Kuenssberg was ‘at the party’, alluding to Partygate, a scandal about meetings at 10 Downing Street during Covid-19 lockdowns. Repurposing linkages between hashtagged and @-tagged tweets allowed us to map a network of critique, assembling a community of ‘supercharged critical thinkers.’ While the ‘repetitive drum of suspicion’ might seem benign, tagged tweets are embedded within a networked ecology of vitriol and misogyny through hashtags connecting creators to a wider network of distrust. Tagging controls are too rudimentary for journalists.