Research
Over the last decade there has been an unprecedentedly rapid rise in attention to transgender individuals and the issues they face, both in mass and new media and in political institutions at every level of governance. As a political communication scholar, my primary interest is to theorize the dynamics by which such marginal identities and issues become salient, the processes by which political actors manage that salience, and the consequences of the mediated political contests that ensue. In particular, my studies focus on the media that form individuals’ political information systems and activists’ efforts to influence those systems in pursuit of sociopolitical change. To that end, my research draws on theories across communication studies, political and cultural sociology, and social psychology, and includes a variety of methodologies, including participant-observation, interviews, content analysis, surveys, and experiments. This theoretical and methodological flexibility enables me to speak across disciplines, across subfields, and across subjects of study. Although my main focus has always been transgender rights, I am a generalist with a very broad spectrum of interests, whose work on transgender issues produces theoretical innovations that inform the study of political communication more widely.
Voices for Transgender Equality: Making Change in the Networked Public Sphere
Transgender rights have emerged as an important topic of everyday conversation across the country in recent years and become, in many ways, the flashpoint du jour of the American culture wars. During the Trump presidency in particular, transgender people were thrust onto the center stage of US politics. Faced with unrelenting hostility and an increasingly complicated media system, transgender activists crafted new communication strategies to fight for their equality, stall attempts to undermine their rights, and win the support of large swathes of the public.
In Voices for Transgender Equality, Thomas J Billard offers an insider’s view into transgender activism during the first two years of the Trump administration. Drawing on extensive on-the-ground observation at the National Center for Transgender Equality, Billard shows how these activists developed an unlikely blend of online and offline strategies to saturate a diverse ecology of national news outlets, local and community media outlets across the country, and both public and private conversations across multiple social media platforms with voices in support of their cause. Moreover, these activists navigated the complex flows of information and ideas among these different domains of the communication system as they worked to shape the national conversation on transgender rights. As Billard argues, this movement occurred at a very particular time in the development of the media system, with “new” media shaping the movement in important ways that are both generalizable to other social movements and unique to transgender activism.
Including rich storytelling and insightful analysis, Voices for Transgender Equality makes a compelling case of what it takes to make social and political change in a world transformed by digital media. Along the way, Billard provides key insights into the new business-as-usual of mediated politics and valuable lessons for more effective activism.
Reviews
“Voices for Transgender Equality is a riveting, on-the-ground account of an activist organization fighting to shape the narrative around trans people’s rights. Even a group at the top of its media game must rely on a combination of careful strategizing and crisis response to deal with the challenges of a media system in which national news can be made by an erratic president, a few media influencers, or a local story planted by a countermovement. In the rare book that speaks both to scholars and activists, TJ Billard deftly shows what the interpenetration of mass media, social media, and everyday conversation means for contemporary social movements. Voices for Transgender Equality should change the way we think about the public sphere.”
Francesca Polletta, author of It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics
“When you read this book, so much of the prior research on media and social movements will feel one-dimensional and stale. TJ Billard deftly illustrates how a new conceptual framework—‘the politics of flows’—can make sense of how today’s social movements fuse media logics to integrate elite-centric promotion, digital coordination, local media action, and everyday interpersonal narratives of change. Written in a way that puts you inside the key moments when activists make decisions about which media to prioritize for their campaigns, this is an exciting and compelling account of just how much has changed in the world of political mobilization over the last decade.”
Andrew Chadwick, author of The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power
Embedded within one of the most prominent transgender institutions in the US, TJ Billard offers a meticulous account of the multi-front communication efforts necessary to shift politics in the contemporary public sphere. Integrating analysis of local and community media, social networks, and organizational media relations, this book provides a new model for understanding media systems and the flows of activist messaging.”
Sarah J. Jackson, author of Hashtag Activism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice
“TJ Billard’s Voices for Transgender Equality issues an urgent call for social movements (and the scholars who study them) to adapt their political communications to the hybridized and complex contemporary media environment. Examining flows in networked communications, ranging from mass media to community media to social media to social networks and beyond, Billard expertly traces the implications of networked media for social movements generally and the transgender rights movement specifically in this must-read book.”
Jennifer Earl, author of Digitally Enabled Social Change
“In Voices for Transgender Equality, TJ Billard has produced the kind of social analysis we urgently need: empirical, pragmatic, and, most importantly, centered on the material lives of transgender people. Among the leading lights in a new generation of scholars, Billard’s contribution augurs well for the future of transgender studies.”
Paisley Currah, author of Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity and founding editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly