ABSTRACT

This chapter considers how Latinxs in the United States navigate online spaces that intersect with established media and political institutions. Within these networks, Latinx identity is contested, reframed, updated, and commodified. It is not the case that identity homogenization is a simple, unidirectional process where elite actors and institutions shape Latinxs into perfect consumers of U.S. politics and ideology. Instead, Latinx subjects simultaneously receive essentialized narratives about themselves and selectively perform aspects in advantageous moments. Online, hybrid media networks enable the use of culture capital for Latinxs in ways not previously possible. These moments of performance vary by class and institutional circumstances, such as middle-class Latinas preforming quince culture online or Latinas in Congress giving intersectional context to policy issues. In summary, these works point to a post-modern system of racial performance. In this system, we preform our identity as Latinxs through media consumption and personalized new media. Culture then becomes a form of immaterial capital, or as I have said before—a commodity.