Counterpublics and Hegemonic Ideology: Responses to Donald Trump’s Post-Hurricane Imperial Condescension toward Puerto Rico on Twitter

Abstract In April 2019, Trump criticized Puerto Rican politicians on Twitter for receiving $91 billion in aid from Washington and said Puerto Rico was taking money from the U.S. Even though Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, their political status is the result of a series of colonial policies that ensured an important degree of U.S. political control over their island. Combining topic modeling and network analysis of 8,256 tweets on Puerto Rico between March 29 and April 8, 2019, we examine the reactions to Trump’s tweets and study the discourses, contestations, and counter-hegemonic rhetorical articulations that attended the tweets. Most responses to the tweets allowed for the creation of a counterpublic space that challenged Trump’s depiction of Puerto Rico. However, these responses also reproduced the unexamined hegemonic colonial ideology at the heart of Puerto Rico’s unequal relationship with the US. We argue that by failing to acknowledge the colonial entrapment that defines Puerto Rico’s relationship with the United States, even the counterpublic discourses against Trump’s rhetoric unwittingly reinforce the colonial relationship.