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Humor That Hurts: An Exploration of Jokes About Black Women with Disabilities on TikTok in South Africa

Journal. Media 2025, 6(4), 174; https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia6040174

by Fabiana Battisti^1,*

and Lorenzo Dalvit²

Reviewer 1: Anonymous

Reviewer 2: Anonymous

Reviewer 3:

Tom Divon

Journal. Media 2025, 6(4), 174; https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia6040174

Submission received: 7 March 2025 / Revised: 28 September 2025 / Accepted: 3 October 2025 / Published: 8 October 2025

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sociality and Digitality: An Exploration of New Forms of Digital Social Connection and Belonging in Africa)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Well done for completing such as impressive research. However, I believe that further minor improvements are necessary before this is published. Please find below my comments:

*As much as you can, could you minimise using collective pronouns in your work? For example, where where you say "we focus on", you can say 'the paper focuses on' or 'this research aims at' and so on. Additionally, line 49, you can say 'the paper tries to answer the following...'

*In line 25, where you mentioned about Tiktok's growth in South Africa, could rephrase by saying something such as 'TikTok is a popular social media in South Africa. In 2022, reports established that TikTok has experienced more growth than any other social media platforms in South Africa ().

*In line 28, could you give examples of some of these 'unique TikTok Languages'?

*In lines 31-32 and a few other ones, I think in-text citation should follow from newest reference to older source and not vice versa.

*Lines 40-41 - what exactly does the 'problematic nature of the ordinary' mean?

*Your question in lines 49-51 seems to present your research as an audience study. Please rephrase this.

*Line 69 - rewrite as 'among which disability is one.'

*Hietanen and Eddebo (2023) quote was not unpacked and discussed. It almost appears non-functional in that paragraph.

*Lines 95-97, your sentence on incongruity does not make any meaning. In that theoretical section, could you please define what humour theories you are backgrounding your research on? That is whether relief, superiority or incongruity theories? I see a brief mention of all three but non-discussed in-depth or specially applied to your research.

*Line 97 - Humorous styles should be a paragraph.

*Line 126 - swap "mode" for 'method'.

*Line 133 - subject topic should be either and not both.

*I did not see how you connected your findings to the theoretical foundations previously explored? Could you engage this more?

*Your first line of conclusion says this is a chapter. Is it a book chapter or a paper?

*In lines 242 - 243, you said "Laughing at people with disabilities is considered a sign of immaturity or lack of intelligence." Is there any evidence or research that corroborates this? Alternatively, if this is related to your own findings, could you please rephrase?

*Finally, your paper would have benefitted from a literature review no matter how small. There are many studies on humour in other contexts that you could have drawn from and see if their findings ultimately corroborates yours or not.

Once again, well done for handling such a difficult topic and I hope to read your work in print.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

This paper will greatly benefit from the services of a proof-reader especially with regards to conciseness and grammatical amendments.

Author Response

R. First of all, thank you very much for all your feedback, we have made the requested changes to the text.

R. We have adjusted the sentence as suggested.

*In line 28, could you give examples of some of these 'unique TikTok Languages'?

R. We have reworded the sentence and removed the reference that could be ambiguous, taking into account the comments of other reviewers.

*In lines 31-32 and a few other ones, I think in-text citation should follow from newest reference to older source and not vice versa.

R. We have adjusted the citation as suggested.

*Lines 40-41 - what exactly does the 'problematic nature of the ordinary' mean?

R. We have reworded the sentence and removed the reference that could be ambiguous.

*Your question in lines 49-51 seems to present your research as an audience study. Please rephrase this.

R. We have reworded it as follows: the study therefore investigates to what extent humor targeting people with disabilities is problematized in the South African digital context, specifically delving into what kind of reactions it evokes in the comments section.

*Line 69 - rewrite as 'among which disability is one.'

*Hietanen and Eddebo (2023) quote was not unpacked and discussed. It almost appears non-functional in that paragraph.

*Line 97 - Humorous styles should be a paragraph.

*Line 126 - swap "mode" for 'method'.

*Line 133 - subject topic should be either and not both.

*I did not see how you connected your findings to the theoretical foundations previously explored? Could you engage this more?

R. Following the suggestions of other reviewers, we have restructured the first paragraph, which has allowed us to resolve some ambiguities that were also pointed out in the comments you sent us. We hope that we have clarified and contextualized the text as best as possible, also explaining the link between the results and the theoretical framework. Specifically, we have highlighted the additions/changes in yellow in the text, creating three distinct initial sections: 2.1 Humor as a borderland for disability, 2.2 Platformed micro aggressive humor, 2.3 South African digital context

*Your first line of conclusion says this is a chapter. Is it a book chapter or a paper?

R. This was a mistake, for which we apologize. It has now been corrected.

R. We were unable to find the sentence you mentioned, but we did find this one in line 542, which indicates that this is how users feel: Laughing at disability jokes is considered immature or unintelligent by at least 17% of users, who made statements like “I'm sorry I don't care who says what you gotta be Heaven if you laughed at this ?.”

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an innovative and timely article that makes an important contribution to understanding moral disengagement in audience responses to digital humour targeting disabled Black women. The methodological approach is rigorous and the focus on intersecting oppressions is both original and necessary. However, while the article successfully situates its analysis within moral psychology and media studies, it falls short of engaging with the rich body of literature at the intersection of disability studies and humour. Scholars such as Lockyer (2015)“It’s Really Scared of Disability”: Disabled Comedians’ Perspectives of the British Television Comedy Industry. The Journal of Popular Television, 3(2), 179–193. Milbrodt (2022)Sexy Like Us: Disability, Humor, and Sexuality. University Press of Mississippi. and more recently Malli (2024) -Disability, Comedy, and the Multifaceted Discourse. In G. Bennett & E. Goodall (Eds.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Disability. Palgrave Macmillan. demonstrated that humour about disability cannot be understood in strictly oppressive terms. Rather, humour is a multifaceted discourse—it can reinforce ableist stereotypes but also act as a powerful tool of resistance, identity reclamation, and subversive critique sometimes together. The article does not sufficiently acknowledge the ambiguous, productive, and agentic potential of humour within disability culture.

While the article makes an important intervention by centring disabled Black women—an intersectional group often marginalised in both academic literature and digital cultures—it does not clearly articulate the rationale for this specific focus over other marginalised groups, such as disabled Black men or disabled individuals from other racialised backgrounds. Given the study's emphasis on moral disengagement in audience responses, a brief discussion of why disabled Black women were selected—beyond acknowledging their compounded marginalisation—would have enhanced the analytical depth. Situating this choice within the wider literature on intersectionality, online ridicule, or disability representation would have clarified whether their selection was due to a representational gap, a specific vulnerability to moral disengagement, or other contextual factors. The absence of this explanation risks presenting the choice as self-evident and may limit the study's broader applicability across intersecting identities.

A deeper engagement with the work of disabled Black women scholars and artists, as well as with the broader literature on humour in disability studies, would have enriched the analysis and provided a more robust, ethically grounded account.

One area that warrants further development is the cultural and historical context of disability in South Africa. While the article effectively analyses audience responses to humour targeting disabled Black women, it does so without addressing how disability is socially and culturally constructed within the South African context. Studies have shown that perceptions of disability in South Africa are shaped by a complex interplay of indigenous beliefs, colonial legacies, and socio-economic factors. For instance, cultural frameworks such as Ubuntu promote inclusion, yet beliefs linking disability to supernatural causes persist in some communities, reinforcing stigma (e.g. Madiba et al., 2024). Moreover, stigma has been shown to significantly impact the mental health and social standing of disabled individuals, especially women, who often face multiple layers of marginalisation. A deeper engagement with this literature would have contextualised audience responses more effectively and helped explain how such humour both reflects and reproduces cultural attitudes toward disability. Without this, the analysis risks appearing decontextualised and overly generalised.However, future research should avoid a solely punitive reading of humour. While jokes can indeed be weaponised to marginalise disabled individuals—especially multiply minoritised groups such as Black disabled women—it is equally important to acknowledge humour’s potential as an empowering and reparative force. Scholars such as Hadley, Lockyer, Milbrodt, and Malli have shown that humour can be a means of resistance, identity affirmation, and social critique. Far from being a killjoy, exploring the complex, sometimes contradictory functions of humour—including its role in promoting wellbeing and mental health—can deepen our understanding of how stigma is both reinforced and resisted through laughter. Future work would benefit from examining how disabled people themselves deploy humour to challenge ableist norms and to foster solidarity and self-expression.

Author Response

Comment 1. This is an innovative and timely article that makes an important contribution to understanding moral disengagement in audience responses to digital humour targeting disabled Black women. The methodological approach is rigorous and the focus on intersecting oppressions is both original and necessary. However, while the article successfully situates its analysis within moral psychology and media studies, it falls short of engaging with the rich body of literature at the intersection of disability studies and humour. Scholars such as Lockyer (2015)“It’s Really Scared of Disability”: Disabled Comedians’ Perspectives of the British Television Comedy Industry. The Journal of Popular Television, 3(2), 179–193. Milbrodt (2022)Sexy Like Us: Disability, Humor, and Sexuality. University Press of Mississippi. and more recently Malli (2024) -Disability, Comedy, and the Multifaceted Discourse. In G. Bennett & E. Goodall (Eds.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Disability. Palgrave Macmillan. demonstrated that humour about disability cannot be understood in strictly oppressive terms. Rather, humour is a multifaceted discourse—it can reinforce ableist stereotypes but also act as a powerful tool of resistance, identity reclamation, and subversive critique sometimes together. The article does not sufficiently acknowledge the ambiguous, productive, and agentic potential of humour within disability culture.

Response: We would like to start by thanking you for your insightful and inspiring comments. Based on your suggestions and those of other reviewers, we have restructured the first section into three paragraphs as follows: 2.1 Humor as a borderland for disability, 2.2 Platformed micro aggressive humor, 2.3 South African digital context

In this way, we have sought to integrate references to critical humor studies and how this is a revealer of society's culture. All changes and additions are highlighted in yellow. In particular, regarding your comment we have added:

Leveille, A. D. (2024). “Tell Me You Have ADHD Without Telling Me You Have ADHD”: Neurodivergent Identity Performance on TikTok. Social Media + Society, 10(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051241269260

Lockyer (2015) “It’s Really Scared of Disability”: Disabled Comedians’ Perspectives of the British Television Comedy Industry. The Journal of Popular Television, 3(2), 179–193.

Milbrodt (2022) Sexy Like Us: Disability, Humor, and Sexuality. University Press of Mississippi. Todd, A. (2024). Cripping Girlhood on Service Dog Tok. Societies, 14(2), 30. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc14020030 Comment 2.

Comment 2. While the article makes an important intervention by centring disabled Black women—an intersectional group often marginalised in both academic literature and digital cultures—it does not clearly articulate the rationale for this specific focus over other marginalised groups, such as disabled Black men or disabled individuals from other racialised backgrounds. Given the study's emphasis on moral disengagement in audience responses, a brief discussion of why disabled Black women were selected—beyond acknowledging their compounded marginalisation—would have enhanced the analytical depth. Situating this choice within the wider literature on intersectionality, online ridicule, or disability representation would have clarified whether their selection was due to a representational gap, a specific vulnerability to moral disengagement, or other contextual factors. The absence of this explanation risks presenting the choice as self-evident and may limit the study's broader applicability across intersecting identities.

Response: With regard to these comments, for which we are very grateful, we have tried to respect the planned length of the paper and have included the reference to lazy intersectionality proposed by:
Watermeyer, B., & Swartz, L. (2022). Disability and the problem of lazy intersectionality. Disability & Society, 38(2), 362–366. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2022.2130177

to better anchor our choice in the current literature.

In addition, we have integrated references to the South African context, specifically in the third paragraph, as follows, in order to convey the complexity and subordination of people with disabilities:

In more detail, as Crigler (2022) have argued, humor is one of the most powerful and insightful tools available to societies for addressing the marginalization of diversity, especially in South Africa. As demonstrated by Sone & Hoza (2017), there is a historical precedent for this in the Xhosa tradition, where the subject of disability is the subject of humor at the expense of those who are physically short. However, as proposed by the authors (2024), disability has not always been confined to exclusion and negative connotation in ancestral South African culture. Instead, it has undergone a process of hybridization that has largely affected collective identity (Vieira, 2019). This aspect was also highlighted by Ned (2022), who called for the reclamation of African cultural perspectives. As demonstrated by several authors (including Hill, 2018), analysis of Black Twitter reveals its function not only as an inclusive space for the expression of black identity and performance online, but also as a "counter-public" that challenges common white supremacist narratives in mainstream social media discourse. Despite the commencement of research in the examination of the proliferation of black female stand-up comedy on social media (Crigler, 2024), a shift in focus from the performance to the contentious manner in which themes can disseminate on digital platforms through the medium of humor reveals the potential of humor to expose the insidious suffering experienced by individuals living with disabilities. Despite their involvement in the struggle to end apartheid alongside other minorities, these groups remain in a state of subordination and invisibility. The objective of decolonial studies is to denounce and deconstruct this state of affairs at both the cultural and institutional levels (see Berghs, 2017, for further details). As asserted by the author (2025), within postcolonial contexts, such as South Africa, narratives and representations in both traditional and digital media reflect a hierarchical suffering paradigm. This means that the vast majority of South Africans living with disabilities who belong to the black, female, and economically disadvantaged demographic are considered to be at the lowest rung on the social ladder.

However, we believe that the further analysis requested in the results is difficult to apply in light of the comments, and that the analysis of the condition of women deserves specific work that goes beyond the scope of this report. Nevertheless, we have accepted and included in the conclusions the need to further explore the perception of people with disabilities. We hope that we have addressed most of the suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear,

Thank you so much for the opportunity to review this piece! I enjoyed reading it very much! It's a topic I care deeply about. I'm particularly invested in questions of trauma, digital coping mechanisms, and the role humor plays in navigating vulnerability and violence online. I have a few comments and suggestions to strengthen the paper's structure and claims, if I may:

Intro -
A key limitation of the intro lies in its overly general framing, which fails to clearly position TikTok as an active and structuring agent in the dynamics the paper seeks to explore. While you acknowledge the platform's popularity and memetic nature, you stop short of articulating how TikTok’s specific affordances (such as sound layering, algorithmic amplification, or duet and stitch features) mediate or exacerbate ableist humor. Instead, the discussion remains broad, and the research question relies on general observations about online discrimination and hate speech without grounding them in the platform’s unique socio-technical logics. As a result, I am afraid I am left without a clear understanding of why TikTok, rather than social media more broadly, is the central object of analysis in this context.

Theoretical background -
This section would benefit from a structural revision. As it stands, the section covers a broad and important range of concepts, especially around TikTok, algorithmic bias, and humor, but these appear somewhat scattered, and the connection to your core research question only becomes clear in fragments. I would recommend reorganizing the section using a funnel structure that begins with humor, then moves to platform dynamics, and finally narrows down to the South African context.

Specifically: 1) Begin with humor as your conceptual anchor. Since your analysis centers on humor as a vehicle for microaggressions, this should be the starting point. Framing humor as a “borderland” of social meaning (one that blurs offense and entertainment) can offer a strong conceptual base. You might want to draw here on studies that directly analyze how humor is used in different cultural settings, like - Jarzabkowski, P. A., & Lê, J. K. (2017). We have to do this and that? You must be joking: Constructing and responding to paradox through humor. Organization studies, 38(3-4), 433-462.‏

Then, you might consider shifting the focus more directly to how humor circulates on platforms and how their specific affordances are leveraged to express and normalize violence. While you do touch on TikTok’s architecture and its logic of virality, the connection between these affordances and the mediation of humor-based discrimination could be more clearly articulated. In this context, Matamoros-Fernández’s (2022) work on platform governance and racialized humor offers a useful lens. Additionally, Divon and Eriksson Krutrök’s (2024) research on "Playful Trauma" provides a great perspective on humor as both a coping mechanism and a strategy for gaining algorithmic visibility during moments of crisis on TikTok. These works can support a more nuanced account of how platform infrastructures, participatory cultures, and audiovisual remix practices enable certain types of humor to flourish, often embedding discriminatory narratives into the ambient flow of content.

- Matamoros-Fernández, A., Rodriguez, A., & Wikström, P. (2022). Humor that harms? Examining racist audio-visual memetic media on TikTok during Covid-19. Media and Communication, 10(2), 180-191.‏

- Divon, T., & Eriksson Krutrök, M. (2024). Playful trauma: TikTok creators and the use of the platformed body in times of war. Social Media+ Society, 10(3), 20563051241269281.‏

Finally, zoom into the South African digital context. The legal and post-Apartheid media frameworks you reference are important, but they currently appear quite late and without strong integration into your broader conceptual frame. Bringing them in more deliberately at the end of the theoretical section would give the paper a stronger sense of place. This would also allow you to articulate more clearly what is unique (or contextually loaded) about ableist humor in South African digital life (an aspect you are well-positioned to speak to!)

Method -
One suggestion for strengthening this section is to expand the reflection on how TikTok’s algorithmic infrastructure shaped the visibility and dynamics of the selected content. While you do acknowledge the algorithm’s influence and limitations around generalisability, it could be helpful to engage more deeply with how TikTok’s specific affordances (such as the ‘For You’ page, comment ranking, and localized curation) structure what content is surfaced and engaged with (see Gillespie, 2018). Since your analysis is rooted in user responses and platform-mediated humor, referencing methodological approaches that deal with platform governance and content visibility (such as Light, Burgess, and Duguay’s (2018) walkthrough method) might add clarity to your analytical choices and further situate your dataset within the broader sociotechnical context of TikTok. These additions could also help address concerns around how representative or organic the sample is, and how humor is mediated through a platform that algorithmically curates emotional and cultural tone.

- Gillespie, T. (2018). Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media. Yale University Press.

- Light, B., Burgess, J., & Duguay, S. (2018). “The walkthrough method: An approach to the study of apps.” New Media & Society, 20(3), 881–900. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816675438

Findings -
1) The findings section surfaces valuable insights, especially through your use of moral disengagement theory and your attention to how humor operates at the intersection of exclusion, violence, and visibility. However, some theoretical anchors, like moral disengagement and religious-cultural framings, emerge only during the analysis, rather than being situated clearly within your theoretical background. It would strengthen the coherence of the paper by introducing these concepts earlier on.

2) Your paper opens with references to the memetic and imitative nature of humor on TikTok, citing scholars such as Shifman. However, this thread seems to disappear later in the paper. I was left unsure whether any memetic structures or patterns actually emerged in the comments analyzed. Were there any recurring joke formats, catchphrases, or audiovisual styles that functioned as meme templates? Or was humor in this context more improvisational and dispersed? Clarifying this point would strengthen both the methodological and analytical dimensions of the work.

3) I think that in the sections where humor is presented as performative or as part of platform trends, you want to consider integrating the concept of "playful activism" (2023), which explores how play, affordances ,and performance on TikTok can become vehicles for political critique. Thus, in the context of affordances, your analysis would benefit from engaging more deeply with the role of TikTok’s remix tools and algorithmic logics in shaping what kinds of humor become visible or viral. This would support a more grounded interpretation of how humor operates not only as content but as a networked, incentivized behavior.

- Cervi, L., & Divon, T. (2023). Playful activism: Memetic performances of Palestinian resistance in TikTok# Challenges. Social media+ society, 9(1), 20563051231157607.‏

4) I strongly suggest drawing on Safiya Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (2018). Noble’s work is foundational in unpacking how digital infrastructures reproduce structural inequalities. As part of your findings touch on the ways discriminatory humor becomes normalized or amplified, especially through trending formats or recommendation systems, this theoretical lens will help you frame humor as not only cultural but also algorithmically curated.

- Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism. In Algorithms of Oppression. New York University Press.‏

5) As mentioned earlier in my review, I suggest visiting the "Playful Trauma" paper. This work engages deeply with humor as a coping strategy and explores how platform affordances and algorithmic visibility shape affective vernaculars in war zones. While your study is situated in a very different context, there are important parallels in how humor can operate as both resistance and harm within digital publics. The paper also brings scholarship that may help you flesh out your theoretical framing and further situate your findings within the broader field of humor studies, trauma, and platform cultures.

Conclusion -
As it stands, the conclusion starts by referencing the specificity of the case study without first stating what broader intervention the paper offers, conceptually or contextually. A stronger opening could clarify what this study adds to current discussions on platformed discrimination, humor studies, or digital publics in South Africa. How does it build on or diverge from previous work in the field? And how do your findings help scholars and practitioners better understand online humor as a mechanism of exclusion or resistance?

In addition, this section could better emphasize how your South African case contributes to global conversations around digital microaggressions, platform governance, or ableist content moderation. At present, there’s a tendency to end the paper by retreating into the limitations of qualitative research and the narrow scope of the sample, rather than asserting what this case helps uncover. I suggest briefly revisiting your key insights and then framing them as a springboard for future work, not just in scale (a larger sample), but also in direction (e.g., integrating the perspectives of disabled users, interrogating algorithmic moderation, or exploring humor's role in platform cultures more deeply).

Thank you for this urgent paper! :)

Author Response

We are very grateful to the author for his thorough and extremely accurate review. It has been extremely useful in helping us to better define our work, together with the comments from the other reviewers. All changes/additions are highlighted in yellow in the text.

We have accepted all suggestions while maintaining an approach that is inevitably linked to the case study (which does not respond to current trends on the platform). We believe this takes the approach in a slightly different direction from that suggested, but fully adheres to the points highlighted by Matamoros-Fernández, A. (2023). Taking Humor Seriously on TikTok. Social Media + Society, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231157609

Specifically, we included the following presentation of the paper at the end of the introduction:

With the aim of identifying ways in which humor becomes a digital weapon to consolidate cultural stereotypes, the study therefore investigates to what extent humor targeting people with disabilities is problematized in the South African digital context, specifically delving into what kind of reactions it evokes in the comments section. This paper proposes a theoretical framework that addresses humor as a borderland in relation to disability, focusing on the role that humor plays in the broader cultural system. In this sense, the conceptualization of moral detachment is proposed as a lens through which to observe its reception in the digital environment. The processes of microaggressions on platforms are then reconstructed in the following paragraph considering growing studies that describe how continuous negotiations between narratives of resistance and exclusion, whether conscious or not, can coexist. The specific South African context is then introduced considering the still strong marginalization of people with disabilities in asserting their voice. Methodologically, the qualitative and thematic analysis is structured around 700 comments on a video from an official comedy profile on TikTok that features a joke about a Black woman with disability. In the results section, we present and discuss, considering the socio-cultural context, the two distinct macro cognitive responses to disability humor, identified as “A step back to social (in)justice” and “Universal judgment (but opaque) on laughter”. In conclusion, we problematize how humor can be a tool capable of perpetuating established patterns, both by continuing to hurt people who have already been historically affected and by exacerbating the social distances between them and society, triggering forms of aggressive resistance as coping mechanisms.

Based on your suggestions and those of other reviewers, we have restructured the first section into three paragraphs as follows: 2.1 Humor as a borderland for disability, 2.2 Platformed micro aggressive humor, 2.3 South African digital context We have therefore integrated the following references and brought forward some of those concerning moral detachment so that they better correspond with the results (as suggested):

Berghs, M., (2017). ‘Practices and discourses of ubuntu: Implications for an African model of disability?’, African Journal of Disability 6, a292

Jarzabkowski, P. A., & Lê, J. K. (2017). Dobbiamo fare questo e quello? Stai scherzando: costruire e rispondere al paradosso attraverso l'umorismo. Studi organizzativi, 38(3-4), 433-462.‏

Lockyer (2015) “It’s Really Scared of Disability”: Disabled Comedians’ Perspectives of the British Television Comedy Industry. The Journal of Popular Television, 3(2), 179–193.

Lockyer, S. & Pickering, M. (2008). “You Must Be Joking: The Sociological Critique of Humour and Comic Media.” Sociology Compass 2 (3): 808–820. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9020.2008.00108.x.

Lockyer, S., & Savigny, H. (2019). Rape jokes aren’t funny: the mainstreaming of rape jokes in contemporary newspaper discourse. Feminist Media Studies, 20(3), 434–449. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2019.1577285

Milner Davis, J. & Hofmann, J. (2023). The humor transaction schema: a conceptual framework for researching the nature and effects of humor. HUMOR, 36(2), 323-353. https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2020-0143

We have therefore also implemented the second section following your suggestions, in particular with this addition:

As Matamoros-Fernández (2023) have highlighted, the algorithmic selection of content on TikTok gives rise to a number of problematic aspects, including the immersive presentation of individual content (i.e. the 'For You' page) and the uncritical replicability of viral audio and memes. The author posits that the platform should adopt a more serious stance towards humor on TikTok, precisely because it reflects people's sense of humor (Bhandari & Bimo, 2022), without giving due consideration to the possibility of reinforcing stereotypes and causing harm to social identities. As asserted by numerous scholars, problematic forms of communication that are characterized as humor on social media platforms present a significant challenge if attention is not directed towards the historically rooted power relations that underpin them (Siapera & Viejo‐Otero, 2021). The most problematic aspect is precisely the fact that platform policies tend to treat all identities as equal without distinguishing historically marginalized groups from the majority of society. The crux of the issue lies in the ambiguity that permeates people's daily engagement with humorous expressions, as evidenced by the prevalence of viral parody challenges. In these cases, users are prompted to appropriate and remix the audio of other videos through memetic engagement (Kaye et al., 2021). In this manner, users seek to gain algo-rithmic visibility, yet concurrently express and normalize forms of symbolic violence, such as racism, which are more subtle in nature because they may be unaware of perpetuating these forms of violence (Matamoros-Fernández et al., 2022; Divon & Eriksson Krutrök, 2024).

In the methodology section, in line with the above, we have integrated this perspective:

l. 291 in accordance with the walkthrough method (Light et al., 2018), the present study endeavours to explore how the materiality of the application guides, supports, levels and culturally constrains users and their sensitivity in terms of humor.

In the first paragraph of the results, we have added the following: l 399.

The emotional intensity captured in these comments aligns with Cervi and Divon's (2023) observation that social media platforms are "playful and affective by design," where performative and platformative content creation becomes an effective binding technique for expressing and disseminating the intensity of emotions, potentially triggering emotional responses and mobilizing affective publics around disability discourse.

l.442.

These negotiations around fictional versus real representations of disability can be understood as coping strategies for processing what is perceived as potentially traumatic content, as Divon and Eriksson Krutrök (2024) suggest in their analysis of how individuals negotiate strategies for coping with traumatic material in digital spaces.

l 454. However, these dynamics operate within what Noble (2018) identifies as platform logics that compound cultural discriminatory practices in humor, orienting them toward potentially dangerous outcomes by amplifying and systematizing existing biases through algorithmic recommendation systems and engagement metrics.

We then took all suggestions into account and reformulated and expanded the conclusions as follows:

The present study sought to explore the dynamics of online humor as a weaponizing mechanism that induces exclusion or resistance within digital publics. The investigation was conducted with a specific focus on the South African context. The present study contributes to ongoing discourses in several critical areas by examining platformed discrimination through the lens of humor. These areas include platformed discrimination, humor studies and the evolving nature of digital publics in the Global South. The present study sheds light on the potential for online humor, often perceived as innocuous, to be weaponized to perpetuate microaggressions and exclusion. Concurrently, it is demonstrated that humor can also serve as a tool for resistance and community building among marginalized groups. This work provides a nuanced understanding of humor's dual capacity in online spaces, particularly within a socio-political landscape as complex as South Africa's. It thereby helps scholars and practitioners better understand online humor as both a mechanism of exclusion and a potential site for resistance. The findings of this study underscore the inherent ambiguity in audience responses, which oscillate between a perceived 'step back to social (in)justice' and a 'universal judgement (but opaque) on laughter.' This ambiguity serves to emphasize the intricate and frequently contradictory nature of online interactions. In these contexts, interpretations of humor can vary significantly, and reactions are not always clear-cut. This paper presents a particular instance of what appears to be a broader phenomenon: derogatory humor directed towards people with disabilities, and the associated reactions. As a preliminary point of reflection, it is reasonable to hypothesize that in South Africa, even covert forms of discrimination on more sensitive topics (e.g. race or gender) would likely have elicited even stronger reactions. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that the proportion of comments that can be regarded as critical appears to at least correspond to the percentage of the population who are either directly or indirectly acquainted with disability. Within the relatively limited corpus of comments, a broad spectrum of sentiments and reactions is evident, ranging from condescension to overt hostility. It is somewhat surprising that even when discussing such a seemingly trivial topic, there is still an occurrence of both covert aggression against disabled individuals and overt aggression towards those who make fun of them. Moreover, this South African case study provides valuable insights that resonate with global conversations surrounding digital microaggressions, platform governance, and the challenges of content moderation, especially concerning ableist content. The distinctive socio-historical context of South Africa, characterized by its legacy of apartheid and persistent challenges concerning inequality, offers a compelling backdrop for observing the manifestation and negotiation of historical power dynamics in digital realms. The present findings emphasize the pressing necessity for platform developers and policymakers to take into consideration the cultural particularities and historical sensitivities that shape online interactions. This imperative necessitates a departure from a uniform content governance approach. This case study sheds light on the subtle ways in which humor can be used to both reinforce and challenge established social hierarchies. It also highlights the limitations of current moderation practices in addressing more nuanced forms of online harm.

This contribution aims to fulfill an emblematic and illustrative value that does not claim to exhaust the controversial topic of micro-aggressions filtered through humor, nor to be representative. On the contrary, it embraces what qualitative research allows—to raise collective questions on broad and complex issues by not limiting itself to a communicationist perspective that predominantly offers circumstantiated answers through analytical tools of tracking and measurement (Sorrentino, 2021). This case study aims to open up an under-addressed scenario of investigation, beginning to shed light on the phenomenon as an indispensable point of reflection in the breadth of the digital landscape, not only of the South African context. Revisiting our key insights—namely, the ambiguous nature of audience responses to derogatory humor, the manifestation of both covert and overt aggression even around seemingly light-hearted topics, and the specific ways the South African digital landscape reflects and shapes these interactions—this research serves as a springboard for future investigations. While this study provides qualitative depth, future work should expand in both scale and direction. This includes employing a larger sample and a mixed-methods approach to better understand the magnitude of the phenomenon and yield generalizable results. Furthermore, it is crucial to integrate the perspectives of disabled users themselves, to assess whether, how, and to what extent they feel personally affected. Future research should also interrogate the role of algorithmic moderation in either curbing or inadvertently amplifying such harmful content and explore humor's broader role in shaping platform cultures more deeply. Finally, it would be interesting to reflect on the perceived effectiveness of current policies and regulations in managing subtle and covert forms of online aggression.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Humor that hurts: an exploration of jokes about black women with disabilities on TikTok in South Africa

Thanks so much for the thoughtful revisions! The paper has clearly come a long way, and you've done a really good job addressing my earlier concerns. At this stage, I only have a few remaining comments. They’re lighter in quantity, but they do touch on some deeper questions I still have about where the paper currently stands in terms of its theoretical clarity, analysis, and coherence. Hopefully, these suggestions help tighten the conceptual framing and support you in making the most of the rich material you’re working with! :)

Introduction

Your paper introduces a potentially compelling framework by positioning humor as a “borderland” and proposing “moral detachment” as a lens for understanding digital responses to disability-related humor. I understand that this is just the introduction, but as it’s currently presented, these concepts are somewhat thrown out there without sufficient clarity or grounding. It’s difficult to discern how exactly the theoretical framing is structured or how it connects to existing scholarship in humor theory, disability studies, or digital culture. More explicit framing (even in a preliminary form) would help the reader understand the conceptual direction early on. Clarifying how “moral detachment” builds on or departs from prior work and outlining how these concepts relate to your methodological approach would strengthen the coherence and accessibility of the paper’s theoretical foundation.
You gesture toward the memetic and imitative nature of TikTok as a key platform logic, being an important framing given the affordances and cultural grammar of the app. However, this concept is not clearly returned to or integrated into the analysis of the comments. If memetic humor is indeed central to your argument, I would recommend engaging more directly with the mentioned scholarship that specifically examines memetic circulation, humor, and virality. This would help situate your intervention within an emerging body of work and clarify how the content you’re examining participates in or resists those memetic dynamics. More specifically, it would be helpful to ask yourself what exactly is “memetic” about the comments you analyze. Are there recurring joke formats, repeated phrasings, comment chains, or reactive patterns that imitate or remix each other? Is there evidence of in-group signaling or algorithmically rewarded replication? These are the types of dynamics that the concept of memetic communication can help unpack, but they need to be made explicit in your analysis. Right now, the term feels underdeveloped and would benefit from being more clearly operationalized in relation to your data.
There appears to be a phrasing and grammar issue in the following sentence: "The exponential growth in the number of its users can be partly related to the already prevalent use of YouTube, it can be considered as evidence of the desire for entertainment as a potent form of stress relief." More broadly, this kind of issue recurs throughout the paper (like “algo-rithmic”, with a comma). Thus, I recommend a careful round of proofreading to ensure clarity, grammatical accuracy, and smoother sentence construction.

Theoretical lens

While the concept of “moral detachment” is introduced as a key theoretical lens in thie section of the paper, it is not clearly or consistently taken up in the subsequent sections. As a result, I am afraid it is currently feels more like a conceptual placeholder than an actively mobilized analytical tool. This is particularly notable because the paper seems to promise an innovative intervention with understanding how humor functions as a borderland and how moral disengagement operates within digital responses to disability-related content. These are rich and timely ideas, and there is clear potential here to offer a meaningful contribution, especially given the South African context and the complexity of online reactions to marginalized bodies. To strengthen the work, I suggest the authors either (1) more explicitly develop and apply the concept of moral detachment throughout the analysis and discussion sections, showing how it helps explain the patterns of user responses, or (2) reconsider its prominence in the introduction if it is not going to be a central thread.
Same with “microaggressions.” This is not fully theorized or meaningfully woven into the analysis. Given that the data draws from TikTok comment sections responding to humor about disability, there is clear potential for a nuanced exploration of how microaggressions operate, whether through dismissal, minimization, ridicule, or coded language. I would encourage you to elaborate on what they mean by microaggressions, perhaps drawing from foundational literature or more recent work on microaggressions in digital environments. More importantly, this framework could be used to categorize and interpret some of the user responses you have gathered. Currently, the term appears more as a backdrop than a functioning analytical category, so I think that strengthening this dimension could help clarify the stakes of the paper and illuminate how harm circulates subtly in platformed discourse.

As a general note on the paper’s structure –

I think more paragraphing would be beneficial throughout. Some of the current sections rely on very long paragraphs that can be dense and difficult to follow. Breaking them up more frequently, especially when moving between distinct ideas, references, or analytical steps, would improve readability and help emphasize the progression of your argument. This would also make it easier for readers to grasp the key contributions you're making in each section.

Thank you, and I believe the paper is almost there!

Author Response

Firstly, we would like to thank very much the reviewer for prompting us to consider the issue in such depth. In general, we have made changes to the form in several places and are available for further proofreading. Within the agreed timeframe for revisions and in light of the work carried out in the first revision in accordance with the comments of the other two reviewers, we have tried to better explain the structure of the paper in the introduction:

The paper is structured as follows. It starts proposing humor as a borderland in relation to disability, focusing on its role in the broader cultural system. This theoretical framework draws on disability and humor studies, considering moral detachment as a lens through which to observe the reception of humor in the digital environment. This helps explain the discrepancy between what we consider acceptable and unacceptable to joke about, normalizing it or not. The processes of microaggressions on platforms are then deepened in the following paragraph, taking into account the growing studies that describe how narratives of resistance and exclusion can coexist, whether consciously or not.

Moreover, we have included the following reference to the growing body of research on microaggressions:

Further, it exposes disabled people to subtle forms of ableist discourse and microaggressions, blurring the line between overt hate and often resulting in increased emotional distress, anxiety about posting online and self-censorship over time (Hueng et al., 2022, 2024, 2025).

As well as we clarified the operational reference to moral detachment in the methodology section:

By doing so, the authors were able to undertake inductive-deductive coding iteratively (Skjott & Korsgaard, 2019; Quan-Haase & Sloan, 2022), naming and renaming emergent codes in light of the relevant literature at the intersection between disability and humor studies. Specifically, we adopted the following categories from Bandura and colleagues' (1996) moral detachment theory to interpret users' justifying and defensive reactions and thus investigate the wide range of microaggressions: Euphemistic labelling, which makes aggressive behavior seem less severe; Palliative comparison, which downplays a bad act by comparing it to something worse; Diffusion of responsibility, where responsibility is diluted among a group; Distortion of consequences, where the negative impact of an action is minimized or ignored; Dehumanization, where victims are stripped of human qualities; Victim blaming, where victims are seen as responsible for their own suffering.

Nevertheless, we believe that, in the case of this study, it is not TikTok's memetic form that can be explored in depth, but rather the blurred perception of what is and isn't acceptable through the platform. This case study is a specific lens through which to explore the distinction between laughing at and the public reaction to this laughter, which in fact analyzes the nuances of microaggressions through the model of moral detachment. We strongly believe that the reviewer's suggestions are relevant but more suitable for further studies on our part, which go beyond the initial scope of this research.

We sincerely hope that this work will contribute to further reflections on the Global South.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear, thank you for this important and timely work, and for the substantial revisions you’ve already made! I have just a few additional comments that I believe will be valuable in moving the paper toward its final, publishable form.

Abstract

The abstract clearly signals the relevance of studying ableism and microaggressions in online spaces, and the intersectional focus on Black women with disabilities is compelling. Well done. At the same time, I think that the abstract would benefit from a clearer sense of order and flow. Currently, it shifts between context, methodological reflections, and findings in a way that makes it slightly tricky to follow. I recommend restructuring so that it moves more linearly from (1) broader context, (2) the specific research gap, (3) the case study and methods, and then (4) the main findings and contribution. This would ensure readers immediately see what is novel about your approach and what your key argument adds to existing scholarship.

Introduction

The introduction covers a lot of ground, but I am afraid that it currently moves too quickly across several ideas without fully signposting how they build toward the paper itself. Right now, as a reader, I am taken from TikTok’s growth in South Africa, to its affordances, to hate speech and weaponization, and then to regulation, all in a compressed space. I’d suggest slowing the pacing by breaking it into clearer stages: (1) establish TikTok’s growth and local relevance, (2) outline its distinctive affordances and risks, and (3) situate why these dynamics matter for this study. I also appreciate that you already include a section that describes what this paper does. That’s very helpful! To make it even stronger, I suggest making the contribution more explicit by clearly spelling out the gap you address, the research questions you ask (and consider framing them as formal research questions), the methods you use, and a brief teaser of your findings. At the moment, these elements are present but remain somewhat implicit.

Humor as a borderland for disability

The theoretical background is impressively comprehensive! But at times it feels dense and slightly detached from the specific phenomenon your paper is addressing. The material on humor, disability, and moral disengagement is essential. Yet, I, as a reader, need more reminders of how these frameworks connect to the empirical focus of TikTok jokes and comments. Without these signposts, the section risks reading like a stand-alone literature review. I’d encourage you to insert brief bridges that tie each theoretical strand back to the paper’s aims (like “This matters for our study because it helps us interpret how TikTok comments frame disability through humor…”). This will keep us oriented around your case. Also, the segue into the second part of the section could be stronger. Right now, the transition (“This is especially crucial in the platform landscape we will explore in the next section”) feels generic. Instead, try to use this moment to outline what additional knowledge the reader needs to transition from broad theories of humor and disability to the specifics of “platformed humor”.

Platformed microaggressive humor

Overall, the theoretical background is rich and well-cited, but it currently feels – again - overly dense, with long paragraphs that cover multiple ideas at once. As a reader, I sometimes lose sight of the specific study you are conducting and why these theoretical perspectives matter for it. I’d encourage you to break this section into shorter, more focused paragraphs and streamline some of the wording so that the argument is less condensed.

For example, in the earlier discussion of humor’s role in shaping group identity and social boundaries, it would be helpful to briefly signal how these dynamics resonate with TikTok jokes and microaggressions directed at people with disabilities. Likewise, in the later section on algorithmic characteristics and the replication of viral humor, a short reminder that these mechanisms of discriminatory circulation will be illustrated in the South African case would keep the reader anchored in the purpose of your study.

Finally, the transition to the South African context remains abrupt. Rather than shifting directly into it, I encourage you to make explicit why this context adds necessary knowledge, so, for example, how it illustrates the intersection of disability, race, and platformed humor in ways that extend the more general theories you’ve just laid out. I believe this will make the flow into the empirical section feel purposeful!

South African digital context

The opening of the South African digital context section currently begins with a broad statement about social media and online humor more generally (“Over the past two decades, social media has contributed…”), only moving to South Africa with “for example” further down. Since this section is meant to foreground the South African context, I’d encourage you to start immediately with that framing. The African context here is not an “example” of a broader point, but the very focus of the section, and the writing should reflect that from the outset.

Materials and Methods

The Materials and Methods section currently goes beyond describing the research design and data collection process, and already introduces elements of analysis and findings (like the quantitative breakdown of supportive vs. condemning comments, with accompanying figures). I recommend relocating these results to the Findings/Results section. This will help keep the structure clear. Methods should focus on how the data was gathered, selected, and analyzed, while results should show what emerged from that analysis.

Conclusion

The conclusion requires futher thinking and revision. You offer a strong restatement of your empirical findings and situate them effectively in the South African context; however, the current version lacks a meaningful dialogue with the theoretical landscape you developed earlier in the paper. At present, it relies heavily on descriptive insights and policy implications without thoroughly clarifying how your findings build upon, extend, or challenge the humor/disability theories and microaggression literature outlined in the theoretical background. A stronger theoretical closure would help demonstrate what your case study contributes back to broader scholarly conversations on humor, platformed discrimination, and digital publics. I encourage you to reframe the conclusion to return explicitly to the theoretical debates you opened with (like humor as boundary-making, microaggressions as normalized yet resisted, algorithmic amplification), to articulate clearly what is original in your study’s contribution, and to sharpen the purpose of the conclusion so that it not only summarizes but also provokes; so think about showing what doors your study opens for future research and what it definitively adds to critical humor studies and disability/media scholarship. I truly believe this would transform the conclusion from an empirical wrap-up into a meaningful theoretical and methodological intervention!

Thank you for your work! :)

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer,
First of all, thank you very much for your valuable comments aimed at making the transitions within the text more fluid and effective. We have included the additions or changes highlighted in yellow in each section.

REV. Abstract

Our Response: Below is the modified abstract (with the relevant sentences in bold).

"Since the end of Apartheid in 1994, South Africa has striven to address past discrimination against members of marginalized groups such as Africans, women and LGBTQ+ individuals. Sophisticated media legislation and a vibrant civil society forged in the struggle against Apartheid ensure limited discrimination in traditional media and relatively fringe online forums. However, subtle forms of undermining signal the persistent legacy of a colonial and patriarchal past. While incidents of online racism and sexism are relatively well documented, ableism deserves more attention. Despite growing scholarship on digital discrimination, a significant research gap remains in understanding how ableist microaggressions manifest online, particularly when intersecting with race and gender. As a result of established media tropes, microaggressions against people with disabilities are somewhat naturalized and reproduced on social media, yet their intersectional dimensions—especially targeting Black women with disabilities—remain underexplored. This paper addresses this gap through a focused case study of jokes targeting Black women with disabilities in one TikTok video and the approximately 700 comments. Considering (dis)ability's intersections with race, gender, socio-economic status, these media texts are subjected to a critical thematic analysis. The study also problematizes the methodological challenges associated with finding, identifying, and purposively selecting such content. The analysis reveals a set of historically and contextually rooted microaggressions expressed through humor, which, as a cultural expression, is inherently covert and thus hard to detect and regulate. This research contributes to understanding how intersectional ableism operates digitally and highlights the need for nuanced approaches to identifying subtle forms of discrimination in online spaces."

REV: Introduction

Our Response: We have incorporated all suggestions by modifying the text highlighted in yellow in the file and explicitly integrating the search questions, as follows:

"As a result of established media tropes being reproduced on social media, microaggressions against people with disabilities have become somewhat normalized, particularly when humor is used as a vehicle for such content. Despite growing awareness of digital discrimination, there remains insufficient understanding of how ableist humor functions as a form of microaggression in South African digital spaces, particularly when targeting intersectional identities such as Black women with disabilities. This study addresses the following questions (RQs):

How does humor targeting people with disabilities manifest in TikTok's comment sections?
What are the dominant response patterns to such humor among South African users?
How do these responses reflect broader sociocultural attitudes toward disability and intersectionality?

Using qualitative thematic analysis, we examine approximately 700 comments on a TikTok video from an official comedy profile featuring a joke about a Black woman with a (dis)ability. The analysis reveals two distinct macro cognitive responses to disability humor: 'A step back to social (in)justice' and 'Universal judgement (but opaque) on laughter'. These findings demonstrate how humor can perpetuate established patterns of marginalization while triggering complex negotiation processes around acceptable forms of entertainment. This research contributes to understanding how intersectional ableism operates in digital contexts, offering insights into the mechanisms through which humor normalizes discrimination and the varied ways audiences engage with such content in post-apartheid South Africa."

REV-Humor as a borderland for disability

Our Response: We have integrated greater reader guidance into the text with specific sentences at the beginning, body, and end (paragraph 2.1), which are always highlighted in yellow in the text (Line 96-203), such as: "This theoretical understanding is crucial for analyzing TikTok comments, as it helps us identify how users construct and justify their responses to disability humor through seemingly contradictory positions—simultaneously finding content entertaining while recognizing its potentially harmful nature." "Understanding these internalized models becomes particularly important when examining TikTok interactions, where users draw on deeply embedded cultural stereotypes about disability to interpret and respond to humorous content targeting Black women with disabilities." "This boundary-making function is especially visible in TikTok's comment sections, where humor targeting disability serves to reinforce distinctions between 'normal' and 'other,' while simultaneously creating communities of shared understanding among those who find such content amusing."

REV-Platformed microaggressive humor

Our Response: We have included the following illustrative subparagraphs in 2.2 Platformed microaggressive humor:
2.2.1 Disability Self-Representation vs. Algorithmic Discrimination
2.2.2 Algorithmic Amplification of Discriminatory Content
2.2.3 Viral Humor and Unconscious Discrimination
2.2.4 Digital Distance and Dehumanization
2.2.5 Bridging to the South African Context

Here too, we have integrated greater reader support into the text with specific phrases at the beginning, in the body, and at the end, always highlighted in yellow in the text (lines 206-304), for example: "This boundary-making function becomes particularly significant in TikTok's comment sections, where jokes about disability serve not only to entertain but to establish who belongs within the community of those who 'get' the humor and who remains excluded as the target of ridicule."

REV-South African digital context

Our Response: As suggested, we have reworded the opening of this section in a targeted manner as follows: "In South Africa, where forms of social and cultural discrimination are prohibited by law (Bhabha, 2009), expressions of hate speech are difficult to find except in veiled form (Author, 2023; Author, 2024). They can only be found in certain minority spaces, such as online forums, blogs and comments sections on social media pages (Mudavanhu, 2017). This legal framework creates a particular dynamic where discriminatory attitudes toward disability must be expressed through more subtle mechanisms, with humor serving as a primary vehicle for perpetuating ableist stereotypes"
As well as dividing it into the following paragraphs, always trying to explain the underlying meaning and guide the reader with text highlighted in yellow:

2.3.1 Historical and Cultural Dimensions of Disability Humor,

2.3.2 Digital Spaces, Black Identity, and Marginalization

2.3.3 Intersectional Hierarchy and Digital Representation

REV-Materials and Methods

Our Response: We have moved the results section as suggested, as it is much more consistent in the following section. Thank you once again for your thoughtful comments, as after several rounds of editing, some things can be overlooked, and we believe it is really important to make the text easier to read.

REV-Conclusion

Our Response: We are very grateful for this comment, which led us to extensively reformulate our conclusions. We have rewritten them, organizing them into the following subparagraphs: Conclusions: Reframing humor as digital boundary-making, 5.1 Decolonizing Digital Humor Research, 5.2 Toward Intersectional Digital Justice. Below is the section, which concludes with questions and areas of application for future research on this topic:

"This South African TikTok case study fundamentally extends existing theoretical frameworks on humor and digital discrimination in several key ways. Our analysis reveals that Meyer's (2000) classic functions of humor—identification, clarification, reinforcement, and differentiation—operate with intensified complexity in algorithm-mediated environments. The dual response patterns we identified—'A step back to social (in)justice' and 'Universal judgement (but opaque) on laughter'—demonstrate that digital platforms do not simply amplify existing humor dynamics but create entirely new forms of contested boundary-making where users simultaneously participate in and resist discriminatory practices.

While existing literature conceptualizes microaggressions as normalized forms of discrimination (Adams & Zúñiga, 2016), our findings reveal a more dynamic process in digital spaces. The South African context illuminates how microaggressions through humor become sites of active negotiation rather than passive reception. Users do not merely absorb or reject ableist content; they engage in complex meaning-making processes that reflect broader struggles over post-apartheid social hierarchies. This challenges linear models of microaggression impact and suggests instead a recursive model where discrimination and resistance co-evolve within the same interactive space. Bandura's concept of moral disengagement, as applied to humor reception (Millner Davis, 2003), requires significant revision in the context of algorithmic platforms. Our data reveals that moral disengagement is not a static psychological process but a sociotechnically mediated performance. TikTok users employ sophisticated strategies to maintain plausible deniability while participating in discriminatory humor, suggesting that platforms create new opportunities for what we term "algorithmic moral distancing"—the use of platform affordances to obscure individual responsibility for harmful content circulation.

Our findings fundamentally challenge Gillespie's (2018) notion of platforms as "open and non-interventionist cornucopias." The South African case demonstrates that TikTok's apparent neutrality actually amplifies existing inequalities through algorithmic mechanisms that treat all identities as equivalent. This creates what we identify as "intersectional erasure"—where the specific vulnerabilities of Black women with disabilities become invisible within platform governance frameworks designed for generic harm prevention. This study extends scholarship on counter-publics (Hill, 2018) by revealing how spaces designed for resistance can simultaneously perpetuate marginalization. Black South African digital spaces function as sites of racial empowerment while maintaining ableist hierarchies, creating "hierarchical counter-publics" where liberation for some groups occurs at the expense of others. This complicates romanticized notions of digital spaces as universally democratizing and highlights the need for intersectional approaches to platform analysis.

5.1 Decolonizing Digital Humor Research

This study makes crucial methodological contributions to critical humor studies by demonstrating the limitations of Northern-centric theoretical frameworks when applied to Global South contexts. Our analysis reveals that humor functions differently in postcolonial contexts, where "weaponized nostalgia" for pre-colonial cultural practices intersects with contemporary digital discrimination in complex ways. The South African case illuminates how colonial histories create specific forms of "layered marginalization" that require new analytical tools.

Our findings question the universal applicability of incongruity, superiority, and relief theories of humor (Meyer, 2000; Watson, 2015). In the South African context, humor operates through what we identify as "historicized superiority"—where contemporary jokes draw power from centuries-old hierarchies of oppression. This suggests that humor theories must account for how colonial legacies shape digital interactions in ways that transcend individual psychological processes. This study also offers the concept of "platformed intersectionality"—a framework that explains how digital platforms intensify and transform offline inequalities through algorithm-mediated interactions. Unlike traditional intersectionality theory, platformed intersectionality accounts for how technological affordances create new forms of discrimination that exceed the sum of individual identity-based oppressions. Our South African case reveals three key mechanisms of platformed intersectionality:

Algorithmic Amplification: Platform algorithms don't simply circulate content but actively reshape social hierarchies by determining which forms of discrimination gain visibility.
Viral Normalization: Memetic circulation transforms individual acts of discrimination into community-wide practices, creating what we term "distributed complicity."
Resistance Fragmentation: Digital platforms simultaneously enable resistance while fragmenting collective action through individualized user experiences and echo chamber effects.

5.2 Toward Intersectional Digital Justice

This South African case study demonstrates that achieving digital justice requires more than content moderation or policy reform—it demands fundamental transformation in how we theorize, design, and govern digital platforms. Our findings reveal that humor is never "just humor" but always a mechanism through which power relations are negotiated, maintained, and potentially disrupted.

The theoretical frameworks we have developed—platformed intersectionality, algorithmic moral distancing, hierarchical counter-publics—provide tools for understanding how digital technologies intensify offline inequalities while creating new possibilities for resistance. As digital platforms increasingly shape global communication, the lessons from South Africa's complex negotiation of humor, disability, and digital power become essential for scholars and practitioners worldwide. This study ultimately argues that critical humor studies, disability scholarship, and platform studies must converge to address the urgent challenges of digital discrimination. Only through such interdisciplinary collaboration can we develop the theoretical and practical tools necessary for creating more equitable digital futures.

Several crucial avenues for future investigation are still open, for instance: How do other Global South contexts reveal different patterns of platformed intersectionality? Comparative studies across African, Asian, and Latin American digital cultures could illuminate how colonial legacies shape platform interactions differently. Future research should examine how recommendation algorithms specifically target marginalized users with discriminatory content, requiring new methodological approaches that combine computational analysis with ethnographic insight. Critical future work must center disabled users' own experiences and resistance strategies, moving beyond analyzing discrimination toward supporting community-led platform alternatives. This research points toward the need for "intersectional platform design" that accounts for multiple, overlapping forms of marginalization rather than treating discrimination as a series of discrete problems."

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

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Humor That Hurts: An Exploration of Jokes About Black Women with Disabilities on TikTok in South Africa

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