ABSTRACT Using the example of the Twitter feed #MeToo, this paper argues that CDS, in its task to understand more about how social media can offer ways for voices to challenge ideologies from below, needs to explore the ideas of ‘nodes’. Right wing populism in the west: Social media discourse and echo chambers. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/majid_khosravinik/publications) and ‘echo chambers’ in greater detail. Though #MeToo did provide an ideological challenge, I show how it is also discursively chaotic and partly driven by influencers who (...) may have a range of other motivations to align with the moral capital in the feed. At another level, #MeToo is highly nodal in terms of affect and moral conviction. These features can be understood in regard to nodal power of affective connectivity. Affective publics and structure of storytelling: Sentiment, events and mediality. Information, Communication and Society, 19, 307–324. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2015.1109697) and also in terms of major shifts in accepted norms of debating politics and society driven by social media. I consider what this means for CDS in relation to identifying discourses and discovering ideology in the social media landscape. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Social media has given way to information and prosumption-oriented discursive fields wherein individuals construct their own social identities. Although interactivity, multimodality, user-centeredness and accessibility are the unique aspects of digital media but the fact that digital media as effective spaces for representing extreme self/other representation while being anonymous and free from following social norms, can cause dysfunctional social behaviours such as cyber hate. Mirroring the normative notions of femininity, masculinity and gender stereotype allows groups and individuals to connect and (...) express similar manifestations of hate, which, often result in the emergence of a ‘discursive spiral of hate’, misogyny and sexism. This paper draws on the important caveats discussed around Social Media-Critical Discourse Studies understanding of the contemporary digital discourses to deconstruct the complex relations between gender, hate speech and celebrities’ discourses on social media. In particular, how Lena Dunham, American celebrity, portrays herself on her Instagram page by going against the hegemonic views and how the audiences, i.e. the digital prosumers perceive that portrayal. Analysing 2000 user-generated comments deconstruct how women are required to suppress their feeling and limit their authentic online presentation to maintain the outward countenance that matches the stereotypical gender roles in audiences’ state of mind. (shrink)

Drawing upon lived experiences, this article explores challenges facing feminist academics sharing work in the media, and the gendered, raced intersections of ‘being visible’ in digital cultures which enable direct, public response. We examine online backlash following publication of an article about representations of Meghan Markle’s feminism being co-opted by the patriarchal monarchy. While in it we argued against vilification of Markle, we encountered what we term distortions of research remediation as news outlets reported our work under headlines such as (...) ‘academics accuse Meghan of dropping feminism like a hot potato’. Negative responses were polarised: anti-Meghan, and pro-Meghan. In response, we received accusations of sexist, racist bullying, debate over definitions of feminism, claims feminism has gone ‘too far’, variously worded directives to ‘shut up’, gendered personal insults, and threats of doxxing. This article examines the tenor of public discourse around feminism and visible feminists. It questions the responsibility of institutions benefiting from public intellectuals for the wellbeing of employees in the public eye, particularly in the anti-intellectual socio-political context of Brexit and Donald Trump, where the costs for ‘visible’ women and feminist activism are ever higher. It also considers our responsibility as researchers to ensure our contributions to public discourse do not exacerbate existing harms of a white-supremacist, classist society. This article interrogates the risks – of misrepresentation, hyper-visibility, and reputational, psychological and potentially physical harm – faced by those engaging in acts of public feminism. (shrink)

When we participate in political debate or protests, we are judged by how we look, which clothes we wear, by our skin colour, gender and body language. This results in exclusions and limits our freedom of expression. The Politics of Becoming explores radical democratic acts of disidentification to counter this problem. Anonymity in masked protest, graffiti, and online de-bate interrupts our everyday identities. This allows us to live our multiple selves. In the digital age, anonymity becomes an inherent part of (...) everyday communication. Through our smart devices we express our selves differently. As cyborgs, our identities are disrupted and reassembled. We curate self-representations on social media, create avatars, share selfies and choose the skin colour of our emojis. The Politics of Becoming encourages us to engage in a revolution of the self. Democratic pluralism is not only a matter of institutional design but also about how we express our identities. Inner revolutions change our personal realities and plant a seed for democratic futures. (shrink)

Over the past decade, Hungary has become a noteworthy example of democratic backsliding, marked by a pronounced shift towards conservative values and traditional gender roles within government policies. This trend, centred around Christian principles, has manifested in political campaigns actively opposing LGBTQ+ rights and the challenging of normative family structure. The resultant media campaigns and policy implementations have ignited extensive public discourse on gender and sexuality, prominently visible on social media platforms. This study conducts a qualitative analysis of the online (...) discussion surrounding the LGBTQ+ children’s book, Fairyland Is for Everyone, to explore the contemporary gender discourse in Hungary. By examining social media comments under Hungarian online news articles, the research identifies three prevailing discursive lenses—heteronormative familism, neocolonialism, and diversity and inclusion—illustrating both the concurrent rise of anti-gender movements and the fortification of LGBTQ+ allyship in Hungary, while also considering broader transnational trends in LGBTQ+ rights and visibility. (shrink)

The provisions of United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) provisions and the CEDAW Committee’s recommendations expand on the theoretical and practical ways in which countries can combat gender-based discrimination. In Pakistan, the digitisation of women and feminist collectives and their experience of violent misogyny on the internet accentuates the weakness of the country’s internet security mechanisms. This study utilises the human rights framework of CEDAW to assess the performance of Pakistan’s internet security (...) mechanisms, and highlights the state’s obligations towards women’s digital safety. Informed by the CEDAW’s provisions and the Committee’s contributions, this paper provides recommendations to combat gender-based violence and improve Pakistan’s internet security mechanisms. (shrink)

The international #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment constitutes the most prominent contemporary campaign against sexual harassment worldwide. It exposed the issue by undermining the ‘culture of silence’ prevailing in several contexts, including political institutions. This article analyses one specific variant of #MeToo, the campaign MeTooEP that emerged in the European Parliament. MeTooEP is unique in many ways: it was the first collective action against sexual harassment in parliaments emerging in the #MeToo aftermath and it was the first collective action within (...) the EP led by members of the staff, which eventually drove some internal policy changes. Using a unique, large interview dataset, the analysis shows how the actors behind MeTooEP were crucial in shaping the campaign. Their knowledge of institutional rules, practices and daily presence in the EP facilitated their advocacy and transformed the Parliament into an enabling platform for their actions. With the help of Feminist Institutionalism, the analysis demonstrates how the formal and informal institutional EP bodies with their rules and regulations shaped MeTooEP in ways that constrained and empowered it. (shrink)

Based on content analysis and in-depth interviews with the editors of 5Harfliler, Catlak Zemin and Recel-blog, popular pro-feminist women’s websites in Turkey, this article shows that these websites constitute important projects in feminist memory work in two ways: explicitly, by commemorating women in history, the gains of the women’s movement in Turkey, and by archiving misogynist policies and gender unequal legislation; implicitly, in the essays written by anonymous women whose personal memories of feminist activism as well as oppression and patriarchy (...) experienced in everyday life become sources for discussion of feminist identity and politics and contribute to women’s history writing from below. The websites also serve as a platform where feminist identity is negotiated and the past, present and future of feminist politics are discussed in a humorous, agonistic and affective style. The source of deliberation is often women’s everyday experiences and concerns rather than formal politics. Although keeping a distance from formal politics renders these websites open to criticisms of naiveté and apoliticism, they provide a creative platform for the constructive discussion of women’s shared everyday problems which are closely connected to a larger political context. (shrink)

At first thought, iteration seems banal. It is about repeating the existing; nothing is changing. But this special issue shows that, in an era obsessed with the new, it is often the repetition of the old that creates social change. Iteration fosters persuasion. It affords opportunities for critical and creative engagement with meaning, values and knowledge. It invites collaboration, though its apparent simplicity often belies a tremendous amount of individual and collective labour involved in the practices of iteration. Through its (...) repetition of the existing, however, iteration also can be a mechanism for reproducing the status quo. Its pervasiveness and banality naturalises power, and its mimetic qualities shrink spaces for critical distance and care. The editors of this special issue have brought together a delightful and fascinating diversity of articles focussed on iteration in cultural production in the digital age. We hop across geographies to examine lockdown diaries, artists’ books, socialist memes, fake news, the design of social media platforms and artificial intelligence, activism, film, social media forum moderation, news website reader comments and more. Iterating through the collection as a whole, across its many disciplines, is a commitment to theorising through empirical evidence, to explaining with critique, and to providing pathways to praxis. These characteristics of this special issue, and the many concepts and arguments it puts forward, make this collection of work exceptionally rich material for seeing iteration and how it shapes the world we live in today, as well as the world we want it to be. In this preface, I take a media sociology approach to show how iteration can be usefully understood as collaborative communication for change. I see this understanding of iteration, whose ascendancy is related to the ascendancy of computer science, as baked into the form of communication technologies—and thus as shaping the kinds of iteration that are possible when we use these technologies. This understanding also prompts us to focus on the connection between iteration and social change. To explore how this works, I analytically slow down the practice of iteration to show that it is a communication practice of transmission. That transmission practice is itself constituted of cognate communication practices—the reception, evaluation and production of knowledge—in which visibility and persuasion are key. In the latter parts of the preface, I illustrate this through the example of witnessing as iteration, as the high-stakes nature of witnessing make it a canary in the coalmine, more generally, for mediated communication in the digital age. I show how breaking the witnessing practice down into its various parts allows us to see how power enters and inflects who and what are iterated, when—and who and what are not. Thinking critically with iteration and against unequal power relations, the praxis this preface suggests is one—much in line with the rest of this special issue—of explaining how iteration might move the grassroots towards their goals. (shrink)

In this paper we will examine the influence digital media has had on political dialogue in the public sphere. We will explore the phenomenon through an example case, namely the global feminist #MeToo movement which started in 2017. Within the framework of the #MeToo Movement, we introduce and examine the challenges digital media poses to the political dialogue in the public sphere. We start by going through concepts and theories utilized in this research paper. Then we will discuss the relationship (...) between digital media and #MeToo, after which we will assess the negative and positive outcomes of the #MeToo movement. Finally, an overall assessment concerning the movement and phenomenon around it is given. Our main argument is that while making the public sphere more inclusive, digital media has also made public debate and political discussion more polarized and antagonistic. (shrink)