1. Feminist activists discuss practices of monetisation: digital feminist activism, neoliberalism, and subjectivity

This article explores the politics of ‘freelance feminism’ by drawing on 30 qualitative in-depth interviews with digital feminist activists. By documenting and analysing the different ways in which digital feminist activism can be monetised, the article shows that the potential to generate income is frequently discussed by, and contemplated amongst, activists. As this article argues, the monetisation of digital feminist activism goes beyond the application of market principles to political protest movements. When activism is monetised, activists’ emotional investments and passion become mobilised and tied to income generation. At the same time, and through emphases on self-branding and ‘authenticity’, activists’ selves are formed and rearranged in line with neoliberal values of entrepreneurialism and market competition. This article therefore shows that the workings of neoliberalism in digital feminist activism play out on an economic level, but also on the levels of affect and subjectivity.

Under review (European Journal of Cultural Studies)

2. Creating content for Instagram: Digital feminist activism and the politics of class

This article explores some of the classed dynamics of doing digital feminist activism. Based on 30 qualitative in-depth interviews with feminist activists, who are based in Germany and the UK, the article examines the ways in which class background and class inequalities shape feminists’ experiences of being politically active on Instagram. Taking Instagram’s visual focus as a starting point for analysis, the article demonstrates the know-how and editorial skills required to produce visually appealing content. Access to this form of expertise is not equally available, however, and class background affects – though does not determine – who feels confident and at ease in producing visually engaging content. Shifting to a different set of knowledges, the second part of the article homes in on a widely shared sense amongst the activists that they had to know and say the ‘right’ things when taking part in activism online. Self-education was deemed an important feature of doing digital feminist activism, and this article critically explores the classed, but also racialised politics of digital ‘learning cultures’, and the ways in which the apparent requirement ‘to know’ may have exclusionary effects.

Under review (Astrolabio)

3. Are we all influencers now? Feminist activists discuss the distinction between activists and influencers

Drawing on 30 qualitative in-depth interviews with a diverse group of feminist activists who do their activism online, this article critically analyses how research participants construct and portray ‘activists’ and ‘influencers’. One theme that emerges from the data is the commercial orientation of influencers, the monetisation of their activities online, and how this differs from activist pursuits. Activism, in this context, was constructed as focused on making social change, and not driven by commercial interests. This article argues that the research participants’ discussion of the differences between ‘influencer’ and ‘activist’, and the attribution of monetisation to influencers, underplays the ways in which market logics structure contemporary forms of activism that take place in the digital economy. Second, the article shows that an investment in the perfect underpins constructions of activism as a politically pure endeavour, and places the investment in the perfect into wider, and feminised cultures of perfection, which privilege white, middle-class femininity. Lastly, the article highlights the feminisation and trivialisation of influencers, and therefore cautions against accounts that uncritically present influencing as trivial and feminine, vis-à-vis activism as more serious.

In preparation for submission.

Events

Digital feminist activism: a mini conference

King’s College London, 20^th of April 2023, 2.00 – 7.00 pm

Funded by the British Academy Grant: Feminism is Trending: Digital Feminist Activism, Labour, and Subjectivity

In recent years, feminism has experienced a wave of unprecedented popularity in North America and Western Europe. This resurgence variously manifests itself in renewed media interest in feminist stories, celebrities embracing feminism and a swell of activism that increasingly – though not exclusively – takes place in digital spaces. As Hester Baer (2016: 18) pointed out, “digital activism constitutes a paradigm shift within feminist protest culture” and there is now a sizable body of research in feminist media studies, which highlights the benefits and pitfalls of such activism (e.g. Jackson et al., 2020; Mendes et al., 2019; Steele, 2021). For instance, in terms of access, researchers have highlighted exclusions around age and class due to a lack of media literacy (e.g. Fotopoulou, 2016) while others have demonstrated that certain sites provide a platform for marginalised groups, such as Black women and trans communities (e.g., Jackson and Banaszczyk, 2016; Jackson et al., 2020; Steele, 2021). In addition, research into digital feminist activism has shown that social media’s affordances can be exploited to reach a large audience across different localities, facilitate open engagement with feminist ideas, raise consciousness and re-frame dominant cultural narratives (Mendes et al., 2019). Researchers have also demonstrated that digital feminist activism can have tangible effects. According to Sarah Jackson, Moya Bailey and Brooke Foucault Welles (2020: xxxii), “such hashtags as #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo have had far-reaching influence, moving debates about identity politics, inequality, violence, and citizenship from the margins to the center and into places as crucial as presidential agendas”.

Bringing together speakers from the UK and the US, who specialise in different geographical contexts such as the US, UK, Germany and Nigeria, this conference will explore some facets of digital feminist activism. In particular, the event will shed light on the complex interplay between digital protest cultures and neoliberalism as well as digital feminist activism and the classed and racialised politics of ‘the perfect’.

This event will take place at King’s College London on April 20^th, between 2.00 – 7.00 pm. Participation is free.

 

Panel I: Digital feminist activism, the politics of class, and ‘the perfect’

Dr Simidele Dosekun, London School of Economics and Political Science: The Class Politics of '#BeingFemaleinNigeria'

In 2015, Nigerian women on Twitter convened around the hashtag “#BeingFemaleinNigeria” (#BFIN) to share their experiences and critiques of patriarchal power and culture in Nigeria. This paper explores the representational claims that were put forward in the tweets, and also interrogates their intersectional, in particular, class politics. It argues that the #BFIN campaign was dominated by the voice, experience and concerns of a young, socio-economically privileged, urban career woman – the 'empowered young woman,’ I propose to call the type. While making urgently important claims about mundane sexist attitudes and practices that impede the empowered young Nigerian woman, the campaign remained quite elite in its horizons and failed to represent or reflect upon the intersectional oppressions that the vast majority of women in the country face.

Simidele Dosekun is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research centres black African women to explore questions of gender, race, subjectivity and power in a global context. She is the author of Fashioning Postfeminism: Spectacular Femininity and Transnational Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2020). Her work has appeared in Feminist Media Studies, Feminism and Psychology, and Feminist Africa, among other journals.

Katrin Schindel, King’s College London: “My profile said ‘intersectional feminism’, now it only says ‘feminism’ because I didn’t feel safe with that anymore” – Individual responsibility, anxiety, and the perfect intersectional feminist

In this paper, I will draw on 22 interviews with digital feminists about their perceptions of debates around intersectionality in contemporary German (speaking) digital feminism. My analysis of popular intersectionality and allyship discourses will demonstrate that these discourses converge in producing another category of the perfect (McRobbie 2015), the perfect intersectional feminist. I will highlight neoliberal notions around white responsibility and individualisation as well as the rise of ‘woke’ culture (Sobande et al., 2022), as I unpack the figure of the perfect intersectional feminist and its underlying classed, gendered, and racialised dimensions. Based on the discourses reflected by my participants, I demonstrate the emergence of a new feminist imperative, whereby, in order to express white allyship, one needs to be constantly informed, educated and reflecting oneself, as well as educating others about all possible debates and terms regarding intersectional identities and discourses. Additionally, in contemporary digital ‘woke’ culture, popular intersectionality demands perfection of each individual – mistakes are immediately called out and one has to instantly demonstrate one’s ‘learning’ and never make that same mistake again. Ultimately though, this imperative to be the perfect intersectional feminist and ally works to re-establish patriarchal notions of a white bourgeois femininity as well as white saviourism.

Katrin Schindel is a PhD candidate in the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London. Her research explores intersectionality and its popularisation under neoliberalism in German speaking digital feminist discourses. Previously trained in Gender Studies as well as a teacher for Social Sciences and EFL, Katrin has taught courses on gender, (social) media, activism, and the politics of representation, and was an invited guest lecturer on intersectionality and digital feminism. Her work can be found in the soon to be published collection on Women's Activism Online and the Global Struggle for Social Change(2023) in the Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change series. Some of Katrin’s research was also presented at the 20^th Nordic Migration Research conference (2021) and the New Directions in Feminism and Media conference (2022).

Christina Scharff, On “saying the right things”: class, race, and the need ‘to know’, King’s College London: This presentation explores some of the classed dynamics of doing digital feminist activism. Drawing on 30 qualitative in-depth interviews with feminist activists, who are based in Germany and the UK, the talk examines the ways in which class background and class inequalities shape feminists’ experiences of being politically active on Instagram. Taking Instagram’s visual focus as a starting point for analysis, the presentation demonstrates the know-how and editorial skills required to produce visually appealing content. Access to this form of expertise is not equally available, however, and class background affects – though does not determine – who feels confident and at ease in producing visually engaging content. Shifting to a different set of knowledges, the second part of the presentation homes in on a widely shared sense amongst the activists that they had to know and say the ‘right’ things when taking part in activism online. Self-education was deemed an important feature of doing digital feminist activism, and this presentation critically explores the classed, but also racialised politics of digital ‘learning cultures’, and the ways in which the apparent requirement ‘to know’ may have exclusionary effects.

Dr Christina Scharff is Reader in Gender, Media and Culture at King’s College London. She currently holds the British Academy grant ‘Feminism is Trending: digital feminist activism, labour and subjectivity’. Dr Scharff is author of numerous publications, including Repudiating Feminism: Young Women in a Neoliberal World (Routledge, 2012); Gender, subjectivity, and cultural work: The classical music profession (Routledge, 2018), and co-editor (with Rosalind Gill) of New Femininities: Postfeminism, neoliberalism and Subjectivity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

 

Panel II: Digital feminist activism and neoliberalism

Hannah Curran-Troop, City University of London

Freelance feminists in crisis

This paper explores the motif of ‘freelance feminists in crisis’ by analysing the working practices of several feminist creative and cultural enterprises in London. It considers how ongoing experiences of pandemic precarity and austerity combined with the current ‘cost of living crisis’ have pushed these precarious feminist groups towards more entrepreneurial, self-promotional, branded, and platformised practices in order to sustain their work. In particular, this paper homes in on the mediation of the ‘cost of living crisis’ and the affective impact of its framing. It examines how a repeated narrative around ‘crisis’ in the UK has exacerbated and crystallized specific survival tactics of these freelance feminists which are profoundly entrepreneurial in their practice. In the process, it interrogates the contradictions such neoliberal imperatives bring to feminist politics, activism and collective practice. In the process, it considers how feminism, entrepreneurialism, and precarity are fused together and negotiated in this contemporary moment of 'crisis'.

Hannah Curran-Troop is a fourth-year doctoral researcher at City, University of London. Her research explores contemporary feminist organisations in London's creative industries, and is concerned with feminist cultural activism, affective work and precarity, digital labour, and gendered entrepreneurialism. Hannah has worked at City's Gender and Sexualities Research Centre the last three years, and is currently working on several social research projects at City University, and the University of Nottingham.

Hester Baer, University of Maryland, College Park, US: Theorizing Digital Feminist Activism for the Neoliberal Age

Scholarship on digital feminist activism must account for the imbrication of contemporary feminist protest with the structures, platforms, and affects of neoliberal capitalism, even as it attends to the affordances of digital media for developing new forms of collectivity, participation, and communication. This presentation builds on my previous research, elaborating on the necessity of developing new theoretical frames for considering the epistemological, political, and aesthetic work undertaken by digital feminisms today. I focus especially on the potential of process-based digital activism within the context of neoliberal co-optation, commodification, and refutation of feminism.

Hester Baer is Professor of German and Cinema & Media Studies and Affiliate Faculty in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park (USA). Her work on digital feminist activism has appeared in Feminist Media Studies and Studies in 20^th & 21^st Century Literature. She is also the author of three books about German cinema and currently serves as co-editor of the journal German Quarterly.

Dr Ayu Saraswati, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa: Social Media, Feminist Activism, and the Neoliberal Self(ie)

This paper offers a fresh perspective on feminist activism by demonstrating how the problematic neoliberal logic governing digital spaces limits the possibilities of how one might use social media for feminist activism.

1. Ayu Saraswati is professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa. She is the author of recently published Scarred: A Feminist Journey through Pain. Her previous books include Pain Generation: Social Media, Feminist Activism, and the Neoliberal Selfie and SeeingBeauty, Sensing Race in Transnational Indonesia.She is the co-editor ofIntroduction to Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Feminist and Queer Theory. Some of the highlights of her works include: receiving the National Women’s Studies Association Gloria Anzaldua book award, being noted as one of the most impactful works in the past twenty years by Meridians journal, and one of the most downloaded articles in Gender, Work & Organization.
2.  

References:

Baer, H. (2016) “Redoing feminism: digital activism, body politics, and neoliberalism”, Feminist Media Studies, 16:1, 17-34, DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2015.1093070.

Fotopoulou, A. (2016). “Digital and networked by default? Women’s organisations and the social imaginary of networked feminism”. New Media & Society, 18(6), 989–1005.

Jackson, S. J., & Banaszczyk, S. (2016). “Digital standpoints: Debating gendered violence and racial exclusions in the feminist counterpublic”. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 40(4), 391-407.

Jackson, S., Bailey, M. & Foucault Welles, B. (2020). #Hashtag Activism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Mendes, K., Ringrose, J., & Keller, J. (2019). Digital Feminist Activism: Girls and Women Fight Back Against Rape Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Steele, C. K. (2021). Digital Black Feminism. New York: New York University Press.