After the March: Using Instagram to Perform and Sustain the Women's March

Abstract

The January 2017 Women's March was an example of the paradigmatic March on Washington, part of the repertoire of collective action used by social movements in the United States for decades. Similar marches were held on its first and second anniversary, in January 2018 and January 2019, respectively. One did not need to travel to the nation's capital to participate in these marches, however; activists also organized hundreds of “sister marches” across the United States and internationally. Yet, a sole focus on these one‐day, physical events misses a great deal of activity. In this article, we examine social media activity related to the Women's March on the platform Instagram that was posted well after the 2017 march was over but before the 2018 march was fully planned. We do so to gain purchase on how individuals and organizations use social media to maintain movements between large events. We analyze a systematic sample of Instagram posts from two sources: (1) individual Instagram users’ public posts with the hashtag #womensmarch and (2) posts from the official Instagram account of the Women's March. Conceptualizing these posts as political performances, we use our findings to draw implications for the study of contemporary protest.

Tracking the Resistance

“…Where technology creates a channel of communication between social movement organizations and individual supporters, it may facilitate identification with the Resistance. Einwohner and Rochford (2019) analyze engagement with the Women's March Instagram account between the 2017 and 2018 marches. They find differences between the official account and Women's March hashtag users in the purpose of their posts and how they performed identity.…”

What Does #Freedom Look Like? Instagram and the Visual Imagination of Values

“…The citizen-consumer duality is arguably central to the study of social media platforms, which operate in a system where capitalism and democracy represent clashing sets of values (van Dijck et al, 2018). Despite the documented use of Instagram for political activism (among many others, see Einwohner & Rochford, 2019), the platform tends to promote so-called "commodity activism" (Mukherjee & Banet-Weiser, 2012) in the wider context of a life that must be "shoppable" (Hund & McGuigan, 2019). For example, while there is an active body positivity movement on Instagram (Cohen, Irwin, Newton-John, & Slater, 2019), brands and corporations exploit its visibility to engage in direct advertising, effectively silencing activists and reshaping the structure and goals of the movement itself (Cwynar-Horta, 2016).…”

Understanding Collective Identity in Virtual Spaces: A Study of the Youth Climate Movement

“…As technology has become more accessible, a growing area of research on collective identity and social movements has focused on collective meaning making and identity creation online. Numerous studies have found that collective identity forms in virtual spaces (Ackland & O’Neil, 2011; Ems, 2014; Einwohner & Rochford, 2019; Gal et al, 2016; Khazraee & Novak, 2018; Mundt et al, 2018; Ray et al, 2017; Rohlinger & Bunnage, 2018; see also Abul-Fottouh & Fetner, 2018; Castells, 2015). In their study of social media use within the Black Lives Matter movement, for example, Mundt, Ross and Burnett conclude that social media plays a significant role in “building connection, mobilizing participants and tangible sources, coalition building, and amplifying alternative narratives” (2018, p.1; see also Ems 2014).…”