Las Periodistas Paramos in Spain: Professional, feminist Internet activism

Abstract

This article analyses how the group Las Periodistas Paramos (We the Women Journalists Stop) arose and developed within the context of the feminist strike that took place in Spain on 8 March 2018 (‘8M’). The purpose of this research is to understand how this community began and its typology, to analyse the selection of digital tools in the process and to outline the strengths and weaknesses of the group on the basis of participants’ experiences. Using three qualitative methods, specifically an interview, non-participant observation and focus groups, the group’s collective work dynamics and its evolution are defined. The results obtained show that this is a community of interest that has collaboratively broadened its initial objectives, surmounted ideological differences, contributed to the feminist movement and grown exponentially by expanding its activities to embrace other Spanish cities and foreign correspondents.

Situating #MeToo: a comparative analysis of the movement in Catalonia and Portugal

“…Women journalists were one of the most active collectives in 2018 and 2019 marches. Assembled in online groups like the Spanish Las Periodistas Paramos or its Catalan version, Les Periodistes ens Aturem (in both cases, ‘Feminist journalists stop’), they demanded equal working conditions by issuing their own manifestos, sparking the hashtags #LesPeriodistesParem, #LesPeriodistesEnsAturem and #LesPeriodistesFemVaga, as well as organising strikes that altered the regular emission of TV and radio shows and left some journal pages blank (Bernal-Triviño and Sanz-Martos, 2020; Florés, 2021).…”

Communication and activist literacy for social change in feminist movements

“…Communication for social change has evolved as a field in recent decades, shifting from traditions of communication for development linked to institutional cooperation and charities (Melkote, 1991;Servaes, 2002) to more participatory perspectives (Marí-Sáez, 2020;Nos-Aldás et al, 2020;Tufte, 2017). Recent trends in "communicating for change" (Tacchi & Tufte, 2020) are based on critical perspectives from post-development, cultural and feminist studies (Bachmann & Proust, 2020;De-Sousa-Santos, 2012) and the effects of the reactivation of social movements in the last decade since the emergence of the Arab Spring, Occupy and, particularly in Spain, the 15M movements (Bernal-Triviño & Sanz-Martos, 2020). This CDSC paradigm is nurtured from the evolution of media and communication research and its cultural and social turn (Baú, 2016;Hemer & Tufte, 2016) as well as crossreflections with the field of Education for Development (Riek, 2015;Skinner et al, 2016) to converge as a communication field understood as agency (Jacobson, 2016).…”

Women Journalists and Social Media Activism: An Analysis of the Hashtags #DeixaElaTrabalhar and #LasPeriodistasParamos on Instagram

“…After the #MeToo movement exploded in 2017 and spread widely on social media, the effects of the allegations of sexual harassment of women not only reached journalism but also spread globally (Steiner, 2019). In Spain, female journalists united under the hashtag #LasPeriodistasParamos to denounce their professional situation (Bernal-Triviño & Sanz-Martos, 2020). The group, which originated in connection to the feminist strike on 8 March 2018, became a form of online activism against the discrimination and the precarious situation of women in labour, especially in journalism and communications (Bernal-Triviño & Sanz-Martos, 2020).…”

“…In Spain, female journalists united under the hashtag #LasPeriodistasParamos to denounce their professional situation (Bernal-Triviño & Sanz-Martos, 2020). The group, which originated in connection to the feminist strike on 8 March 2018, became a form of online activism against the discrimination and the precarious situation of women in labour, especially in journalism and communications (Bernal-Triviño & Sanz-Martos, 2020). Similarly, Brazilian women sports journalists virtually gathered under the hashtag #DeixaElaTrabalhar which was born from a protest video created by 50 sports journalists (RWB report, 2020) to draw attention to the harassment and discrimination suffered within the field of sports journalism (Ramires, 2020).…”

“…The coverage of women in the mainstream news media is insignificant, and feminism is often delegitimized, marginalized, and trivialized (Geertsema-Sligh, 2018). Brazilian and Spanish female journalists have used social media platforms to manifest their nonconformity and contribute to the feminist movement (Bernal-Triviño & Sanz-Martos, 2020;Matos, 2017). Such online collectives can be interpreted as a strategy on the part of female journalists to politicize their personal experiences (Clark, 2014) and to bring about change (Antunovic, 2019).…”