Under the watchful eyes of men: theorising the implications of male surveillance practices for feminist activism on social media

Feminist activism in digital space: Postfeminist contradictions in #WhyIStayed

“…A sociotechnical and historical situating of #WhyIStayed also brings to bear further postfeminist contradiction. As Megarry (2017) writes, “The encoding of male bias in platforms and practices should be of greater concern to feminist scholarship” (5). Gendered online harassment and abuse continue to increase, making the possibility of voicing dissent online potentially more risky now than it was at the time #WhyIStayed emerged.…”

“…Visibility can also be fleeting, as the virality of a particular hashtag can be difficult to maintain long term (Woods, 2014). In addition, the effectiveness of hashtag feminism can be inhibited through surveillance (Megarry, 2017), harassment and trolling (Mantilla, 2015), misrepresentation by mainstream media (Jackson, 2016), attempts to derail conversations, and the infiltration of hashtags by fake accounts (Ganzer, 2014). An example can be seen in Operation: Lollipop, an anti-feminist trolling effort in which fake Twitter accounts claiming to be feminist women of color were used to propogate hashtags like #EndFathersDay and #WhitesCantBeRaped in an effort to discredit and delegitimize feminist activism and ideals by associating them with absurdist claims (Ganzer, 2014).…”

“…Scholars have recently acknowledged hashtag feminism as characterized by complexity and contradiction (e.g. Megarry, 2017; Mendes et al, 2018). Few studies, however, analytically interrogate contradictions and their implications for hashtag feminism.…”

“…Existing research also points to the complexity of digital spaces as sites for feminist activism. Some question the potential for digital activism to effect substantive change in the context of neoliberalism (Baer, 2016) and corporate control over digital spaces (Megarry, 2017). Due to the affordances of digital space, activists can find themselves subjected to online harassment and abuse (Rodino-Colocino, 2014), as evidenced by #GamerGate (Massanari, 2017; Salter, 2017), and activist campaigns can become co-opted (Stache, 2015).…”

From High Visibility to High Vulnerability: Feminist, Postcolonial and Anti-Gentrification Activism at Risk

“…In these times when hijacking of terms and stories happens on a daily basis, activism also means constant narrative recreation and damage control. Some scholars call the internet a patriarchal structure (Megarry, 2018) and there are voices that demand gender equality of online space. The rallying cry of 'We should all be feminists' (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) is turning into 'We should all be activists' as new reports emerge concerning male bias in AI (Crawford, 2016;Adam, 2006;Leavy, 2018), sexist coding of digital voice assistants (West, Kraut and Ei Chew, 2019), the inherent inequality of AI-assisted recruitment processes (Dastin, 2018), and inequality of activism too.…”