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

Abstract

The social media collective actions through the hashtags #DeixaElaTrabalhar and #LasPeriodistasParamos raised problems that women journalists were suffering in both Brazil and Spain. While the representation of feminism has long been studied, less attention has been paid to comparative studies and the more personal representation. Focusing on a combination of visual and textual qualitative content analysis, we explore 90 Instagram posts from women journalists within the two hashtags and how they portray themselves in relation to their profession. At the time of writing, Instagram is one of the most popular social networks focused on the publication of audiovisual content. This makes it suitable for the study of online self-representation. The article identifies using the Documentary Image Analysis and the Critical Discourse Analysis the recurrent demands and denunciations regarding journalism gender-related issues and finds common visual vernaculars in #DeixaElaTrabalhar and #LasPeriodistasParamos posts. This study makes a comprehensive analysis of how women journalists construct their identity on Instagram images concerning the topics they talk about and the elements they use to insert themselves in the female journalists’ collectives and connects it with the theories on feminism and social media activism. The results reported here shed new light on how female journalists take control over their situation and find empowerment, feminism, non-violent protest, and professional/private life to be common points regarding the identity construction in relation to these online groups.