Women’s Voices Online and the Emergence of Lived Realities as Distinct Political Behaviour: A Womanist Approach to Selected Zimbabwean Blogs

Mpofu, Sibongile

doi:10.1080/23743670.2018.1425151

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…However, there is still a paucity of research coming out of the southern African region. A recent study (Mpofu, 2018) examines women's use of blogs in Zimbabwe and finds that blogging has become an avenue for women to resist oppressive political and social norms. Elsewhere, blogs have been providing space for women activists for over a decade.…”

Section: Identity Hair and Online Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

Embracing natural hair

Mbunyuza-Memani¹

2022

JCSA

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This paper reports on the use of online blogs as spaces where Black South African women createsisterhoods and self-define. Using online blogs, the women learn about natural black hair, affirmblackness and resist hierarchal ideologies of beautiful hair. Whereas predominantly, existingstudies find that media representations of beauty and beautiful hair are defined via whiteness andthat Black women also participate in self-production in ways that suggest an acceptance of thehierarchy that locates Black looks at the margins, very little research has been done about Blackwomen who resist the hegemonic representation of and assumed superior status of white looksin general and flowing hair specifically. Drawing on two theories: whiteness and Africana womanism, and using purposive sampling, this study examined 17 qualitative interviews with Black South African women and Chocolate HairSisters, Natural Sisters, and FroChic three online blogs started by Black South African womenadvocating for natural hair. The findings indicate that online spaces have become sites of resistance, learning, positive Blackaffirmation, and support for and by Black women – sisterhood nets. In interviews, women narratedstories of how they had to learn to nurture and love their hair, something they were not taughtfrom an early age. The absence of knowledge about dealing with natural hair led women to theonline blogs where they found e-learning communities of sisters. This study’s focus is how socialhierarchies of appearance are contested online and overflow to offline spaces to affirm physicalfeatures of a race long-marginalised in social understandings of beauty.

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Section: Identity Hair and Online Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

Embracing natural hair

Mbunyuza-Memani¹

2022

JCSA

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“…From my beginnings as a blogger, firstly for a Zimbabwean community blogging network called Kubatana and then onto my personal blog Fungai Neni, I have witnessed space grow for more critical engagement and debate through uptake of social media and what I refer to as African self-initiated platforms. In 2012, I founded a women's web-based platform called Her Zimbabwe, which has been researched academically multiple times (Carelse, 2017;Leccese & Lanson, 2015;Mpofu, 2016;Mpofu, 2018) and received various local and international accolades in its time of operation over the next five years.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Doing Digital Migration Studies:

Leurs,

Ponzanesi

2024

Doing Digital Migration Studies

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ICT-based co-presence in transnational families and communities: challenging the premise of face-to-face proximity in sustaining relationships. Global Networks, 16(2), 133-144. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway. Duke University Press. Beck, U. (2016). The metamorphosis of the world: How climate change is transforming our world. Polity. Beck, U. (2010). The cosmopolitan manifesto. In G. Wallace Brown & D. Held (Eds.).The cosmopolitan reader (pp. 217-228). Polity Press.

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Alternative Values in News Reporting

Harcup

2020

What’s the Point of News?

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Women’s Voices Online and the Emergence of Lived Realities as Distinct Political Behaviour: A Womanist Approach to Selected Zimbabwean Blogs

Cited by 6 publications

References 25 publications

Embracing natural hair

Embracing natural hair

Doing Digital Migration Studies:

Alternative Values in News Reporting

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