The Limitations of Social Media Feminism No Space of Our Own,Jessica Megarry

-About this book

Social media has been celebrated for revolutionising protest: it is now quicker and easier to create petitions and collect signatures, share details of direct actions and upcoming meetings, and engage in political discourse across geographical borders. One of the lingering and often ignored questions in social movement scholarship, however, is what does the move to social media signify for revolutionary movements that were once characterised by the building of strong ties between activists in physical space?

 What happens to activist commitment and community-building when the medium used for organising no longer requires sustained face-to-face contact?

And, in the case of women’s liberation—a revolutionary social movement seeking to overthrow male dominance—what happens when the tool used for organising brings women into constant contact with men, the social group whose power they wish to dismantle?

In this book I examine the extent to which social media is, or is not, compatible with organising for women’s liberation. In other words, I investigate the political significance of women’s adoption of social media for feminist organising. Distinct from the static web pages of the early internet, social media platforms publish evanescent, user-generated content and are driven by a logic of constant updating, speed and connectivity.

The rise of social media as the dominant system of digital communication has unleashed an avalanche of celebratory rhetoric championing the new opportunities now available to feminists to challenge the social and political order. 

Throughout this book, I aim to contribute to scholarly and activist understandings of why feminist efforts on social media have not resulted in the revival of a feminist movement which is in any way comparable to the WLM.

 I offer a radical feminist analysis of women’s use of social media to try to bring about social change, and I argue that celebrating women’s use of social media for feminist organising makes little sense, from either an academic or an activist point of view, unless claims are historically situated in terms of previous movement successes and challenges.

-Contents
1 A Fourth Wave or a Fool’s Errand?​
2 Unravelling the Web of Equals
3 ‘By women, for women, about women’:​ The Women’s Liberation Movement as a Free Space
4 ‘On the internet, there is no women-only space’:​ Male Power in Digital Networks
5 ‘I don’t see any strategy really, I see more […] personal venting’:​ Consciousness-Raising, Theory-Building and Activism in Digital Space
6 ‘It doesn’t feel as transparent and accountable’:​ Social Media and Feminist Ethics
7 Female Performers on a Male Stage
   Index

-caractéristiques

Date de parution :14 décembre 2020

Éditeur : Springer Nature Switzerland AG

N.de pages: 323 pages

ISBN-10 : 3030606287

ISBN-13 : 978-3030606282

Dimensions : 14.81 x 2.39 x 21.01 cm

Poids de l’article : 604 g

Langue  : Anglais