Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > Affordances and platformed visual misogyny

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

Affordances and <i>platformed visual misogyny</i>: a call for feminist approaches in visual methods

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
Close
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>3/07/2024
<mark>Journal</mark>Feminist Media Studies
Issue number5
Volume24
Number of pages22
Pages (from-to)962-983
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date18/02/24
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

With social media technologies, feminist perspectives have reached parts of society traditionally uninterested in or fundamentally opposed to them. While feminist activists and allies have employed technological affordances for support, belonging, and justice, the same tools are used by actors of the alt-right to gag feminist voices. As it circulates, anti-feminist content sustains heteropatriarchy and damages women beyond the symbolic by means of trolling, doxxing, and meme wars. We address this through a review of feminist visual methods applied to the analysis of imaginaries of digital gendered hate in four case studies: (1) Greta Thunberg memes in the DENY Facebook group; (2) “Fanquan Girls” meme wars in the Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement; (3) visual artefacts shared under the Twitter hashtag #SisterIDoBelieveYou; and (4) cartoons of Grace Mugabe relating to presidential succession produced in seven African countries. By reflecting on the ethos behind these four cases, we identify specific benefits to be gained from working with feminist visual methods, and contour a novel phenomenon: platformed visual misogyny.