“Half
the world’s population, but not with half the share of wealth, wellbeing and
opportunity. And certainly, women do not get half of media attention, or an
equal voice in expression – only 22 percent of the voices you hear and read in
the news today are women’s.” [Women in the News: Gender Wire, IPS]
Today,
cyberspace allows women to be online and use the media just as much as men. In
America, 54% of adult females (42
million women) use social media at least on a weekly basis. Their top interests are entertainment, food,
health/wellness, and recipes/cooking. Fashion/beauty/shopping comes in fifth. Online media is a matriarchy, with women composing
the majority of nearly every major social media outline. Women are also twice
as likely as men to blog and to use blogs as a source of information, advice,
debate, and opinion sharing. 34% of
women use social networks to get information, while 20% of women are looking
for advice and recommendations.
In the past, the feminist cause has inspired to fight for change
through the story telling of tales of social injustice. In the 1970s,
consciousness raising was all about sharing stories.
Nowadays, the Internet allows women the
opportunity to participate in feminist debate and discursive activism without
feeling restricted by their gender as online feminism works as a thriving hub
of contemporary feminist action. It pushes the envelope for how to even think
of feminism across the globe: from North Africa to Australia, storytelling is
now uploaded to millions through online media in helping women prevent
harassment, mobilize campaigners, discuss policy or lobby the government.
Online media is the medium; women’s issues are the message.
However, modern markets require modern
strategies to capitalize on ways of sharing information on online media. Women have been connecting and sharing online for years, yet it can be a
struggle to keep pace with the constantly changing social frontier. Web
activists are creating online communities that encourage women to voice their opinions,
and then pointing those women towards ways to take direct action. In this way,
online media acts for ‘web activism’ as a funnel to organise.
Feminars
seeks to examine how online media acts as this funnel. We are especially
interested in doing comparative analyses of the active online movement through
social media and blogging sites as tools for voicing women’s issues. Online
media tools include:
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Facebook’s role in social
networking, discussing women’s issues though ‘pages’ and ‘groups’ and how Facebook
has been a hindrance
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Twitter’s role in allowing
women to share their opinions, links and starting campaigns
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Blogsphere- how it has
started a surge of feminist discussion
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Websites like Jezebel,
Feministing, Mama Mia and The Dawn Chorus: their role in reshaping contemporary
women’s issues to be more accessible and relatable to all genders.
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Youtube’s role in shaping
Women’s issues through videos and links
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Other content includes: Articles, Interviews, Transcripts of Scholarly Talks, Links, Images,
Polls and Questionnaires, Forums, Digital Art and Animation
Some of the
topics we will explore in our feature include:
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Cross-Generational
and Cross-Cultural Feminism, Post-Feminism and Anti-Feminism
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Feminist
Humour
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Women’s
Health
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Media
Representations of Gender
-
The purpose
of Feminars is not just to talk about feminist topics, but to explore how the
online media space can actually enhance this discussion through media tools. We
want to encourage critical thinking, self-examination and changes in broader
social discourse through an insight into how online media encourages or perhaps
hinders this process.
We hope to
engage with our target audience of primarily young women, and then on a broader
scale, all women and men, to reflect on the Internet’s ability to touch on
issues relevant to the community as a whole. Though we do analysis, in the end we
hope to see how online media sends people away from those sites rather than
trapping them there!
