“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
This infographic by DigitalFlash NYC shows how differently women use the world's two most trafficked social media services:
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:
- - Facebook’s role in social networking, discussing women’s issues though ‘pages’ and ‘groups’ and how Facebook has been a hindrance
- - Twitter’s role in allowing women to share their opinions, links and starting campaigns
- - Blogsphere- how it has started a surge of feminist discussion
- - 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.
- - Youtube’s role in shaping Women’s issues through videos and links
- - 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:
- - Cross-Generational and Cross-Cultural Feminism, Post-Feminism and Anti-Feminism
- - Feminist Humour
- - Women’s Health
- - 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!
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