Photographable femininities in women’s magazines and on Instagram

2021 ◽  
pp. 136754942110031
Author(s):  
Sofia P. Caldeira ◽  
Sofie Van Bauwel ◽  
Sander De Ridder
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Women's Magazines ◽  
Gender Representation ◽  
Fashion Magazines ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
Representational Practices ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Visual Cultures ◽  
Aesthetic Values

This article explores the intertextual relationship between women’s glossy fashion magazines and Instagram. As the boundaries between the two formats are becoming increasingly porous – with visual conventions and discourses flowing bi-directionally between women’s magazines and Instagram – this article questions how they mutually reshape each other and the representations of femininities they carry. It explores the tensions emerging from these media’s distinctive ethos of gendered representation, and it questions how the politics of gender representation can be negotiated through aesthetic practices. This research empirically grounds these discussions in a multi-sited qualitative textual analysis, comprised of both a sample of 18 issues of three glossy women’s magazines’ titles (Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Vogue) and a sample of 77 randomly selected female ‘ordinary’ Instagram users (i.e. not celebrities or Insta-famous users), aged 18–35. Both Instagram and women’s magazines link gendered beauty to aesthetic values and the ability to look good in photographs, thus incentivising the pursuit of Instagrammable aesthetics. However, both formats can also highlight the everyday political potential of aestheticised representations. Relying on user-generated representations, Instagram has the potential to showcase a wider diversity of femininities, which can help to broaden the scope of who can be deemed photographable – an idea echoed by women’s magazines’ adoption of a popular feminist tone. These celebrations of diversity, reminiscent of strategies of visibility politics, and politicised discourses become materialised through aesthetic practices both within Instagram and women’s magazines. Yet, despite the emphasis on a social media-inspired feminist and political tone, political engagements on these media can also become enmeshed with postfeminist sensibilities, thus conflating fashion, beauty, and empowerment. This article explores how the on-going changes in these multi-layered and intertextual representational practices echo broader cultural and political transformations in contemporary visual cultures.

scholarly journals “It’s Not Just Instagram Models”: Exploring the Gendered Political Potential of Young Women’s Instagram Use

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-15
Author(s):  
Sofia P. Caldeira
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Young People ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
Gender Representation ◽  
Politics Of Representation ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Visual Cultures ◽  
Depth Interviews

With over one billion monthly users worldwide (Constine, 2018) and being embedded in the everyday lives of many young people, Instagram has become a common topic of discussion both in popular media and scholarly debates. As young women are amongst the predominant active users of Instagram (WeAreSocial, 2019) and the demographic stereotypically associated with online self-representation (Burns, 2015), Instagram carries an underlying gendered political potential. This is manifested through online political practices such as hashtag activism (Highfield, 2016), as well as through Instagram’s use of user-generated content to challenge existing politics of representation, broadening the scope of who is considered photographable (Tiidenberg, 2018). This article explores how this gendered political potential is understood by young women using Instagram. This research is based on 13 in-depth interviews with a theoretical sample of female ‘ordinary’ Instagram users (i.e., not celebrities or Insta-famous), aged 18–35. Our findings illustrate how the perception of political potential is grounded in the participants’ understanding of Instagram as an aesthetically-oriented platform (Manovich, 2017). Most participants recognised the potential for engaging in visibility politics (Whittier, 2017), representing a wider diversity of femininities often absent from popular media. However, this was seen as tempered by the co-existence of idealised beauty conventions and the politics of popularity within social media (Van Dijck & Poell, 2013). Furthermore, this political potential is accompanied by the possibility of receiving backlash or being dismissed as a slacktivist (Glenn, 2015). As Instagram becomes a central part of contemporary visual cultures, this article seeks to critically explore the nuanced ways in which young women’s everyday experiences of Instagram intersect with broader cultural and political questions of gender representation.

Fashioning Multiplatform Masculinities

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 645-664 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jimmy Draper ◽  
Andrea M. McDonnell
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Personal Style ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Gay Male ◽  
Representational Practices ◽  
Multiple Audiences ◽  
Technological Affordances ◽  
Men And Masculinity

Scholarly interest in the potential of personal style blogging to intervene in fashion media’s gendered norms has focused on women and femininity. To assess the implications for men and masculinity, this article examines gay male bloggers’ self-representational practices. Through interviews and textual analysis, we find their uses of different digital platforms reproduce and confront the heteronormativity of men’s fashion media in ways that speak to their status as bloggers in the industry. Specifically, their desire to demonstrate recognizable forms of fashion expertise keeps their blogs disciplined by industry norms of masculinity even as the need to self-brand encourages queer self-expression across other social media. We thus argue the ways in which bloggers embrace platforms’ technological affordances to engage multiple audiences are central to theorizing how their labor produces different discourses and depictions of masculinity. This builds on arguments made by gender and sexuality scholars to explain the significance of gay men’s fashion.

scholarly journals ‘Smash the patriarchy’: the changing meanings and work of ‘patriarchy’ online

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-189
Author(s):  
Rosemary Lucy Hill ◽  
Kim Allen
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The 1960S

This article discusses the resurgence of the term ‘patriarchy’ in digital culture and reflects on the everyday online meanings of the term in distinction to academic theorisations. In the 1960s–1980s, feminists theorised patriarchy as the systematic oppression of women, with differing approaches to how it worked. Criticisms that the concept was unable to account for intersectional experiences of oppression, alongside the ‘turn to culture’, resulted in a fall from academic grace. However, ‘patriarchy’ has found new life through Internet memes (humorous, mutational images that circulate widely on social media). This article aims to investigate the resurgence of the term ‘patriarchy’ in digital culture. Based on an analysis of memes with the phrase ‘patriarchy’ and ‘smash the patriarchy’, we identify how patriarchy memes are used by two different online communities (feminists and anti-feminists) and consider what this means for the ongoing usefulness of the concept of patriarchy. We argue that, whilst performing important community-forming work, using the term is a risky strategy for feminists for two reasons: first, because memes are by their nature brief, there is little opportunity to address intersections of oppression; secondly, the underlying logic of feminism is omitted in favour of brevity, leaving it exposed to being undermined by the more mainstream logic of masculinism.

The Construction of Women’s Positions in Sport: A Textual Analysis of Articles on Female Athletes in Finnish Women’s Magazines

1997 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 290-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riitta M. Pirinen
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Female Athletes ◽  
Women's Magazines ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Gender Hierarchy ◽  
Media Texts ◽  
Ideological Construction

This study analyzed the treatment of female athletes in Finnish women’s magazines. The purpose was to examine how media representations constructed hierarchic relations between women. Furthermore, the aim was to examine how the construction and legitimation of the hierarchy between women and the gender hierarchy are interwoven with each other. Finally, the study discussed the possibilities to challenge, resist, and transform the ideological construction of these hierarchic relations. Briefly, the study demonstrated the ways in which media texts may both construct disempowering positions and also offer recourses of empowering positions for women.

scholarly journals The banality of WhatsApp: On the everyday politics of backstage activism in Mexico and Spain

First Monday ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emiliano Treré
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Multiple Roles ◽  
Negative Side ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Everyday Politics ◽  
Qualitative Exploration

Drawing on interviews with social movements and organizations in Mexico and Spain, this paper sheds light on the dynamics of ‘backstage activism’ with a focus on WhatsApp. It illustrates how activists have integrated this app into their media ecologies to reinforce collective identity, cement internal solidarity and lower the pressure of protest. It shows that within WhatsApp groups, campaigners have countered the paranoia experienced in the frontstage of social media exchanging ironical material and intimate messages. It demonstrates that WhatsApp has been used as a robust organizational device and it is now firmly integrated into the mechanisms of organizations and movements. Its communicative affordances (speed, reliability, mobility, multimediality) in conjunction with the omnipresent smartphone are often emphasized. Nuancing characterizations that tend to either disregard its role or stress its negative side, this qualitative exploration foregrounds the banality of WhatsApp. This article unpacks the multiple roles of this app within the submerged practices of movements and organizations.

scholarly journals Textual Analysis for the Protection of Children and Teenagers in Social Media - Classification of Inappropriate Messages for Children and Teenagers

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thársis Salathiel de Souza Viana ◽  
Marcos de Oliveira ◽  
Ticiana Linhares Coelho da Silva ◽  
Mário Sérgio Rodrigues Falcão Júnior ◽  
Enyo José Tavares Gonçalves
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Textual Analysis

scholarly journals Sosiaalisen median hyödyntäminen nuorten palvelujen yhteiskehittämisessä

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-22
Author(s):  
Harri Jalonen ◽  
Jussi Kokkola ◽  
Valtteri Kaartemo ◽  
Miika Vähämaa
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Knowledge Base ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Discussion Forum ◽  
Discussion Board ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Using Data

Co-creation assumes an interactive and dynamic relationship where value is created at the nexus of interaction. Co-creating value is challenging with marginalized youths. In this article, social media is seen as an underutilized resource for developing services. This article approaches social media as a context from which it is possible to derive information that would otherwise be unattainable. Using data from a Finnish discussion board, this article answers the following question: How can the experiences of socially withdrawn youth shared on social media be used to enrich the knowledge base on service co-creation processes? The empirical data consist of messages on the Hikikomero discussion forum, which were analysed using a combination of unsupervised machine learning and discourse analysis. The results show that social media provides a window into the everyday lives of socially withdrawn youths, offering information that could be used to develop public services

Brief Reminders: Muslim Preachers, Mediation and Time

2020 ◽  
pp. 132-152
Author(s):  
Simon Stjernholm
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Multimodal Communication ◽  
Media Production ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Media ◽  
Religious Nature ◽  
Media Practices

This chapter explores a willingness on behalf of certain Muslim preachers to move beyond traditional preaching styles and create material that fits well within current social media practices. Focusing on the media productions of two Muslim preachers in Sweden, the chapter analyses how they experiment with oratory genres and modes. Using self-imposed brevity and multimodal communication in a type of media production defined here as a ‘reminder’, these preachers try to exhort their audiences to consider matters felt to be of pressing religious nature. The examples illustrate attempts to expand the reach of Islamic religious discourses beyond mosque environments and into the everyday life of an audience, with the potential of achieving a different kind of rhetorical work than a regular lecture or sermon.

Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Studying Digital Feminist Activism

2019 ◽  
pp. 24-41
Author(s):  
Kaitlynn Mendes ◽  
Jessica Ringrose ◽  
Jessalynn Keller
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
The Political ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
Approaches To Studying ◽  
Critical Technology ◽  
Key Terms

In this chapter, we outline our conceptual framework, addressing key theories that underpin our analysis, including, affect and related concepts, including affective solidarity, networked affect, and affective publics. We also introduce key terms from critical technology studies, including platform vernacular and other concepts relevant to the political economy of social media. After providing further information on the six case studies described in the Introduction, including their reason for selection and methods used, the chapter details our unique methodological approach, which draws insights from a range of interdisciplinary tools, including feminist ethnographic methods, thematic textual analysis, semi-structured interviews, surveys, and online observations.

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