Double-Edged Sword? The Impact of Online Misogyny on Female College Students' Digital Activism in the Post-COVID-19 Era.

Using original surveys to investigate how online gender-based harassment marginalizes or empowers female college students, we found increased exposure to misogyny polarizes digital participation. Women aware of gender inequality in Korea encountering online hate speech were more inclined to engage in online movements, unlike women who did not recognize such inequality. This highlights distinct opportunities in relation to digital activism, showing online hate speech can sometimes be a catalyst for online political participation. This study expands current research on digital protest, highlighting the political ramifications of empowering women in the critical context of their unequal democratic rights outside the West.

"There Are Many of Us": Online Testimonies From "Pill Victims" as a New Form of Health Activism.

The French pill scare is usually presented as a "media debate" triggered by the case of Marion Larat, a young woman who suffered a stroke attributed to the pill she was taking. This article intends to focus on a practice that preceded, accompanied, and followed this health scare: the publication of online testimonies of thrombotic reactions posted on the website of the French Association of Victims of Pulmonary Embolism and Stroke Associated with Hormonal Contraception (Avep). Through a discourse analysis, we intend to analyze these online public self-reports as an activist practice aimed at criticizing the dominant medical discourse on contraception. Four discursive frames emerged: unpreparedness of women and doctors, denial of blame and search for the cause, breaking the silence and building solidarity, and collective action. The first two frames concern the process women put in place to obtain the right to speak about and criticize a medical practice. The right to speak is achieved through a concise narrative style focusing on facts, bodily manifestations, and risk factors. The second pair refers to the formation of pill victims as subjects with an ambivalent status and ephemeral agency. The testimonies build what we call "lone solidarity", that is, the creation of a social bond and action around a common experience of witnessing medical injustice that develops without any exchange between members. This proves to be inclusive and viral, but at the same time fiercely anti-representational with respect to political struggles or social identification.

Latency and Crisis: Mutual Aid Activism in the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Activists have responded to the Covid-19 pandemic by organizing for mutual aid: creating collective action to meet people's material needs and build ties of solidarity. I examine the difficulties encountered by mutual aid activists during the pandemic through Alberto Melucci's notions of latency and collective identity. Through digital ethnographic observations of the Instagram accounts of mutual aid groups based in Philadelphia, USA, as well as interviews with the activists, I explore how mutual aid, conceptualized as latency work, was practiced by activists in the unprecedented conditions of the pandemic and how activists approached collective identity processes. I show that activists experienced a compression of latency and mobilization within the crisis context of the pandemic, which made it more difficult for them to pursue the construction of a collective identity. I also suggest that the effects of this compression were further exacerbated by the logic of immediacy that characterizes social network sites.

Digital activism and collective mourning by Chinese netizens during COVID-19.

This study examines the discursive practice of mourning and commenting by netizens on the final social media post made by Dr Li Wenliang, regarding it as a form of political participation and competitive discursive politics enacted in cyberspace. Discourse theory is applied to conduct discourse analysis on 4000 comments. We identified two strategies that netizens used to establish an alternative space for discourse. The first involved hidden protests expressed through multi-semantic mourning, avoiding suppression by indirectly challenging official authorities. Second, through engagement with microblogs, netizens applied personalized narratives to form a collective memory and a counter-memory space that departed from the official normative narrative. Discursive activities enacted by netizens stimulated the political agenda of resilient adjustment on the part of the authorities, leading the government to accept and incorporate public demands into policies through strategic rectification. These findings help to better understand the significant power of disorganized connective action that is reliant on affective citizens and the further development of regime resilience on the part of the Chinese political system in response to digital activities.

A pesquisa crítica na trama de narrativas: desenredando histórias de assédio sexual nas redes sociais / Critical research in a plot of narratives: untangling stories of sexual harassment on social media

Os sites de redes sociais vêm impulsionando protestos antissexistas, nos quais mulheres narram suas experiências de violência sexual e também apoiam outras mulheres com histórias semelhantes. No protesto #PrimeiroAssédio, milhares de mulheres aceitaram o convite para contar suas primeiras histórias de assédio sexual. Este artigo reflete sobre os desafios da pesquisa social crítica e ética com vítimas de assédio sexual que narram suas experiências em plataformas digitais. Tal pesquisa implica desenlear uma trama que envolve as narrativas dominantes acerca dos corpos, papéis, direitos e deveres das mulheres; as contranarrativas das mulheres que contestam as narrativas dominantes; e as narrativas construídas pelas pesquisadoras sobre as histórias contadas. O artigo discute o que está em jogo ao se escolher como narrar, incluindo a narração acadêmico-científica que se debruça sobre essas histórias. Em conclusão, as autoras entendem sua escrita como um ato político voltado para a transformação social e contra a condição subalterna feminina. As pesquisadoras trabalham para fortalecer as vozes das mulheres que denunciam a violência sexual, operando em aliança com elas, enquanto também contestam as narrativas hegemônicas de base patriarcal.

This article reflects on the challenges of critical social research with victims of sexual harassment who narrate their experiences on digital platforms. It draws from a selection of stories told by women in the #FirstHarassment protest (2015) in which they recount, in a tone of denunciation, these first experiences. Inspired by critical discourse analysis and culturally oriented narrative analysis, in dialogue with feminist theorizing, the study distinguishes a plot that involves dominant narratives about women's bodies, roles, rights, and duties; women's counter-narratives that contest dominant narratives; and the narratives constructed by women researchers about the stories told. It discusses how the participants' testimonies undertake efforts to denaturalize sexual harassment and deconstruct the logic of female culpability for sexual violence suffered. The stories create alliances and convey new narratives for gender relations and women's rights advocacy. The article also discusses how the academic-scientific narration that addresses these stories constitutes an ethical-political positioning. The authors conclude that their writing is a political act aimed at social transformation and against the subaltern condition of women. The researchers work to strengthen the voices of women who report sexual violence, operating in alliance with them, while also contesting patriarchally-based hegemonic narratives.

Activating the past in the Ferguson protests: Memory work, digital activism and the politics of platforms.

This article analyzes the Facebook page Justice for Mike Brown-set up during the 2014 Ferguson protests-in order to rethink the role of memory work within contemporary digital activism. We argue that, as a particular type of discursive practice, memory work on the page bridged personal and collective action frames. This occurred in four overlapping ways. First, the page allowed for affective commemorative engagement that helped shape Brown's public image. Second, Brown's death was contextualized as part of systematic injustice against African Americans. Third, the past was used to legitimize present action, wherein the present was continually connected to the past and future. And fourth, particular discursive units became recognizable symbolic markers during the protests and for future recall. Based on this typology, we show that memory work, although multidirectional and in flux, is stabilized by the interactions between the page administrator, users, and Facebook's operational logic.