Documenting digital feminist activism: Mapping feminist responses to new media misogyny and rape culture

近年来，互联网和社交媒体在全球范围内的一系列社会和政治抗议活动中发挥了突出作用--从阿拉伯之春到占领华尔街运动，再到西班牙独立运动，显然，新媒体技术具有创造社会变革、改革政治制度和挑战一系列压迫意识形态的潜力。然而，这些技术也为网上形式的性别歧视、骚扰和厌女症(对妇女和女孩的仇恨)的扩散开辟了高度可见的公共空间。在Twitter和Facebook等网络2.0平台上，关于对女性的“网上仇恨”和“网络跟踪”的高调报道不胜枚举，人们越来越担心强奸笑话和图片的正常化和接受度，这些笑话和图片庆祝针对女孩和妇女的暴力行为。虽然英国政府已经认识到媒体性别歧视是一个日益严重的问题，并开展了一系列旨在预防强奸和制止性暴力和性虐待的宣传活动，但很少有研究记录厌恶女性在数字媒介文化中采取的特殊形式，更没有研究分析激进分子对这一问题的反应范围，这些措施以创新和创造性的方式动员新媒体技术。虽然这才刚刚开始吸引主流媒体的关注，但女权主义者正在通过使用新的媒体平台和技术来反击强奸文化的扩散。例如，一个由女权主义活动家组成的国际团体最近发起了#FBraise运动，向Facebook的企业广告商征集了超过6万条推文和5000封电子邮件，要求公司从这家社交媒体公司撤下广告，因为Facebook拒绝删除鼓励对妇女和女孩暴力的厌女症内容。这场为期一周的运动导致Facebook承诺改变其仇恨言论的政策，并使删除宣扬强奸文化、歧视女性和针对妇女和女孩的性暴力的页面变得更容易。同样，还创建了一些网站、脸书网页和推特标签，鼓励妇女和女孩记录、拍摄和记录厌女症和骚扰事件，提高公众认识并创建社区支持受害者。因此，这项研究的主要目的是：1)查明强奸文化、骚扰、厌女症和性暴力在网上和网上发生的时间和方式；2)探索和分析女权主义者对这些事件的反应；3)了解参与这一行动的妇女和女孩的经历；4)通过创建当代数字女权主义激进主义的活生生的档案，记录女权主义者的反应和经历。为了实现这些目标，该项目使用了跨学科的研究方法，包括网络媒体的内容和女权主义批评话语分析，以及民族志方法，如观察在线活动家社区和采访女权主义活动家，以探索他们如何以及为什么使用数字技术。这项研究通过记录新媒体厌恶女性的一些形式和一系列女权主义数字活动家的反应，有可能让包括女权主义活动家、政府、慈善组织和Facebook等媒体公司在内的许多利益相关者受益。我们的主要数字产品是一个在线档案，它将记录这种女权运动，并促进一个合作空间，活动人士可以在其中记录他们自己的倡议，并与全球其他妇女和女孩联系。

In recent years, the Internet and social media have played a prominent role in a range of social and political protests across the globe - from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street to the Spanish Indignados, it is clear that new media technologies have the potential to create social change, reforming political systems, and challenging a range of oppressive ideologies. Yet such technologies have also opened up highly visible public spaces for the proliferation of online forms of sexism, harassment, and misogyny (hatred of women and girls). There have been numerous high profile stories about 'e-bile' (online hatred) and 'trolling' (online stalking) of women, and a growing concern over the normalisation and acceptance of rape jokes and images that celebrate violence against girls and women on web 2.0 platforms like Twitter and Facebook. While the UK government has recognised 'media sexism' as a growing problem, and has run a number of awareness campaigns aimed at rape prevention and stopping sexual violence and abuse, there is little research which documents the particular forms that misogyny takes in a digitally mediated culture, and even less which analyses the range of activist responses to this problem which mobilize new media technologies in innovative and creative ways. Although it is only beginning to attract mainstream media attention, feminists are fighting back against the proliferation of rape culture through their uses of new media platforms and technologies. For example, an international group of feminist activists recently initiated the #FBrape campaign which solicited over 60,000 tweets and 5,000 emails to Facebook's corporate advertisers, demanding that companies pull their advertisements from the social media company due to Facebook's refusal to remove misogynist content encouraging violence against women and girls. The one-week campaign resulted in a promise from Facebook to change their policies on hate speech and make it easier to remove pages which promote rape culture, misogyny and sexual violence towards women and girls. Similarly, a number of websites, Facebook pages and Twitter hashtags have been created which encourage women and girls to document, photograph, and record instances of misogyny and harassment, raising public awareness and creating communities to support victims. Consequently, the main objectives of this research are to 1) map out how and when rape culture, harassment, misogyny and sexual violence are occurring in on and off-line spaces; 2) explore and analyse feminist responses to these incidents; 3) understand the experiences of women and girls who participate in this activism; and 4) to document feminist responses and experiences through the creation of a living archive of contemporary digital feminist activism. To meet these aims the project uses interdisciplinary research methods including content and feminist critical discourse analysis of online media, and ethnographic methods, such as observation of online activist communities and interviews with feminist activists, to explore how and why they are using digital technology. The research has the potential to benefit a number of stakeholders including feminist activists, government, charitable organisations, and media companies like Facebook by documenting some of the forms that new media misogyny is taking and a range of feminist digital activist responses. Our primary digital output is an online archive that will document this feminist activism and facilitate a collaborative space where activists can record their own initiatives and connect with other women and girls globally.