Arab women’s veiled affordances on Instagram: a feminist semiotic inquiry

ABSTRACT

Feminist semiotics is developed to explore Arab women’s self-presentations on Instagram. The novel framework enables interpretive theorising of a corpus Instagram posts by Arab women in the Middle East and North African region (MENA). Qualitative analysis zooms in on the accounts of four Arab women influencers, defined as microcelebrities monetising content online. Self-presentations are theorised as a process of semiosis, which involves signs, objects and interpretants of visual meanings. This perspective is contextual rather than universalising and addresses the lack of theoretical perspectives for considering Arab women’s palette of self-presentations. Simultaneously, the study is reflexive of tensions surrounding feminist semioticians’ positionalities. Unique theorising reveals situated micro-practices and ‘veiled affordances’ of modest while sometimes highly politicised self-presentations by Arab women.

KEYWORDS:

• Feminist semiotics
• Arab women
• Instagram
• self-presentations
• veiled affordances

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zoë Hurley

Zoe Hurley (PhD) is the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs inthe College of Communications and Media Sciences at Zayed University, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. She earned her PhD from Lancaster University, United Kingdom. Her thesis developed novel feminist semiotic enquiry to explore issues of Arab women’s social media empowerment. Her current research explores visual social media and the postdigital condition. Zoe has published articles in Social Media + Society; Postdigital Science and Education; and Visual Communication, as well as authoring blogs, commentaries and book chapters on social media. Zoe teaches undergraduate courses in social media and new media writing.