Communicating feminist politics? The double-edged sword of using social media in a feminist organisation

ABSTRACT

Media coverage of violence against women and girls (VAWG) has increased in recent years, due to high-profile investigations such as the 2012 Jimmy Savile case in the UK, and in response to the #MeToo movement in the USA. Feminist organisations are likely to be asked for comment by the media as a result, but journalistic interest in case details rather than systemic causes of VAWG means that political messages focused on ending VAWG remain difficult to communicate. In contrast, social media is frequently celebrated as a channel through which the politics of feminist organisations can be promoted more directly, bypassing mainstream media agendas. In this article, we present the results of participatory research that explored the tensions inherent in social media use by one UK feminist organisation, Rape Crisis England & Wales (RCEW). The findings challenge the utopian view of social media as a panacea for news media shortcomings. Rather than being unequivocally positive, integrating social media into a feminist organisation’s communication work is a double-edged sword, bringing significant challenges that users must negotiate on a daily basis.

KEYWORDS:

• Rape Crisis
• social media
• feminist politics
• sexual violence
• VAWG

Acknowledgments

Huge thanks to our six collaborators from RCEW, who so generously shared their expertise, enthusiasm and experience with us. We are grateful to the Creative and Cultural Industries Exchange at the University of Leeds, whose Ignite 2014 grant enabled this energising collaboration.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The Rape Crisis Federation (1996–2003) preceded RCEW as the movement’s overarching body. Rape Crisis Scotland is RCEW’s sister organisation in Scotland.

2. “Victim” and “survivor” are contested terms; we have chosen to use “survivor.”

3. In 2016 the organisation restructured and this role no longer exists.

4. While we did not work directly with RCEW service users, the project’s aims are survivor-centric and are directed towards ending VAWG.

5. The Ignite funding covered payment and travel expenses for all RCEW collaborators, which allowed them to participate in the project.

6. Run by British Universities Film & Video Council, Box of Broadcasts is a subscription TV and radio service for education.

7. Following the conclusion of the initial project, we engaged in a pilot of the social media strategy in collaboration with Sarah L., who was conducting separate research into the value of publicising Survivors’ Voices. The pilot is not reported here.

8. Operation Yewtree exposed the BBC and NHS hospitals as locations of sexual abuse, and institutional failings were a regular topic in media coverage (Boyle 2017; Greer and McLaughlin, 2013). However, our dataset only covers stories that featured RCEW during the specified time, and consequently did not include the full range of institutions implicated in Operation Yewtree.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Creative and Cultural Industries Exchange, University of Leeds [Ignite grant].

Notes on contributors

Lee Edwards

Lee Edwards is a critical scholar of public relations, with a particular focus on the circulation of power and inequality in and through the profession. She has published widely on the production of power in and through public relations, and on diversity in the profession. She draws on a wide range of theory in her work, including feminist perspectives of communication, critical race theory, intersectionality and the sociology of occupational fields. E-mail: [email protected]

Fiona Philip

Fiona Philip is an independent scholar of gender, sexuality and culture, as well as a rare book seller (Quair Books). She has published on the queer politics of Borderline (1930) and copyright and the cultural industries. Alongside feminist and queer theories, she’s engaged by, and in, the role of ICT for opening up heritage collections and for activist work. E-mail: [email protected]

Ysabel Gerrard

Ysabel Gerrard is a Lecturer in Digital Media and Society in the Department of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield. She is a former Intern at the Social Media Collective, Microsoft Research New England and is the current European Communication and Education Research Association (ECREA) Digital Culture and Communication young scholars’ representative. Ysabel also organises the Data Power Conference. Her research interests include: social media content moderation (specifically pro-eating disorder communities), anonymous secret-telling apps and teenage life, the ethics of researching social media data, and digital research methods. Ysabel has published her research in First Monday, the Journal of Communication Inquiry and New Media and Society. E-mail: [email protected]