Putting a price on social movements: A case study of #metoo on instagram

Abstract

Social media has enhanced the dissemination of information relating to specific social movements, allowing activists to quickly mobilize and more easily communicate. However, the practice of “hashtag activism” has unforeseen consequences; it gives users with commercial interests a great deal of control over when and how hashtags are utilized. To investigate the intersection between commodification, social movements, and social media, we examined the use of #metoo and three other #metoo‐related hashtags on the popular social networking platform Instagram as a case study. The aim of the #metoo social movement, which gained traction in 2017–2018, was to raise awareness on the issue of sexual violence. We collected a sample of 200 randomly selected posts to analyze their content and relevance to the movement. Our findings not only indicate that 1 in 5 posts within our sample had a commercial aspect, but also revealed a variety of commodifying strategies employed by the users.

Sexual health information on social media: a systematic scoping review

“… Autor:innen (Jahr) Social-Media-Plattform (F1) Inhaltsanalytische Methode (F2) Qualitätsanalyse (F3) Anbieter a (F4) Zielgruppe genannt (F5) Themen Anzahl b (F6) Qualitätsausprägung c (F7) 1 Ache und Wallace (2008; [ 37 ]) YouTube Quantitativ manuell – Profis Laien Sonstige – 1 – 2 Adams-Santos (2020; [ 38 ]) YouTube Qualitativ – Laien + 1 – 3 Afnan et al. (2019; [ 39 ]) Instagram Quantitativ manuell – Laien – 1 – 4 Alaggia und Wang (2020; [ 40 ]) Twitter Qualitativ – Laien – 1 – 5 An et al. (2014; [ 41 ]) Twitter Quantitativ computational – Laien – 1 – 6 Balasubramanian et al.…”

When the Personal Becomes Political: Unpacking the Dynamics of Sexual Violence and Gender Justice Discourses Across Four Social Media Platforms

“…In contrast, users are more likely to self-censor their progressive feminist expressions on Facebook to avoid judgment from closer family-friend networks (Keller, 2019). Instagram’s photo and video sharing feature has highlighted visual narratives in social activism, while it is greatly subject to commercialization attempts (Afnan et al, 2019). For Reddit, its community structure and discussion board features facilitate the outpourings of traumatic personal encounters and networking centered around the #MeToo hashtag (Manikonda et al, 2018), but it may also serve as a camp for misogynistic voices (Massanari, 2017).…”

Activist communication design on social media: The case of online solidarity against forced Islamic lifestyle

“…For instance, identity hashtag movements are known to motivate individuals to share "selfies" with personal stories to elucidate the experiences of marginalized social groups (Liu et al, 2018). By connective action instead of collective mobilization influence online participants to form their own personalized self-identity (Afnan et al, 2019) as part of presentative we-ness (Arda, 2015: 95) rather than group identity. As Allmark inserted women exercise active participation in their formulation of self-portraits, aka selfies, through their own projecting self-image reflection (Allmark, 2019: Introduction).…”

“…Networked engagements can refer to new understanding of collective identity as "beingwith" beyond representational identification in the case of online, networked constituent global struggles of autonomous logic (Arda, 2015: 79). YY platform uses social media as the other networked international feminist movements "for seeking and disseminating information, framing public discourse, expressing collective solidarity and developing counter-narratives against those produced by authoritative discourse" (Afnan et al, 2019). YY adopts the initiative of sharing the participants' stories of familial and communal pressure similar to other networked movements.…”