Rum för diskussion? - En etnologisk undersökning av digitala diskussioner om feminism
(2020) ETNK02 20192Division of Ethnology
- Abstract
- The following paper examines discussions of feminism online and how participants orientate themselves in these. The specific case consists of a swedish separatist Facebook group for women and non-binary people. The group has over 100000 members and has a constant flow of activity where members interact with each other in different ways. Among this activity there is discussions of feminism, often leading to heated debate and disagreement.
In the fieldwork four different methods were used: observation, a questionnaire, a digital group interview and online follow-up interviews. The observation explored three different threads, all focusing on why one would not call themselves feminist, together consisting of 462 comments. The... (More) - The following paper examines discussions of feminism online and how participants orientate themselves in these. The specific case consists of a swedish separatist Facebook group for women and non-binary people. The group has over 100000 members and has a constant flow of activity where members interact with each other in different ways. Among this activity there is discussions of feminism, often leading to heated debate and disagreement.
In the fieldwork four different methods were used: observation, a questionnaire, a digital group interview and online follow-up interviews. The observation explored three different threads, all focusing on why one would not call themselves feminist, together consisting of 462 comments. The questionnaire was made on a survey website and was published in the group two times. The digital group interview was held in a thread that was created for the sake of the thesis, and members would discuss in the comment section. Some of the participants were later asked some follow-up questions in smaller interviews held through Facebook messenger. The main theory for analyzing the material consisted of Sara Ahmed’s theory of orientation, which is sprung from her queer phenomenology. Her idea aboutthe feminist killjoy and Gill and Sharff’s definition of postfeminism have also been important in my analysis of the material.
The result of the study shows that the orientations taking place in the discussions mainly took place through placing other members in certain feminist positions, rather than positioning oneself. The identified positions could all be said to exist in the outer edges of a feminist spectrum and were all looked upon as “extreme” in different ways. Therefore the members would orientate themselves away from positions rather than against. The results also show that there was a central line for the members to follow in order to stay orientated and that this line was to be just the right amount of feminist. Since the participants of the discussions tend to ascribe disorientation to each other through the positions, the safest way to stay orientated and in line is therefore for the members to not participate in the discussions. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9002541
- author
- Johansson, Rebecka LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- ETNK02 20192
- year
- 2020
- type
- M2 - Bachelor Degree
- subject
- keywords
- Feminism, Facebook, Online discussion, Orientation, Postfeminism
- language
- Swedish
- id
- 9002541
- date added to LUP
- 2020-01-27 15:35:54
- date last changed
- 2020-01-27 15:35:54
@misc{9002541,
abstract = {{The following paper examines discussions of feminism online and how participants orientate themselves in these. The specific case consists of a swedish separatist Facebook group for women and non-binary people. The group has over 100000 members and has a constant flow of activity where members interact with each other in different ways. Among this activity there is discussions of feminism, often leading to heated debate and disagreement.
In the fieldwork four different methods were used: observation, a questionnaire, a digital group interview and online follow-up interviews. The observation explored three different threads, all focusing on why one would not call themselves feminist, together consisting of 462 comments. The questionnaire was made on a survey website and was published in the group two times. The digital group interview was held in a thread that was created for the sake of the thesis, and members would discuss in the comment section. Some of the participants were later asked some follow-up questions in smaller interviews held through Facebook messenger. The main theory for analyzing the material consisted of Sara Ahmed’s theory of orientation, which is sprung from her queer phenomenology. Her idea aboutthe feminist killjoy and Gill and Sharff’s definition of postfeminism have also been important in my analysis of the material.
The result of the study shows that the orientations taking place in the discussions mainly took place through placing other members in certain feminist positions, rather than positioning oneself. The identified positions could all be said to exist in the outer edges of a feminist spectrum and were all looked upon as “extreme” in different ways. Therefore the members would orientate themselves away from positions rather than against. The results also show that there was a central line for the members to follow in order to stay orientated and that this line was to be just the right amount of feminist. Since the participants of the discussions tend to ascribe disorientation to each other through the positions, the safest way to stay orientated and in line is therefore for the members to not participate in the discussions.}},
author = {{Johansson, Rebecka}},
language = {{swe}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Rum för diskussion? - En etnologisk undersökning av digitala diskussioner om feminism}},
year = {{2020}},
}