DOCSLIB.ORG

Social Media and the Schoolgirl: Performance, Power and Resistance

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Social Media and the Schoolgirl: Performance, Power and Resistance Social media and the schoolgirl: performance, power and resistance A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities. 2019 Jessica Faye Heal Manchester Institute of Education School of Environment, Education and Development Table of Contents List of Tables and Figures .................................................................................... 4 Abstract ........................................................................................................... 5 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................ 7 About the author .................................................................................................... 8 1. Introduction ................................................................................................. 9 Background .......................................................................................................... 12 School Site Reflections ....................................................................................... 18 Thesis Overview .................................................................................................. 19 2. Literature review ....................................................................................... 25 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 25 Defining Social Media .......................................................................................... 26 Popularity and Peer groups ................................................................................ 45 Constructing power, knowledge, and resistance ............................................. 57 Gender and education ......................................................................................... 74 3. Methodology ............................................................................................. 93 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 93 Research design .................................................................................................. 94 Epistemological approach ................................................................................ 108 Research Methods ............................................................................................. 118 Sensitivity, ethics, access ................................................................................ 134 Chapter Summary .............................................................................................. 141 4. Introducing the contexts of doing schoolgirl: social media, school and gender expectations. .................................................................................. 142 Situating social media ....................................................................................... 143 School, Social Media and Social Learning ...................................................... 156 Valued Femininity .............................................................................................. 165 Chapter Summary .............................................................................................. 184 5. The role of peer hierarchies, social media and male peers in maintaining schoolgirl femininity. ............................................................ 186 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 186 Peer Hierarchies and Popularity ...................................................................... 187 2 Practising Peer Popularity Online .................................................................... 208 Validating the Performance .............................................................................. 215 The role of male peers ....................................................................................... 222 Chapter Summary .............................................................................................. 229 6. Regulation of, and resistance to, schoolgirl femininities ................... 231 Regulating schoolgirl femininity ...................................................................... 232 Enforcing patriarchal control ........................................................................... 240 Shaming schoolgirls ......................................................................................... 248 Pressure to perform .......................................................................................... 258 Possibilities of resistance ................................................................................. 261 Chapter summary .............................................................................................. 278 7. Conclusion .............................................................................................. 280 Addressing the research questions ................................................................. 281 Contributions to knowledge ............................................................................. 293 Implications ........................................................................................................ 301 Concluding reflections ...................................................................................... 304 Biblography ................................................................................................. 306 Appendix 1 Information sheet and consent form to students and parents . 352 Appendix 2 Letter to Head teachers ................................................................ 356 Appendix 3 Interview Schedule ........................................................................ 357 Appendix 4 Additional interview questions .................................................... 359 Appendix 5 Detailed sample information ........................................................ 360 Appendix 6 Sample stratified by self-reported peer popularity .................... 362 Appendix 7 Ethics approval confirmation ....................................................... 363 Appendix 8 Draw-and-Tell Peer Hierarchy Diagrams ..................................... 364 Appendix 9 Coding framework ......................................................................... 365 Appendix 10 Example reflection piece ............................................................ 366 Appendix 11 Extract from coding journal ....................................................... 368 Appendix 12 Memo example ............................................................................. 369 Appendix 13 Number of Followers on Instagram by peer group .................. 370 Appendix 14 Numbers of participants by interview type ............................... 370 3 List of Tables and Figures Table 1 Sample overview ............................................................................. 106 Figure 1 A diagram of the peer hierarchy across the sample schools .......... 107 Figure 2 A diagram depicting the peer hierarchy language. ......................... 189 Figure 3 Interviewees self-reported social status by psuedonym and year group ..................................................................................................... 190 Figure 4 Drawing by Jennifer from Milner’s Academy .................................. 364 Figure 5 Drawing by Jodie from Estuary Academy ....................................... 364 Word Count: 86,782 4 Abstract Jessica Faye Heal University of Manchester 2019 Social media and the schoolgirl: performance, power and resistance This thesis explores the online performance and discursive construction of schoolgirl femininity. It is based upon interviews with girls between the ages of 12 and 15 in three maintained secondary schools in the UK, using smartphones and drawing to support the conversations. Drawing on Foucault and Butler’s theorisations of power, performativity and resistance, the thesis finds that peer popularity is a vector for maintaining patriarchal norms by patrolling the most appropriate forms of digital and schoolgirl femininity. Methodologically, this thesis highlights the value of considering peer popularity within gender and education studies, as a mechanism to trace the flow of power, from societal to micro level interactions both in school and online. The most ‘powerful’ form of femininity is characterised as hyper; an investment in outward appearance and sexualized behaviours validated by social media metrics. This hegemonic femininity actively patrols and enforces hetero-normative behaviour and the school is revealed as a modern-day panopticon in which smartphones act as surveillance, ready to capture and share any failures that are distributed through various online and offline tools to shame. The intersection of the online and offline in schools creates heightened pressure to balance authentic yet perfect forms of femininity that can be experienced as impossible to maintain, a fairy-tale authenticity. Within this contradictory discourse, however, lies the possibility of resistance for some girls. Those outside the most popular group counteract the prevailing discourses with tools to release them from the pressure of performance; and demarcate less patrolled digital spaces where alternative subjectivities can be practised. These resistances are underpinned by a conscious compliance,
Load more

Recommended publications
  • “Express Yourself in New Ways” – Wait, Not Like That
    “Express yourself in new ways” – wait, not like that A semiotic analysis of norm-breaking pictures on Instagram COURSE: Thesis in Media and Communication science II 15 credits PROGRAM: Media and Communication science AUTHORS: Andrea Bille Pettersson, Aino Vauhkonen EXAMINER: Peter Berglez SEMESTER: FS2020 Title: “Express yourself in new ways” – wait, not like that Semester: FS2020 Authors: Andrea Pettersson, Aino Vauhkonen Supervisor: Leon Barkho Abstract Instagram, as one of today’s largest social media platforms, plays a significant part in the maintaining and reproducing of existing stereotypes and role expectations for women. The purpose of the thesis is to study how Instagram interprets violations against its guidelines, and whether decisions to remove certain pictures from the platform are in line with terms of use, or part of human subjectivity. The noticeable pattern among the removed pictures is that they are often norm-breaking. The thesis discusses communication within Instagram to reveal how and why some pictures are removed while others are not, which limits women’s possibilities to express themselves in non-conventional settings. The study applies semiotics to analyse 12 pictures that were banned from the platform without directly violating its guidelines. Role theory and norms are used to supplement semiotics and shed light on the underlying societal structures of female disadvantage. Two major conclusions are presented: 1) Instagram has unclearly communicated its guidelines to women’s disadvantage, and 2) Instagram has therefore been subjective in the decisions to have the pictures removed from the platform, also to women’s disadvantage. Further, the discussion focuses on how Instagram handles issues related to (1) female sexuality, (2) women stereotyping, and (3) female self-representation.
    [Show full text]
  • Ironic Feminism: Rhetorical Critique in Satirical News Kathy Elrick Clemson University, [email protected]
    Clemson University TigerPrints All Dissertations Dissertations 12-2016 Ironic Feminism: Rhetorical Critique in Satirical News Kathy Elrick Clemson University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_dissertations Recommended Citation Elrick, Kathy, "Ironic Feminism: Rhetorical Critique in Satirical News" (2016). All Dissertations. 1847. https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/1847 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations at TigerPrints. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TigerPrints. For more information, please contact [email protected]. IRONIC FEMINISM: RHETORICAL CRITIQUE IN SATIRICAL NEWS A Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of Clemson University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design by Kathy Elrick December 2016 Accepted by Dr. David Blakesley, Committee Chair Dr. Jeff Love Dr. Brandon Turner Dr. Victor J. Vitanza ABSTRACT Ironic Feminism: Rhetorical Critique in Satirical News aims to offer another perspective and style toward feminist theories of public discourse through satire. This study develops a model of ironist feminism to approach limitations of hegemonic language for women and minorities in U.S. public discourse. The model is built upon irony as a mode of perspective, and as a function in language, to ferret out and address political norms in dominant language. In comedy and satire, irony subverts dominant language for a laugh; concepts of irony and its relation to comedy situate the study’s focus on rhetorical contributions in joke telling. How are jokes crafted? Who crafts them? What is the motivation behind crafting them? To expand upon these questions, the study analyzes examples of a select group of popular U.S.
    [Show full text]
  • Social Norms, Shame, and Regulation in an Internet Age Kate Klonick
    Maryland Law Review Volume 75 | Issue 4 Article 4 Re-Shaming the Debate: Social Norms, Shame, and Regulation in an Internet Age Kate Klonick Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mlr Part of the Internet Law Commons, and the Law and Society Commons Recommended Citation 75 Md. L. Rev. 1029 (2016) This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Academic Journals at DigitalCommons@UM Carey Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Maryland Law Review by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UM Carey Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RE-SHAMING THE DEBATE: SOCIAL NORMS, SHAME, AND REGULATION IN AN INTERNET AGE * KATE KLONICK Advances in technological communication have dramatically changed the ways in which social norm enforcement is used to constrain behavior. Nowhere is this more powerfully demonstrated than through current events around online shaming and cyber harassment. Low cost, anonymous, instant, and ubiquitous access to the Internet has removed most—if not all—of the natural checks on shaming. The result is norm enforcement that is indeterminate, uncalibrated, and often tips into behavior punishable in its own right—thus generating a debate over whether the state should intervene to curb online shaming and cyber harassment. A few years before this change in technology, a group of legal scholars debated just the opposite, discussing the value of harnessing the power of social norm enforcement through shaming by using state shaming sanctions as a more efficient means of criminal punishment. Though the idea was discarded, many of their concerns were prescient and can inform today’s inverted new inquiry: whether the state should create limits on shaming and cyber bullying.
    [Show full text]
  • Can Literary Studies Survive? ENDGAME
    THE CHRONICLE REVIEW CHRONICLE THE Can literary survive? studies Endgame THE CHRONICLE REVIEW ENDGAME CHRONICLE.COM THE CHRONICLE REVIEW Endgame The academic study of literature is no longer on the verge of field collapse. It’s in the midst of it. Preliminary data suggest that hiring is at an all-time low. Entire subfields (modernism, Victorian poetry) have essentially ceased to exist. In some years, top-tier departments are failing to place a single student in a tenure-track job. Aspirants to the field have almost no professorial prospects; practitioners, especially those who advise graduate students, must face the uneasy possibility that their professional function has evaporated. Befuddled and without purpose, they are, as one professor put it recently, like the Last Di- nosaur described in an Italo Calvino story: “The world had changed: I couldn’t recognize the mountain any more, or the rivers, or the trees.” At the Chronicle Review, members of the profession have been busy taking the measure of its demise – with pathos, with anger, with theory, and with love. We’ve supplemented this year’s collection with Chronicle news and advice reports on the state of hiring in endgame. Altogether, these essays and articles offer a comprehensive picture of an unfolding catastrophe. My University is Dying How the Jobs Crisis Has 4 By Sheila Liming 29 Transformed Faculty Hiring By Jonathan Kramnick Columbia Had Little Success 6 Placing English PhDs The Way We Hire Now By Emma Pettit 32 By Jonathan Kramnick Want to Know Where Enough With the Crisis Talk! PhDs in English Programs By Lisi Schoenbach 9 Get Jobs? 35 By Audrey Williams June The Humanities’ 38 Fear of Judgment Anatomy of a Polite Revolt By Michael Clune By Leonard Cassuto 13 Who Decides What’s Good Farting and Vomiting Through 42 and Bad in the Humanities?” 17 the New Campus Novel By Kevin Dettmar By Kristina Quynn and G.
    [Show full text]
  • A Content Analysis of #Womenagainstfeminism on Twitter
    University of Central Florida STARS HIM 1990-2015 2015 "Because I Shave My Armpits…": A Content Analysis of #WomenAgainstFeminism on Twitter Marina Brandman University of Central Florida Part of the Sociology Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/honorstheses1990-2015 University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in HIM 1990-2015 by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Recommended Citation Brandman, Marina, ""Because I Shave My Armpits…": A Content Analysis of #WomenAgainstFeminism on Twitter" (2015). HIM 1990-2015. 1696. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/honorstheses1990-2015/1696 “BECAUSE I SHAVE MY ARMPITS…”: A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF #WOMENAGAINSTFEMINISM ON TWITTER by MARINA L. BRANDMAN A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Honors in the Major Program in Sociology in the College of Sciences and in The Burnett Honors College at the University of Central Florida Orlando, FL Spring Term 2015 Thesis Chair: Amy Donley, Ph.D ABSTRACT Because of the speed and convenience of Twitter, it has become one of the most widely utilized platforms for breaking news and is often used to raise awareness of current social issues, political happenings, and social injustices. As more women use Twitter and other social media to embrace the feminist label online, an array of criticism has come to surface. A new movement, #WomenAgainstFeminism, has become popular with Twitter users who reject feminism ideals and the feminism label.
    [Show full text]
  • 72 Years After Death, World War II Fighter Comes Home
    New Charge for Mother of Baby $1 Weekend Edition With Meth in Saturday, System / Main 5 July 8, 2017 Serving our communities since 1889 — www.chronline.com Fox Theatre Progress Lewis County Coffee Co. South Wall Rebuild Underway as Group Chehalis Business Challenges Customers to Step Hopes for More State Funding / Main 7 Outside Their Comfort Zones on Coffee / Main 4 Sheriff ’s 72 Years After Death, World Office: Man War II Fighter Comes Home Killed in William James Gray Jr.’s Remains to Be Buried Randle Next to Friend Who Kept Wartime Promise Allegedly Shot First AUTOPSY COMPLETED: Victim’s Name Not Released Pending Positive Identification By The Chronicle A man shot and killed Tues- day evening in Randle allegedly fired the first shots in the con- frontation, witnesses told the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office. An autopsy was completed Friday on the man, tentatively identified based on information found at the scene as a 51-year- old transient, according to the Sheriff’s Office. please see SHOT, page Main 9 Inslee Vetoes Tax Break Plan for Pete Caster / [email protected] Above: Jeanne Louvier, left, looks on as her daughter, Jan Bradshaw, flips through a scrapbook compiled by Louvier’s mother of her son’s correspondence while serving Businesses in Europe during World War II. Army Air Force 1st Lt. William “Bill” James Gray, Jr., Louvier’s older brother, died while serving in Germany on April 16, 1945. Top Left: William “Bill” James Gray Jr. is seen in a photograph provided by his family. REJECTED: Deal Would Have Allowed MILITARY HONORS: Family Learns Manufacturers to of Man’s Heroism Through a Have the Same B&O Scrapbook After Remains of Fighter Rate as Businesses Pilot Found in Germany Such as Boeing By Eric Schwartz OLYMPIA (AP) — A plan to [email protected] give manufacturers the same tax cut that the Legislature previ- As World War II tore nations and families apart, ously gave to Boeing was vetoed two best friends in Washington proudly rose to the by Gov.
    [Show full text]
  • Alam: Violence Against Women in Politics
    Rapid #: -17473426 CROSS REF ID: 1068205 LENDER: FUG :: Electronic Journals BORROWER: NJR :: Main Library TYPE: Article CC:CCG JOURNAL TITLE: Journal of language aggression and conflict USER JOURNAL TITLE: Journal of language aggression and conflict. ARTICLE TITLE: Violence against women in politics ARTICLE AUTHOR: Zainab Alam VOLUME: Online first ISSUE: MONTH: 3 YEAR: 2021 PAGES: Full article ISSN: 2213-1280 OCLC #: 886441346 Processed by RapidX: 4/21/2021 2:36:58 PM This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17 U.S. Code) Violence against women in politics The case of Pakistani women’s activism Zainab Alam Rutgers University, U.S.A. This paper explores the protest claims of Pakistani women against the everyday oppression of traditional gender roles and the complex backlash they provoke as an instance of violence against women in politics. Taking the annual Aurat March (Women’s March) as a focal point, I analyze the provocative placards and slogans that have gone viral in both traditional and digital media and investigate the misogynistic counter attacks launched by conservatives, men’s rights advocates, and anti-feminists. Contesting nar- row definitions of the political in mainstream research, I argue that Aurat March protesters and activists are women in politics and that counter- discourses, designed to delegitimize the protest and the women’s issues it represents, constitute a mode of discursive violence that should be included in scholarly and activist discussions of violence against women in politics. Keywords: violence
    [Show full text]
  • 'The World Is Not a Safe Place for Men': the Representational Politics Of
    ‘The World is Not a Safe Place for Men’: The Representational Politics of the Manosphere Mary Lilly Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies In fulfillment of the requirements for the MA in Political Science Faculty of Social Sciences University of Ottawa © Mary Lilly, Ottawa, Canada, 2016 Abstract This thesis offers an overview of the representational politics of the online antifeminist community known as the ‘manosphere’. It ana- lyzes how gender and gender politics are represented in the discourse, with an eye to how traditional gender constructs, and traditional gen- dered norms and inequalities, are reproduced. This project—the first study to focus exclusively on the mano- sphere—contributes to our understanding of the community in two ways; it addresses a significant gap in the literature on the topic, and it tests the accuracy of the ‘conventional wisdom’ on the manosphere. Using mixed-methods critical discourse analysis, the study ana- lyzed the discourse of the two primary subcultures of the community, and found that traditional gender norms and relations are reproduced therein, and that for the most part the conventional wisdom is accu- rate: femininity and women are disparaged, masculinity is imagined to be ‘in crisis’ (constantly under siege by feminizing forces), and feminism is represented as hypocritical and oppressive. ii Acknowledgements A thank you to my supervisor, Paul Saurette, who supported me when I needed support, challenged me when I needed to be chal- lenged, for his invaluable guidance, compassion, and expertise, and for all he has helped me to learn over the past almost three years.
    [Show full text]
  • Lawrence Chapter 12 Lawrence and Ringrose August 31
    CHAPTER 12 @NoToFeminism, #FeministsAreUgly and Misandry Memes: How Social Media Feminist Humour is Calling out Antifeminism Emilie Lawrence and Jessica Ringrose University College London, Institute of Education In The Aftermath of Feminism, Anglea McRobbie (2009) defines postfeminism as the simultaneous rejection of feminism by critics who argued it was outmoded because it aggravated for an irrelevant political issue (women’s equality), and the commodification of feminism through forms of faux-feminism or a ‘postfeminist masquerade’ that appropriated feminist rhetoric to sell products. Rosalind Gill’s (2007) conceptualisation of a “postfeminist sensibility” illustrated by the co-optation of feminism through contemporary advertising and other media, demonstrated this dynamic of the market-harnessing feminism. Gill and colleagues have shown how faux feminism and commodity feminism can work in many diverse forms; from aid campaigns where Western women and girls are inculcated to save women and girls in the ‘third world’ from their less empowered forms of femininities (Koffman and Gill 2011), to ‘Love Your Body’ discourses that co-opt fat activism and body positivy in the service of expanding capitalist markets to ever wider nets of consumers (Gill and Elias 2014). Thus, postfeminist media culture has been deemed to be a space where feminism is either vehemently rejected, or it is a form of cultural appropriation that subverts genuine feminist coalition, solidarity and politics. However, recent scholarship suggests that the analytical lens offerd by postfeminism may no longer be as useful as it once was. Catherine Driscoll (2016) maintains that postfeminism is a totalizing framework that invokes a temporal frame of before and after 1 feminism that is reductive but also Eurocentric, giving it limited purchase in global contexts.
    [Show full text]
  • Degruyter Opphil Opphil-2020-0134 369..388 ++
    Open Philosophy 2020; 3: 369–388 Philosophy of the City Louise Pedersen* Moving Bodies as Moving Targets: A Feminist Perspective on Sexual Violence in Transit https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2020-0134 received May 31, 2020; accepted July 16, 2020 Abstract: Acts of sexual violence in transit environments are everyday occurrences for women across the globe, and the fear of being on the receiving end of sexual violence severely impacts women’s mobility patterns. Gill Valentine, in her examination of women’sfearofmaleviolenceandwomen’s perception and use of public space, has argued that the impact on women’s mobility amounts to a spatial expression of patriarchy. The aim of this paper is to expand upon Valentine’snotionof“the spatial expression of patriarchy” by engaging feminist philosophy within the context of sexual violence against women on public transportation. More specifically, I will argue for two particular inter- pretations of the spatial expression of patriarchy, one structural and one relational. It follows from my view that solutions to overcoming and ending sexual violence against women on public transportation hinge on both a structural and a relational understanding of the spatial expression of patriarchy. Keywords: public transportation, sexual assault, sexual harassment, spatial injustice, misogyny, sexism, relational space, right to the city 1 Introduction Back in the early 20th century, women would use hatpins, up to a foot long, to fight off aggressive men referred to as “mashers,” who would try to force their attention on them in the city streets and on street cars.¹ The use of the hatpin sometimes resulted in injury to the masher.
    [Show full text]
  • Female Nature, Cucks, and Simps’: Understanding Men Going Their Own Way As Part of the Manosphere
    Department of Informatics and Media Media & Communication Studies Two-year Master’s thesis ‘Female Nature, Cucks, and Simps’: Understanding Men Going Their Own Way as part of the Manosphere. Student: Zhané Hunte Supervisor: Kerstin Engström Spring 2019 Abstract The main aim of this thesis was to examine the ‘Men Going Their Own Way’ (r/MGTOW) community on Reddit. This aim was carried out by exploring (1) the themes perpetuated in the community, (2) how r/MGTOW fits in the contemporary ‘manosphere’, (3) the linguistic identity of its users, (4) the presence of hegemonic and inclusive masculinity, and lastly (5) the role of social media logics on r/MGTOW. The theoretical framework was comprised of theories about the characteristics of the manosphere, linguistic identity, hegemonic masculinity theory and inclusive masculinity theory, discourse, and social media logics. The analysis was comprised of research tools from Thematic Analysis, Content Analysis, and Foucauldian discourse analysis. The Content Analysis was facilitated by qualitative and quantitative software, WordStat. Through the use of these tools it was found that female nature, feminism, masculinity, society, and self-improvement were common themes in the community. Furthermore, masculinity, the dismissal of femininity, and a distinct lingua franca were elements that created a common antifeminist identity among the r/MGTOW users. Alleged scientific theories and beliefs about female nature and feminism were used as means to justify the position of men as victims. And lastly, most of the ideals of hegemonic masculinity, except for stoicism, were accepted. Taking social media logic into account, we see that users on certain platforms can boost certain content.
    [Show full text]
  • Troll Feminism: the Rise of Popular Feminism in South Korea
    Troll Feminism: The Rise of Popular Feminism in South Korea Euisol Jeong PhD University of York Women’s Studies September 2020 Abstract This dissertation explores a new form of feminist movement in South Korea that has emerged online. The movement, which I refer to as the ‘Megalia phenomenon’, was catalysed by ‘man-hating trolling’ in 2015, which distinguishes this new digital feminism from extant feminist movements. The dissertation interrogates how South Korean digital practices have shaped a specific form of popular feminism – which I term ‘troll feminism’. In this dissertation, I ask: how the digital venues on the South Korean web have interacted and intertwined with the Megalia phenomenon; how Megalian trolls devised their activist practices based on the digital habits; and how Megalians’ digital discourses were materialised through forms of practical activism. I trace how the participants in the Megalian movement appropriated the practices of online misogynists (such as aggressive and offensive trolling acts) in order to respond to prevalent online misogyny, which led them to develop a feminist movement. The fun entailed in trolling altered how people ‘do’ feminism in this movement, making participants experience it as game playing, hence ‘gamifying’ the activism. As the activism of ‘chasing fun’ through ‘man-hating’ enabled many women to question the gendered reality of their world, the politics of trolling provided a feminist critique of South Korean society that made women’s lives intelligible and made social oppression recognisable, resulting in their involvement in political resistance. I analyse the materialist orientation of feminist politics in the Megalian movement, arguing that its inclination to prioritise what is actual and material, practical and pragmatic derives from Megalians’ nature as digital users, and as gamers, who seek out direct and immediate reactions to their actions – which they experience as ‘triumphs’ in the gender war they are involved in.
    [Show full text]