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1 Destroying the Joint: a Case Study of Feminist Digital Activism in Australia

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1 Destroying the Joint: a Case Study of Feminist Digital Activism in Australia Destroying the joint: a case study of feminist digital activism in Australia and its account of fatal violence against women A thesis submitted to fulfil requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Jenna Price Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences The University of Sydney 2019 1 Statement of originality This is to certify that to the best of my knowledge, the content of this thesis is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for any degree or other purposes. I certify that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work and that all the assistance received in preparing this thesis and sources has been acknowledged. Jenna Price 2 Table of Contents Table of Figures ..................................................................................................................... 6 Abstract ................................................................................................................................ 7 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................. 8 Preface ................................................................................................................................ 12 Glossary of Terms ....................................................................................................................... 14 Chapter One: An Introduction............................................................................................. 15 From Twitter strangers to Facebook sisters ................................................................................ 15 The context of Destroy the Joint ................................................................................................ 16 At the intersection...................................................................................................................... 21 Chapter Outlines ........................................................................................................................ 25 Chapter Two: A brief history of sisterhood, from waves to the web .................................. 30 Feminism as a social movement ................................................................................................. 31 Organisational continuity (or commitment) ............................................................................... 33 Shared and collective identity (or unity) .................................................................................... 34 Core ideological purpose (or worthiness) ................................................................................... 36 Is there a fourth wave of feminism? ........................................................................................... 38 Existing research on Destroy the Joint ........................................................................................ 41 Chapter Three: In the mix: methods, methodologies and researching as a feminist about my sisters ............................................................................................................................ 46 Case studies ................................................................................................................................ 47 Case selection ............................................................................................................................. 49 Why interviews? ......................................................................................................................... 50 Recruitment process and pool for interview .............................................................................. 53 Insider research .......................................................................................................................... 55 Other data collection .................................................................................................................. 57 How the data was analysed ........................................................................................................ 57 My table of feminist aliases ........................................................................................................ 62 Educated middle class radicals: an analysis of those who participated in this research ............. 62 The activists of Destroy The Joint ............................................................................................... 64 3 Chapter Four: Working the feminist networks, networking for feminist change (or old activists and new tricks) ...................................................................................................... 65 Key events in the formation of Destroy the Joint ...................................................................... 65 Building the page ...................................................................................................................... 70 Context, backlash, doubts .......................................................................................................... 73 How the activists wanted it to work ........................................................................................... 75 From many working individually to one working with others .................................................... 76 The evolution of an informal organisation ................................................................................ 77 The processes of Destroy The Joint ............................................................................................ 80 Tensions between past and present forms of activism (or, old habitus dies hard) ................... 82 Chapter Five: Go prefigure - how habitus and capitals shape digital feminist activists ...... 90 Why values matter: prefigurative politics .................................................................................. 90 Why values matter: Prefiguration .............................................................................................. 94 How prefiguration links to habitus and capital ........................................................................... 95 Further exploration of the capital of activists ........................................................................... 104 Every day, a little bit more ....................................................................................................... 108 Chapter Six: In formation - why Feminism 101 matters, a heuristic for information activism .......................................................................................................................................... 111 The communicative turn and twist as an expression of cultural capital ................................... 111 The expression of cultural capital through information activism ............................................. 112 Sharing information/knowledge .............................................................................................. 113 Gatekeeping ............................................................................................................................. 114 Gatewatching ........................................................................................................................... 114 Contribution to a shared cultural capital of contemporary feminist activism .......................... 114 Sharing or transferring cultural capital ..................................................................................... 115 Information production ............................................................................................................ 119 Information distribution ........................................................................................................... 122 Chapter Seven: On campaigning and Counting Dead Women .......................................... 128 A comparison of three campaign win posts .............................................................................. 131 Telstra campaign ...................................................................................................................... 133 Aboriginal women jailed for “public mischief” ......................................................................... 140 Campaigning techniques .......................................................................................................... 143 Community legal centres and the Counting Dead Women campaign ....................................... 146 4 Counting Dead Women posts ................................................................................................... 152 What of the images themselves? ............................................................................................. 156 Where has Counting Dead Women been cited? ....................................................................... 162 Next steps ................................................................................................................................ 164 Personal action frames and social media networks .................................................................. 165 Chapter 8: Taking its toll: the bad news and the good on emotional labour in feminist activism ............................................................................................................................. 172 Dealing with key feminist concerns such as family violence ..................................................... 179 The aspects of activism............................................................................................................
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