UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Taking Back the Streets: Resisting #StreetHarassment in a New Era of (Virtual) Public Space A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements of the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Planning by Nina Marie Flores 2016 © Copyright by Nina Marie Flores 2016 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Taking Back the Streets: Resisting #StreetHarassment in a New Era of (Virtual) Public Space by Nina Marie Flores Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Planning University of California, Los Angeles, 2016 Professor Leobardo F. Estrada, Chair Whether on foot, bike, bus, or train, women are often targets of street harassment such as catcalls, unwanted touching, or leering. When women are forced to navigate harassment in the city, it limits their ability to access public spaces with the same freedom and ease as their male counterparts. As a planning issue, examining street harassment reveals serious concerns about gender justice, and can deepen our understanding of gender-based safety issues in public. Drawing on feminist theory, this dissertation is motivated by the idea that public space is profoundly gendered with social, cultural, political, and economic consequences for women. !ii In this study I looks at the role of social media in meditating the relationship between virtual and physical public spaces. Building on ideas about gender, the right to the city, and public space, the purposes of this research are to 1) provide empirical evidence that street harassment is widespread and presents a safety and access issue of concern to urban planners, 2) to show how harassment affects daily lives, 3) to demonstrate the ways in which social media platform Twitter is used as a virtual public space for processing and sharing experiences in physical public space, and 4) to examine how women are using Twitter to resist harassment both as individuals and with anti-harassment organizations. Using a case study approach, nearly 10,000 tweets about street harassment were collected based on keyword and hashtag, and analyzed as micro-narratives. Tweets were considered in relation to harassment-related events and media stories during the study period, and in context of anti-street harassment activism by individuals and organizations. The tweets were evaluated as part of a growing movement against street harassment using Bill Moyer’s framework on the stages of social movements. The results of this research confirm that street harassment is part of women’s daily lives on city streets, and revealed that women also face harassment in the virtual world. However, women are resisting, and the findings show that social media data can offer an unparalleled window into understanding experiences with harassment, fears in public space, and strategies for resistance. !iii The dissertation of Nina Marie Flores is approved. Kathleen L. Komar Paavo Monkkonen Leobardo F. Estrada, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2016 !iv For Jackie: a badass scholar, planner, teacher, activist, organizer, advisor, mentor, and dear friend who offered endless advice, sharp insights, and the gift of her loving friendship while I wrote this dissertation. You are so missed, every day. Jacqueline Leavitt (1939 — 2015) !v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of figures and tables .…….….……………………………………………………………viii Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………….….……ix Author Vita ……………………………………………………………………………………xiii Chapter 1: Introduction …………………………………………………………………….… 1 • Coming to this Research: Street Harassment and Twitter • Framing: Right to the Gendered City and Virtual Public Space • Research Questions and Assumptions • Research Significance • Dissertation Organization Chapter 2: Literature Review …………………………………………………………………14 • Feminism, Gender, and Feminist Theory • Waves of Feminism • Feminism, Gender, and Planning • Right to the Gendered City • Fear, Safety, and Space • Fear and Transit • Applying Feminist Perspectives • Street Harassment in the Literature Chapter 3: Defining Virtual Public Space ……………………………………………………38 • Twitter as a Research Space • Twitter and Planning • Twitter, Social Movements, and Resistance Chapter 4: Conceptual Framework …………………………………………………………49 • Multiple Scales for Understanding Gender-Based Violence • Extending the Decision to Act: Virtual Public Space • Tweets as Action, Action as Resistance Chapter 5: Overview of Methods ……………………………………………………………55 • Overview of Methods • Feminist Standpoint Theory as Methodological Tool !vi • Critical Race Theory and Methodology • Tweets as Narratives • Case Study Design and Rationale • Study Limitations Chapter 6: Data and Analysis ………………………………………………………………..65 • Documents, Artifacts, and Online Participant Observation • Preliminary Research and Listening Period • Determining Keywords and Hashtags • Tweet Collection • Tweet Analysis Procedures • Additional Tweet-Based Analysis • Media Analysis Chapter 7: Tweet Findings Part I — Subunit Analysis …………………………………….81 • Descriptive Analysis of Total Collected Tweets • Subunit Catcall*: Descriptive Analysis • Subunit Catcall*: Tweet Analysis • Subunit #streetharassment: Descriptive Analysis • Subunit #streetharassment: Tweet Analysis • Subunit #EndSH: Descriptive Analysis • Subunit #EndSH: Tweet Analysis • Subunit #YouOkSis: Descriptive Analysis • Subunit #YouOkSis: Tweet Analysis Chapter 8: Tweet Findings Part II — Case Analysis……………………………….…….…152 • Cross-Unit Analysis • Media Analysis and Tweet Peaks • Code Cloud Analysis Chapter 9: Summary and Recommendations ………………………………………………164 • Summary of Findings • Research Implications • Recommendations for Planning • Feminism, Planning, and the Future of Virtual Public Space References …………………………………………………………………………….………176 !vii List of Figures and Tables Figure 1.1 Live street harassment tweets (p. 4) Figure 1.2 Research questions (p. 9) Figure 4.1 Conceptual Framework with research questions: Gender-based violence as a planning issue (p. 49) Figure 4.2 Moyer’s stages of social movements (p. 52) Figure 5.1 Critical approach to tweet analysis (p. 59) Figure 5.2 Data types, sources, collection, and purpose (p. 63) Figure 7.1 Tweets by keyword and hashtag (p. 82) Figure 7.2 Keyword catcall* tweets (p. 83) Figure 7.3 Hashtag #streetharassment tweets (p. 96) Figure 7.4 Hashtag #EndSH tweets (p. 113) Figure 7.5 Hashtag #YouOkSis tweets (p. 139) Figure 8.1 Major media stories during study period (p. 160) Figure 8.2 Tweet peaks during study period (p. 161) Figure 8.3 Code cloud from ATLAS.ti (p. 162) !viii Acknowledgements During my five years at UCLA I have been the grateful recipient of generous graduate student funding. Financial support for this project included the UCLA Dissertation Year Fellowship, the UCLA Graduate Research Mentorship, the Graduate Division Cota-Robles Fellowship, and the Luskin School of Public Affairs Meyer & Renee Luskin Fellowship. I am equally grateful to the Social & Cultural Analysis of Education program at California State University Long Beach, which supplemented my graduate funding with consistent employment opportunities as a lecturer for the past three years. As the research for this project progressed, Twittermining made data collection easy and manageable. I thank them for their quick and enthusiastic answers to emails. Additionally, thanks goes to the Young Research Library’s Digital Research StartUp Partnership (DResSUP) program for digital scholarship — in many ways they made this project possible. Special thanks goes to Zoe Borovsky for her ongoing support throughout the program, Yan Liang for her tutorial help, and Peter Broadwell for wrangling nearly 10,000 tweets into a neat, readable spreadsheet. Writing about this topic takes a toll, and I thank anti-harassment organizations that are working night and day to address street harassment through their activism, policy advocacy, and awareness raising efforts. Many thanks to Holly Kearl for her work at Stop Street Harassment, whose hashtag #EndSH is in this study and provided concrete examples of online and on-the- ground connections. A big thank you to Jennifer Pozner for giving permission to use screenshots of her live tweets from when she was harassed on the subway. These tweets provide a vivid example of one way Twitter is used to capture and process harassment in real time. !ix I am also thankful for the opportunity to present this research at several academic conferences, and to receive early and ongoing feedback on my ideas, approach, and analysis. Audience questions during a presentation at the 2015 Western Political Science Conference provided intriguing conversations about quantitive versus qualitative Twitter-based research, and comments from David Sloane, my session chair at the Associated Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) annual meeting in 2015, provided further confirmation that there was a place for this research within the field of planning. Financially, travel to these conferences was only possible thanks to travel grants from the UCLA Urban Planning department, the UCLA Graduate Division, and the ACSP People of Color Interest Group (POCIG). My committee is a dream team of scholars and mentors, each bringing their own critical edge and their own ways of showing support for me and my work. Without question Leo Estrada is a driving force behind my success in this program. His encouragement and mentorship, his commitment to me as a student, and his willingness to support my research ideas — no matter how far fetched! — allowed me to thrive, and not just survive in this doctoral program.