Video Transcript:
Hi everyone! My name’s Brianna Ferguson and this is my ethnography research project about Feminism on Twitter.
Feminists are classified as those who focus on achieving equality of the sexes. For years upon years this group has struggled to bring attention to a specific set of goals such as eliminating the pink tax, striving for gender equal pay, overall rights to choose what to do with their bodies, and getting rid of the double standards many women face. They have evolved and will continue to evolve through the years to bring attention to the many gender issues that impose women as inferior to men. Leading up to now, feminism can be divided into three waves. With social media being such a large influence on today’s society, there is an upcoming fourth wave approaching.
Feminists on the social media platform Twitter are completely different from other groups I’ve observed in the sense that they empower others with very few words and are truly passionate about their topic. As I studied feminism on Twitter, I came to the realization that there are multiple different types of feminism after seeing a post mentioning “Conservative Feminism”. I thought in my mind, “is that even a real thing,” noting their values. While conservative feminism is an interesting ideal, they stand against some of the major things the feminist movement fights and has been fighting towards for many years. After coming to this realization, I decided that my main research question would be based on the different types of feminism and the variety of feminism on Twitter.
By accessing Twitter frequently throughout the research conducting stage, I was able to collect the majority of my information regarding my main research question and how feminists portray themselves on Twitter. As I conducted my research, I paid attention to big name accounts that had a large following base. This allowed me to gauge how influential these accounts were on feminists’ paths. Not only did I focus on those accounts, but I also made sure to direct my attention to smaller accounts who offered similar content. The smaller accounts became especially important while I was conducting surveys.
After creating a survey designed to gain more knowledge about feminist accounts from direct interactions, I searched for the right participants. This step was difficult in the sense that many accounts were unreachable due to Twitter safety features. That is where the smaller accounts came into play. Many small accounts were almost equally developed and ran by people who were strongly devoted to the movement. Interacting with these accounts helped me obtain a more realistic view of how different types of feminists think.
As I began researching in the midst of an upcoming election and recent death of a beloved Supreme Court justice who many feminists held close to their hearts, the information I collected was fairly skewed. The majority of posts I initially observed ranged from one extreme of remembering the legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the other of working as diligently as possible to remove Donald Trump from office.
Among other types of posts, I discovered many that included information about feminism, progress of the movement, powerful quotes by women, and criticized the “rights and wrongs” of feminism. Note briefly some interesting and thought-provoking screenshots I pulled from my research.
Results from the survey gave insight on how certain account runners felt about specific topics. 100% of the participants indicated that they were radical feminists meaning that their biggest goal is aiming to break down the patriarchy and abolish male supremacy. The final consensus was unanimous as well, being that conservative feminism is nonexistent. While focusing on the different types of feminism, I observed that both radical and liberal feminists have the strongest presence on Twitter. Liberal feminists are those who believe very strongly in individual empowerment and push for equality legally and politically.
To finalize the results of my findings, I can sum it up in one brief sentence: Feminism is different for each and every person. There are multiple larger categories, such as radical or liberal, that one could put themselves into based on their particular beliefs, but there is not one feminism that can be deemed inferior to another, except of course conservative feminism which is far from the general description of feminism. However, true feminism shares one common goal: achieving gender equality.
The efforts and results of feminism are seen daily. If it wasn’t for what women did in the early first wave of feminism there would not have been an upcoming fourth wave. From my research, it is now clearer who are allies and who aren’t. During times like these, it is important to be conscious of people attaching feminism to their name with a malicious motive, however supporting a very different set of values. With more women now than ever being appointed to positions of power it is easy to be misled by what they truly stand for. It is important to acknowledge that just because a woman holds a position of power does not mean that they will implement the changes that the feminist movement has worked so hard for. This theory can also be ultimately looked at in regards feminism in general. Just because one says they support women or more particularly women in power does not mean they support what feminism is about.
The Digital Ethnography Project 