Welcome to the coven: organising feminist activism in the connective era

Abstract

© 2019 Dr. Verity Anne TrottThe highly publicised protest wave of the early 2010s triggered a reconceptualization of the organisational practices and structures of contemporary activism. Prior research was focused on analysing the new sociality of the internet, primarily organisational websites and forums, and how this was affecting, influencing, and extending collective action (Bimber et al., 2005; Chadwick, 2007; Earl, 2010). The traditional model of collective action was found to no longer account for the full range of actions that were occurring in digitised spaces. In response to this shift, Bennett and Segerberg (2012, 2013) proposed the logic of connective action to account for new models of protest organising with social and digital technologies. However, their large-scale networked analysis, while insightful, fails to capture the finer-grained relationships between activists particularly within less transparent networks. In addition, since the development of their theory, there has been an explosion of feminist protests epitomised by the recent #MeToo movement. The scale, reach, and seeming permanence of these feminist actions demands further examination. Thus, this thesis provides a theoretical account of the organisational structures and practices occurring behind the scenes of contemporary feminist actions. Drawing on a social media ethnographic approach, this thesis documents the post-digital and hybrid feminist social movement repertoire that is resulting in a globalisation of feminist protests. The research is based on in-depth interviews with feminist activists and focuses on three case studies of feminist protests: the original Hollaback! campaign hosted on a photoblog, the series of #TakeDownJulienBlanc post-digital protests, and the solidarity feminist hashtag #EndViolenceAgainstWomen. The thesis also incorporates a discussion of the #MeToo movement due to its significance in the contemporary political climate. Its key contributions are challenging the myth of structurelessness within contemporary protests; reaffirming the hybridity of organisational practices; and conceptualising the franchising of feminist activism. Overall, the thesis identifies the profoundly feminist issues that impact contemporary organisational structures and practices, resulting in an expansion and partial contestation of Bennett and Segerberg’s (2013) connective action typology