[Commlist] Call for Papers: Special Issue of Communication Papers

Call For Papers /// Special Issue of Communication Papers

Digital Feminism, Platform Activism, and Online Violence in a Time of 
Backlash

Guest Editor: Guiomar Rovira Sancho

Digital media platforms have profoundly transformed the ways feminist 
ideas, activism, and solidarities circulate across national and cultural 
contexts. Social media environments such as Instagram, X, TikTok, and 
YouTube enable new forms of feminist engagement that scholars describe 
as digital feminism, hashtag activism, and networked feminist movements 
(Mendes, Ringrose & Keller, 2019; Clark, 2016). Through these platforms, 
feminist actors mobilize publics, challenge patriarchal norms, and build 
transnational networks of resistance that extend beyond traditional 
activist infrastructures.

Digital media environments have facilitated highly visible feminist 
campaigns such as #MeToo, #YesAllWomen, and #NiUnaMenos, demonstrating 
how networked communication can transform individual testimonies into 
collective political action (Jackson, Bailey & Welles, 2020; Mendes et 
al., 2019; Baer, 2016). These movements illustrate the emergence of what 
Papacharissi (2015) conceptualizes as affective publics, in which 
digitally mediated emotions and narratives contribute to political 
mobilization and collective identity formation.

At the same time, digital platforms are not neutral infrastructures. 
Platform architectures, algorithmic recommendation systems, and 
commercial logics shape the visibility, circulation, and reception of 
feminist discourse (Gillespie, 2018; van Dijck, Poell & de Waal, 2018). 
Feminist communication within digital environments operates within the 
broader dynamics of platform capitalism (Srnicek, 2017) and surveillance 
capitalism (Zuboff, 2019), where visibility and engagement are governed 
by algorithmic logics that privilege particular forms of content, 
emotional expression, and engagement metrics. Ruha Benjamin’s concept of 
the “New Jim Code” highlights how discriminatory technological designs 
can reproduce and amplify existing racial and social hierarchies through 
seemingly neutral systems of data and automation.

Within these contexts, feminist activism frequently encounters tensions 
between empowerment, commodification, and backlash. As Banet-Weiser 
(2018) argues, contemporary media cultures are characterized by the 
coexistence of popular feminism and popular misogyny, where feminist 
messages circulate widely while also triggering intensified 
anti-feminist reactions. Similarly, Gill (2007, 2016) has shown how 
postfeminist sensibilities shape contemporary media cultures, 
influencing how feminist discourse becomes simultaneously visible and 
depoliticized within neoliberal media environments.

Recent scholarship also highlights the geopolitical and colonial 
dimensions of digital infrastructures. Data colonialism has been 
described as a new form of extractive power that reinforces global 
inequalities and produces forms of epistemic violence against knowledges 
and communities from the Global South (Ricaurte, 2019). 
Trans-hack-feminist and technopolitical collectives have increasingly 
denounced these dynamics while proposing alternative technological 
imaginaries grounded in autonomy, care, and collective governance 
(Briones and Rovira, 2024). At the same time, the rapid development of 
Artificial Intelligence has become a key site of feminist critique, with 
scholars and activists advocating for situated, accountable, and plural 
approaches to technological design that challenge the 
techno-universalism of corporate platforms (Ricaurte and Jasso, 2023).

Online spaces can therefore simultaneously foster feminist solidarity 
while amplifying harassment, misogyny, and organized anti-feminist 
backlash (Jane, 2016; Mantilla, 2015). Online harassment and gendered 
abuse have become increasingly pervasive, particularly targeting women 
and gender-diverse people who participate in political, activist, and 
journalistic fields (Nadim & Fladmoe, 2021). These dynamics are 
unfolding within a broader global context marked by the rise of 
authoritarian and far-right movements, increasing militarization and 
war, and coordinated digital campaigns aimed at discrediting feminist, 
LGBTQ+, and anti-racist movements (Noble, 2018). In this environment, 
feminist digital activism is forced to continuously reconfigure its 
strategies, infrastructures, and forms of solidarity in order to resist 
both platform governance and organized reactionary attacks.

The current moment therefore raises urgent questions about the 
possibilities and limits of platform-mediated feminist politics. How are 
feminist movements adapting to changing digital infrastructures, 
algorithmic governance, and the consolidation of platform power? In what 
ways are feminist actors confronting online violence, disinformation, 
and coordinated backlash? How do feminist technopolitical practices 
imagine alternative digital futures beyond the extractive logics of 
platform capitalism?

This special issue, guest edited by Guiomar Rovira Sancho, invites 
scholars to critically explore how feminist activism unfolds within 
contemporary platform cultures and digital media environments. We 
particularly welcome contributions that examine how feminist actors 
navigate the ambivalent conditions of visibility, vulnerability, and 
resistance in networked spaces.


  Possible Topics

We welcome theoretical and empirical contributions addressing (but not 
limited to):

·Digital feminist movements and hashtag activism beyond #MeToo

·Feminist responses to online harassment, misogyny, and gendered 
disinformation

·Far-right digital cultures, anti-feminist backlash, and platform politics

·Feminist technopolitics, transhackfeminism, and alternative infrastructures

·Platform governance, algorithmic bias, and feminist critiques of AI

·Data colonialism, digital extractivism, and feminist epistemologies 
from the Global South

·Feminist activism in contexts of war, authoritarianism, and political 
polarization

·Affective publics, digital storytelling, and feminist memory practices

·The commodification of feminism and the tensions of popular feminism

·Intersectional and transnational perspectives on digital feminist activism


  Theoretical Perspectives

Submissions may engage with key debates in digital feminism, feminist 
media studies, platform studies, and critical data studies. 
Contributions may draw on the work of scholars whose research has shaped 
the analysis of feminist politics within contemporary media and 
technological environments, including but not limited to:

  * Sarah Banet-Weiser
  * Kaitlynn Mendes
  * Jessalynn Keller
  * Rosalind Gill
  * Ruha Benjamin
  * Paola Ricaurte


Authors are encouraged to mobilize and critically engage with concepts 
such as:

  * popular feminism and popular misogyny
  * hashtag feminism and networked feminist movements
  * feminist visibility politics
  * affective publics and digitally mediated emotions
  * feminist counterpublics and alternative digital publics
  * online misogyny, harassment, and anti-feminist backlash
  * platform governance, algorithmic power, and data politics
  * data colonialism and decolonial approaches to digital infrastructures
  * feminist technopolitics and critical perspectives on AI


  Important Dates

Full paper submission deadline: *15 October 2026*
Publication of the issue: *December 2026*


  Special Issue Editors

*Guest Editor*
Guiomar Rovira Sancho - University of Girona
(guiomar.rovira /at/ udg.edu) <mailto:(guiomar.rovira /at/ udg.edu)>

*Managing Editor*
Hasan Gürkan – Communication Papers, University of Girona
(hasan.gurkan /at/ udg.edu) <mailto:(hasan.gurkan /at/ udg.edu)>


  Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts should follow the Communication Papers author guidelines and 
be submitted through the journal’s online submission system. All 
submissions will undergo a double-blind peer review process. For more 
information: 
https://communicationpapers.revistes.udg.edu/about/submissions 
<https://communicationpapers.revistes.udg.edu/about/submissions>

Articles should be written in English or Spanish and should typically 
range between 6,000–8,000 words, including references.


    Submission

Submissions should follow the author guidelines of /Communication 
Papers/ and be submitted through the journal’s online system:

https://communicationpapers.revistes.udg.edu/about/submissions<https://communicationpapers.revistes.udg.edu/about/submissions>

All submissions will undergo double-blind peer review.


    Editorial Contacts

Guest Editor
Guiomar Rovira Sancho – University of Girona
(guiomar.rovira /at/ udg.edu)

Managing Editor
Hasan Gürkan – Communication Papers
University of Girona
(hasan.gurkan /at/ udg.edu)


    No APC Statement

Communication Papers is an open-access journal that does not charge any 
Article Processing Charges (APC). Submission and publication are free of 
charge for authors.

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