[ecrea] Feminist Media Studies - Special issue on Online Misogyny: Call for abstracts

Feminist Media Studies - Special issue on Online Misogyny: Call for
abstracts

Edited by Debbie Ging and Eugenia Siapera

Deadline for submission of 350-word abstract + short (1-page) CV: 1st
October 2016

http://explore.tandfonline.com/cfp/ah/special-issue-online-misogyny-call

In recent years, online misogyny has become a major concern for women.
As a new wave of feminist / female bloggers, journalists, activists and
gamers have attempted to assert their presence on the internet, there
has been a concerted backlash against both feminism and women generally.
This special issue of Feminist Media Studies seeks to identify and
theorise the complex relationships between online culture, technology
and misogyny. How have the internet’s anti-woman spaces and discourses
been transformed by the technological affordances of the internet and
social media? How are they being articulated and reproduced in diverse
cultural contexts and / or transnationally? Are they borne of the same
types of discontents articulated in older forms of anti-feminism or to
what extent do they articulate a different constellation of social,
cultural and gender-political factors?

Despite growing social concern about online misogyny, discussion and
debate of this issue has been primarily journalistic to date. Moreover,
the focus has been strongly western-/anglo-centric, and has tended to
revolve around certain ‘flashpoint’ events. There is a need, therefore,
for greater representation of how this phenomenon operates globally
across contexts from non-anglophone, technologically advanced cultures
to countries in the Global South. It is important to ask, for example,
how internet access and local gender landscapes complicate our
understanding of this subject. In addition to the more high-profile,
anonymous attacks covered by the western media, there are also reports
of intimate partner and acquaintance abuse online, which often takes the
form of ‘revenge porn’ or unauthorized distribution of sexts by men
known to their victims. Moreover, misogyny can and does operate in the
more formal contexts of the technology sector. All of these examples
should alert us to the importance of progressing academic inquiry on
this issue not from a point at which we assume online misogyny to be a
stable, recognisable phenomenon but rather by inviting contributions
that will expand current knowledge and understanding beyond western
experiences, gender-political contexts and epistemological frameworks.

What is significant about all of these phenomena is their very real
impact on the lives and safety of real women, as well as their success
in deterring women from expressing their opinions or putting their work
online. Despite this, online misogyny remains under-researched in
academia (Jane, 2014). There have, however, been important activist
interventions such as #everydaysexism and #freethenipple as well as a
raft of feminist groups organizing online to highlight and challenge
misogyny. Given that activists, journalists, gamers and filmmakers have
effectively led this charge, we consider it important to ask whether
these new, more popular expressions of digital feminism are reaching new
audiences and shaping new publics, and what impact this might have on
theoretical understandings of feminism. Moreover, while it is important
to consider the new misogyny in relation to older theorisations of
anti-feminism (Faludi, 1991; Kimmel, 1995; Messner, 1997), it is also
crucial to build reflexive criticism into narratives that have hitherto
excluded non-western cultures as well as other, related forms of online
hate speech such as racism, homophobia and transphobia.

Online Misogyny aims to give this increasingly important area of enquiry
the impetus, attention and theoretical cohesion it requires. The
increasingly amorphous and anonymous nature of online misogyny and the
fluid and dynamic nature of online communication pose considerable
challenges for data capture and analysis, and we expect methodological
innovation to be a key element of this special issue. We also hope to
publish at least one contribution from an activist, artist or non-academic.

Possible topics in relation to this theme may include (but are not
limited to):

Online misogyny and feminist media theorisations
Forms of online misogyny  (including threats, abuse, ‘revenge porn’,
creepshots, sexting, slut-shaming, technology-enabled intimate partner
and acquaintance violence, and others)
Sites and contexts of online misogyny
Discourses and visuality of online misogyny
Global contexts and online misogyny
Transnational travel / global pathways of misogyny
Online misogyny’s articulations with racism, homophobia and transphobia
Technological affordances: the role of algorithims, anonymity,
governance, technical design, platform politics, etc.
Social, political and personal impact of online misogyny
Women’s / feminist responses to online misogyny
Performative responses to online misogyny
The role of social media corporations and community managers
Workplace and institutional misogyny: misogyny in the technology /
gaming / journalism sectors
Legislation and corporate policy
Digitally networked publics: the impact of online misogyny on democracy
and the public sphere
Online misogyny and the post-feminist context

Aims & Scope
Feminist Media Studies provides a transdisciplinary, transnational forum
for researchers pursuing feminist approaches to the field of media and
communication studies, with attention to the historical, philosophical,
cultural, social, political, and economic dimensions and analysis of
sites including print and electronic media, film and the arts, and new
media technologies. The journal invites contributions from feminist
researchers working across a range of disciplines and conceptual
perspectives.

Peer Review Policy
All research articles in this journal undergo rigorous peer review,
based on initial editor screening and anonymous refereeing by at least
two scholars.

Submission Instructions

Please submit a 350-word abstract as well as a short (1-page) CV to
Debbie Ging ((debbie.ging /at/ dcu.ie) <mailto:(debbie.ging /at/ dcu.ie)>) and Eugenia
Siapera ((eugenia.siapera /at/ dcu.ie) <mailto:(eugenia.siapera /at/ dcu.ie)>) by 1st
October 2016. Authors whose abstracts are selected will be notified by
15th January 2017 and asked to submit complete manuscripts by 15th June
2017. Acceptance of the abstract does not guarantee publication of the
paper, which will be subject to peer review.

Editorial information

Guest Editor: Debbie Ging ((debbie.ging /at/ dcu.ie) <mailto:(debbie.ging /at/ dcu.ie)>)
Guest Editor: Eugenia Siapera ((eugenia.siapera /at/ dcu.ie)
<mailto:(eugenia.siapera /at/ dcu.ie)>)

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