Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology

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https://hdl.handle.net/1794/25990

Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology is an open-access peer reviewed journal featuring scholarship on gender, new media and technology.

The journal publishes contributions that exemplify Ada’s commitments to politically engaged, intersectional approaches to feminist media scholarship.

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Open Access
Reading Representations of (Un)desirable GBTI Men on QueerLife’s 4Men Website Section
(Fembot Collective, 2020-02) Vanyoro, Kudzaiishe
Using discourse analysis and semiotic analysis, this article examines how the language and images of the “4men” section of the South African site QueerLife construct masculinity and femininity as (un)desirable aspects in gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (GBTI) men’s relationships. The use of “(un)desirable” in this article suggests that there are contesting definitions of what constitutes desirable and undesirable traits in GBTI relationships. Although QueerLife states that it caters to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people, this article only focuses on GBTI men’s content in the 4men section. The article argues that despite claiming to cater to all within the LGBTI spectrum, representations on QueerLife 4men seem to treat masculinity as the most desirable trait. This encompasses traits such as penis size, athleticism, class, emotionlessness, and muscular, firmly built bodies. Overall, the analysis of these texts will show that among what such representations seek to achieve in post-apartheid South Africa is an appeal to white, urban, middle-class gay communities.
Open Access
A Feminist Reading of Hashtag Activism in Ghana
(Fembot Collective, 2020-02) Mohammed, Wunpini Fatimata
This article examines Akumaa Mama Zimbi’s activism in the Ghanaian social media landscape, specifically Twitter. I argue that while it is imperative to critique her hashtag activism for its complicity with patriarchal ideology in the repression of female sexuality, it is important to contextualize her work within conversations on gender activism and feminisms in Ghana. This article parses out the politics of and tensions in feminist movements on the continent demonstrating how certain activist labels can be depoliticized and used to undo decades of feminist work on the continent. By drawing on my lived experience as an ethnically marginalized Muslim woman born and raised in Ghana who is active in the country’s digital (activist) public sphere, I present a critical analysis of the pervasive conversations on gender activism and feminism in Ghana. I employ the conceptual framework of framing to examine the main topics that arise out of Akumaa’s #WearYourDrossNow campaign on Ghana Twitter which aims at discouraging young women from engaging in premarital sex. I assert that Akumaa’s work is inspired by her personal interpretation of gender activism and is closely tied to religious morality and conservative notions of female sexuality in Ghana.
Open Access
[Issue no. 16 Cover]
(Fembot Collective, 2020-02) Steeves, H. Leslie
Open Access
The Hakuna Kama Mama Project: Producing Technologies of Resistance to Maternal Mortality in East Africa
(Fembot Collective, 2020-02) Jaksch, Marla L
Giving birth can be a life or death matter for many pregnant women. As a consequence of the high rates of maternal death in many countries, death in childbirth has come to be understood as an unfortunate yet accepted part of the contemporary maternal health landscape. Globally, the high rates of maternal death comprise many overlapping historical and systemic features that are not always easy to disentangle. Adding to the complexity are entrenched approaches to maternal mortality that tend toward one-size-fits-all strategies, approaches that minimize or erase the specificity of local and regional differences. This trend is problematic as Western biomedical approaches often demand that women perform assigned roles and operate under systems not of their own control or making—ignoring long histories, behaviors, and cultural beliefs that have preexisted this moment and have supported women’s authoritative knowledge. As an intervention into this landscape, this discussion introduces an ongoing project, Hakuna Kama Mama (HKM), which expands dominant framings by populating the healthscape with localized understandings of maternal health because African women are often regarded as the objects of expert knowledge rather than the subjects of their own stories. The HKM project centers upon the participants’ subjective perspectives of motherhood in their daily lives because they are knowledgeable subjects who desire to be seen as capable, responsible experts—as mothers and hard-working contributors to their community.
Open Access
Framing the Other: Rethinking Media Representations of Mursi Women’s Display of Gendered Lip-Plated Bodies
(Fembot Collective, 2020-02) Atuhura, Dorothy
With illustrations drawn from Ilja Kok and Willem Timmers’s documentary Framing the Other (2012), this article rethinks media representation of the contact between Mursi lip-plated women of Ethiopia and Western tourists who come to sightsee and photograph their traditionally modified bodies. The film Framing the Other represents this contact as a destructive force that has not only enabled Mursi women’s victimhood as objects of the tourist gaze, but one that has contributed negative cultural change and loss of tradition. In this article, I provide an alternative, if not oppositional, interpretation that only attends to the nuanced ways Mursi women negotiate cultural loss and change, and recognizes modalities of agential tactics they deploy to negotiate cultural exchange and perform identity work within a cross-cultural contact zone marred with significant inequalities that work to their (dis)advantage. I do not imply that my reading will provide a definitive reading; rather, I reexamine the vanishing tradition and victimhood narratives portrayed in Framing the Other, showing that its multiple layers of meaning in fact motivate an oppositional and alternative reading.
Open Access
Gendered Digital Inequities in African Contexts: Measuring and Bridging the Gaps
(Fembot Collective, 2020-02) Kwami, Janet D
While access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as mobile phones and the internet has increased over the last couple of years, new digital inequalities also continue to emerge regarding gender, socioeconomic backgrounds, and different levels of digital literacies and education. The gendered nature of access to and use of digital technologies shapes opportunities for many African women, influences the process of social inclusion, and thus exacerbates social inequalities. This essay interrogates the interrelationships of gender, new digital technologies, and socioeconomic development among marginalized groups in different contexts in countries on the continent of Africa, focusing on the rising digital inequities among marginalized communities. I make the case for the collection of disaggregated data and comparative studies of gendered digital inequities as important for understanding and bridging gaps. By focusing on marginalization rather than poverty, I examine the relationships between people, locales, and institutions rather than assets alone. By examining how distributed groups connect through digital tools, I hope to raise some important questions about the nature of digital inequities in today’s networked society and address gender empowerment through inclusive and research-based ICT policy making and practice.
Open Access
Emerging Gender, Media and Technology Scholarship in Africa: Opportunities and Conundrums in African Women’s Navigating Digital Media
(Fembot Collective, 2020-02) Gadzekpo, Audrey; Gardner, Paula; Steeves, Leslie H
Open Access
My Mobile Phone, My Life: Deconstructing Development (Maendeleo) and Gender Narratives among the Marakwet in Kenya
(Fembot Collective, 2020-02) Komen, Leah Jerop
The increased adoption of mobile telephony for development is based on the assumption that mobile telephony has the potential to foster social change. To some, such technology can aid most developing countries to leapfrog stages of development. Yet to others, the technology is at most counterproductive: development has been understood differently by the developed in comparison to the underdeveloped. Missing in this narrative is the people’s own conceptualization of the term development as well as their gender roles, often a component of development programs. This study presents findings on an alternative conceptualization of development, dubbed maendeleo, a Swahili term that denotes process, participation, progress, growth, change, and improved standard of living—as defined by the people or women themselves as they interact with mobile telephony in rural Kenya. Using Manuel DeLanda’s assemblage theory to analyze interviews, this study proposes an alternative conceptualization of development. This different perspective on development denotes both process and emergence, through the processes and roles that mobile telephony plays in the techno-social interactions of users, context, and other factors as they form social assemblages that are fluid in nature, hence challenging the Western proposition that new technologies produce development understood as social transformation.
Open Access
Newspapers as Gendered Spaces: Photographic Representation of Kenyan Female Athletes in the Kenyan Press during the Rio 2016 Olympic Games
(Fembot Collective, 2020-02) Nyanoti, Joseph
Kenya is known globally as the home of world champions in athletics, including the Olympics. However, although the Olympic games dominate public discourse in Kenya when they are being held every four years, there is hardly any academic interest in the many press photographs that are published in this season. The main objective of this study is to analyze how female athletes were photographically represented compared with their male counterparts in the Rio 2016 Olympics in the Kenyan newspapers. I employed quantitative content analysis and semiotic analysis to study Kenya’s two leading daily newspapers, the Daily Nation and the Standard between August 5 and 21, 2016, the time the Olympic games took place. My findings indicate that the two newspapers allocated more photographic space to men compared with women athletes. The findings also show that photographs in this study depicted women as weaker than men, as emotional unlike their logical male counterparts, and generally as inferior to men.
Open Access
[Issue no. 15 Cover]
(Fembot Collective, 2019-02) Mobilus in Mobili
Open Access
#MosqueMeToo: Islamic Feminism in the Twittersphere
(Fembot Collective, 2019-02) Point, Camille
In this paper I examine the impact of social media campaigns, using the trending hashtag #MosqueMeToo as an artifact to analyze the extent to which these visual codes (through their democratic modes of participation) provide Muslim women with an accessible way to share their lived experiences and claim space within a virtual forum. Through highlighting the widespread impact of the hashtag Islamic feminist movement, I argue for the benefits of having a carefully articulated and tentative convergence of contemporary feminism and religious belonging rather than a critical distance between the two.
Open Access
Torn: A Social Media Drama over the Aziz Ansari Scandal
(Fembot Collective, 2019-02) Bivens, Rena; Khan, Ummni
This is a work of fiction that addresses social media platforms and communication channels that are intimately entangled with contemporary movements related to empowerment, oppression, and sexual violence. We created a video that is composed solely of screen recordings from our protagonist’s computer and smart phone. Within a Canadian context and from the perspective of a graduate student, our narrative explores fear, ambivalence, identity, pressure, performance, and image management through the lens of the recent scandal that surrounded celebrity-comedian Aziz Ansari and the broader relationship to the #MeToo movement.
Open Access
ladymouth: Anti-Social-Media Art As Research
(Fembot Collective, 2019-02) Ciston, Sarah
Open Access
Introduction: Sexual Violence, Social Movements, and Social Media
(Fembot Collective, 2019-02) Guha, Pallavi; Stabile, Carol A; Gajjala, Radhika, 1960-
Open Access
Women Tweet on Violence: From #YesAllWomen to #MeToo
(Fembot Collective, 2019-02) Jackson, Sarah J; Moya, Bailey; Foucault Welles, Brooke
From the earliest feminist press to Twitter, women have used technology to create and sustain narratives that demand attention and redress for gendered violence. Herein we argue that the #MeToo boom was made possible by the digital labor, consciousness-raising, and alternative storytelling created through the #YesAllWomen, #SurvivorPrivilege, #WhyIStayed, and #TheEmptyChair hashtag networks. Each of these hashtags highlight women’s experiences with interpersonal and institutionally-enabled violence and each was precipitated by high-profile news events. Alongside an examination of Twitter networks, we consider the social and cultural conditions that made each hashtag significant at particular moments, examining the ideological and political work members of these hashtag networks perform. We find that feminist hashtags have been successful in creating an easy-to-digest shorthand that challenges and changes mainstream narratives about violence and victimhood.
Open Access
Online Activism: Centering Marginalized Voices in Activist Work
(Fembot Collective, 2019-02) Mohammed, Wunpini Fatimata
This article contextualizes feminist activism within Northern Ghana, highlighting the complexities of activism in this society. I argue that although social media provides space for the articulation of marginalized voices, it is imperative to examine how cultural capital and an intimate knowledge of power dynamics within a socio-cultural context shapes successful activist work. Therefore, online activism when complemented by activist work offline, can be used to address injustices towards marginalized people. I contextualize the case within a religiously conservative society, emphasizing the role that an activist’s positionality can play in facilitating activist work. Throughout the article, I deconstruct activism, shedding light on the evolution and malleability of activism depending on whether or not activist work leads to concrete results. Therefore, I draw on critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA) to contextualize activist work that I engaged in, together with non-activist identifying people and feminist allies to seek justice for a woman who was front and center in our quest to address sexism publicly directed at her.
Open Access
“América Latina Vai Ser Toda Feminista”: Visualizing & Realizing Transnational Feminisms in the Women’s Worlds March for Rights
(Fembot Collective, 2018-11) Synder, Cara K; Veiga, Ana Maria; Wolff, Cristina Scheibe
On August 2, 2017, ten thousand feminists from around the globe took to the streets of Florianopolis, Brazil to march for women’s rights. The Marcha Mundos de Mulheres por Direitos (Women’s Worlds March for Rights, or MMMD) was a central part of an academic conference jointly titled the 13th Women’s Worlds Congress / 11th Seminário Internacional Fazendo Gênero. Using this March – both its physical forms and its digital translations – as a case study, this essay explores how the visual rendering of dissent articulates and realizes transnational feminist politics and solidarities.
Open Access
Awkwardness and Assemblage: Digital Schemes for Feminist World-Making
(Fembot Collective, 2018-11) Smith-Prei, Carrie, 1975- author; Stehle, Maria
In this essay, we develop the concept of awkward assemblages to describe feminist digital activism that is multidirectional in its political effects and interpretive legibility, built of uneasy bedfellows and ill-suited coalitional partners. We exemplify the way in which activist practices, developing out of the tensions in which contemporary feminisms find themselves, complicate the genealogy of feminist protest. We focus on feminist responses triggered by the sexual assaults in Cologne, Germany, on New Year’s Eve 2015/16, particularly the work of Swiss-German performance artist Milo Moiré. This example allows us to highlight the complex ways in which local and contemporary feminist interventions intersect with the history of feminist protest art and how they link to transnational movements—among other examples, the #MeToo movement. We then turn to digital-feminist coalitional possibilities by thinking through assembling, along with coding and hacking, as performative labor that emphasizes the potential of inventing and visualizing political forms that (however awkwardly) materialize different worlds.
Open Access
Race and Resistance Amid Feminism, Priming, and Capitalism: The (surprisingly-globalized) Visual of an Asian American Woman Activist
(Fembot Collective, 2018-11) Korn, Jenny Ungbha
Open Access
Drawing the Revolution: The Practice and Politics of Collaboration in the Graphic Novel Lissa
(Fembot Collective, 2018-11) Nye, Coleman; Sherine, Hamdy
Motivated by the potentials of comics to convey complex, yet accessible anthropological insights on global health and political transformation, the authors crafted the collaborative work of graphic “ethnofiction” Lissa: A Story about Medical Promise, Friendship, and Revolution. Lissa chronicles the unlikely friendship of two young women living in Cairo—one Egyptian, one American—who are navigating difficult health circumstances at home and revolutionary unrest in the streets. In this excerpt and discussion of the collaborative process of crafting Lissa, we illustrate how we attended to the broader epistemological, aesthetic, and ethical fields within which the project took shape by working collaboratively with Egyptian revolutionaries on the story and by employing different visual and narrative techniques throughout the book to cite their artistic, academic, and activist work.