Platform Feminism: Protest and the Politics of Spatial Organization

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ada14-platf-sin-2018.pdf (3.36 MB)

Date

2018-11

Authors

Singh, Rianka

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Fembot Collective

Abstract

This article brings into question the political utility of platforms as media for feminist resistance. Using examples of #MeToo, and the Women’s March on Washington, movements that have relied on the platform for reinvigorating what Sarah Banet-Weiser has called “popular feminism” (2018), I argue that common media platforms tend to infer an underlying assumption of safety, privilege and power in relation to social space. Through highlighting how BIPOC people organize in social space, I argue that the focus on amplification and elevation, facilitated by the logics of platform, obscures the needs of those who resist on the margins. I introduce the spatial strategies employed by those who must negotiate space differently to challenge the centrality of platforms as media the structure contemporary feminist protest.

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10 pages

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Citation

Singh, R. (2018). Platform Feminism: Protest and the Politics of Spatial Organization. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, No. 14. https://doi.org/10.5399/uo/ada.2018.14.6

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/1794/26937

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Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology; Issue No. 14: Visualizing Protest: Transnational Approaches to the Aesthetics of Dissent (November 2018)