Weaving a ‘World’ for Women: Exploring the Affordances of Digital Spaces for Transnational Feminist Organizing

• In Event: The Politics of Women's Campaigns and Spaces

Abstract

This study explored the technological affordances of digital spaces for transnational feminist organizing. The digital space of World Pulse, an online media network, was examined, focusing in on a recent digital action campaign aimed to collectively engage the online community around a problem of interest. The organizations’ campaign messages and the content and structure of submissions to phase one of the campaign were analyzed qualitatively using a thematic analysis. The analysis identified three salient affordances of World Pulse’s digital space for transnational feminist organizing, including connecting, voicing, and exchanging. Additionally, this study identified both material and socio-cultural constraints related to participants’ offline realities that shape their abilities to leverage these affordances, drawing attention to the ways members’ are multi-located. Understanding what actions these digital spaces of transnational feminist organizing enable has implications for organizations, activists, and practitioners turning to the web as a ‘space’ for collective organizing and activism.

Author

• Jasmine Linabary, Purdue University