Citizen Media and Gender

What do citizen media look like in relation to gender today? This entry starts by offering an overview of citizen media practices in a historical narrative, starting with how the Women’s Lib challenged dominant media representations of gender, to Spare Rib and women’s press in the 1980s, to zine-­‐making in the Riot Grrl movement, and other alternative media produced by women in the 1990s. Before turning to explore contemporary developments in the digital era,
I provide a brief overview of cyberfeminism as an artistic/activist intervention, which continues to inform both academics and activists today. The discussion moves on to contemporary protest movements that use physical spaces and artefacts as part of their communicative repertoire, such as SlutWalk marches around the world, the anti-­‐Lads Mags movement in the United Kingdom, Nasty Women in the United States, Pussy Riot in Russia, and craftivism. Finally, special attention is paid to the role of digital media and on-­‐going developments in social media, with particular emphasis on the Arab Spring and ‘hashtag feminism’.