Contemporary Feminist Media Cultures

The social and cultural processes of contemporary feminist media cultures are underpinned by historically specific socio-economic, political and technological changes. The rise of economic precarity in the Global North, and the spread of social media as a dominant form of media and communications, inform a range of new feminist logics across a range of media sites. The circulation of feminist content in Western, mainstream media, echoes the content that circulates online via social media and other networked communications technologies. Popular feminism has therefore been theorized as mediated and networked, ‘likeable’ and ‘spreadable’. The popularity of feminist ideas within digital culture points to a globalising ‘feminist turn’ in digital culture. At the same time, contemporary feminist media cultures are also shaped by the ‘digital turn’ in feminism. The online activities of girls and young women constitute new forms of feminist subjectivity, agency, resistance and activism, linked to the new mediated and mediatized popularity of feminism.