Feminist Activism and Digital Networks, 1st ed. 2016 Between Empowerment and Vulnerability Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change Series

This book sheds new light on the way that, in the last decade, digital technologies have become inextricably linked to culture, economy and politics and how they have transformed feminist and queer activism. This exciting text critically analyses the contradictions, tensions and often-paradoxical aspects that characterize such politics, both in relation to identity and to activist practice. Aristea Fotopoulou examines how activists make claims about rights online, and how they negotiate access, connectivity, openness and visibility in digital networks. Through a triple focus on embodied media practices, labour and imaginaries, and across the themes of bodily autonomy, pornography, reproduction, and queer social life, she advocates a move away from understandings of digital media technologies as intrinsically exploitative or empowering. By reinstating the media as constant material agents in the process of politicization, Fotopoulou creates a powerful text that appeals to students and scholars of digital media, gender and sexuality, and readers interested in the role of media technologies in activism.

1. Introduction.- 2. Women's Organisations and the Social Imaginary of Networked Feminism: Digital and Networked by Default?.- 3. The Paradox of Feminism, Technology and Pornography: Value and Biopolitics in Digital Culture.- 4. From Egg Donation to Fertility Apps: Feminist Knowledge Production and Reproductive Rights.- 5. Space, Locality and Connectivity: The End of Identity Politics as we Know it?.- 6.  Looping Feminist Threads: Sustaining Knowledge, Creating Possibility.