- Title
- Navigating change: a critical analysis of social media’s role in shaping gender activists’ perspectives
- Creator
- Dias, Sasha Elliot
- Subject
- Uncatalogued
- Date Issued
- 2024-10-11
- Date
- 2024-10-11
- Type
- Academic theses
- Type
- Master's theses
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/466128
- Identifier
- vital:76699
- Description
- This research explores the unique challenges and opportunities that social media offers gender activists fighting for equality and social justice. It examines the negative and positive elements of social media, highlighting the ways it can be adopted to build communities, amplify voices, and advance social change in unique ways, but also the ways in which it can adversely contribute to existing power imbalances and inequalities. This research does not concentrate on any specific gender-based movement, but rather aims to understand how gender activists in South Africa have embraced social media in their local activism. The study followed a qualitative approach and collected the data through in-depth semi-structured interviews. It also followed a thematic framework in its analysis of the data collected from the interviews. The study found that, while online gender activism in South Africa faces challenges such as harassment and the digital gender divide, there is still progress in terms of community building and political engagement on social media. The findings suggest that, in spite of the challenges, social media can still be an important tool for advancing gender-based social justice in South Africa. This research made use of Counter-publics and Cyberfeminism as guiding theoretical frameworks. The theory of Counter-publics provides a valuable way of understanding how virtual groups emerge and challenge dominant societal norms and values. Cyberfeminism provides insight into how women have challenged contemporary inequalities through the adoption of technologies such as social media. As sub-components to Cyber-feminism, Intersectionality and Standpoint perspectives were used to understand how activists’ diverse identities and social positions influence their individual forms of activism.
- Description
- Thesis (MSocSci) -- Faculty of Humanities, Sociology, 2024
- Format
- computer
- Format
- online resource
- Format
- application/pdf
- Format
- 1 online resource (89 pages)
- Format
- Publisher
- Rhodes University
- Publisher
- Faculty of Humanities, Sociology
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Dias, Sasha Elliot
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike" License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)
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RU Department of Sociology
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | DIAS-MSOCSCI-TR24-238.pdf | 672 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |