Feminism Not for All? The Discourse Around White Feminism Across Five Social Media Platforms

Abstract

BIPOC scholars have criticized that feminism and feminist activism have often failed to include race, class, and intersectional identities in the feminist agenda. Using theoretical concepts from framing, rhetoric, and cross-platform activism, we examine (a) the discourse in social media posts around white feminism and (b) the platform differences of this content across five different social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and YouTube. The methodology we use is a combination of computational text analysis approaches and content analysis. Our study highlights the voice of those who felt marginalized by the feminist movement including the uprising of #MeToo. We find pockets of conversations on topics such as experiences of People of Color or Women of Color; critique of white feminism, experiences of LGBTQ+ communities, and Black experiences. These posts predominantly used techniques to persuade the audience with reason, facts, and logic. The most common framing technique used was acknowledgment. Moreover, our findings show multiple differences across the five social media platforms.