‘More safeguarded and among friends’: Negotiating platformised (in)visibility in feminist Instagram Stories

Abstract

In the context of contemporary feminisms, platformised visibility is often understood in a positive light, potentiating practices of visibility politics and algorithmic activism. However, visibility can be unequally distributed and even carry risks when extended to unintended or hostile audiences, particularly in a climate of growing anti-feminist pushback and backlash. Drawing on 18 in-depth interviews with a varied group of feminist Instagram users, this article explores ambivalent perceptions and relationships with the notion of platformised (in)visibility, foregrounding the paradoxical space that Instagram Stories occupies in the imagined attention economy of the platform. On one hand, Stories are framed as a tool for strategically increasing and sustaining feminist algorithmic visibility. Stories’ communicative affordances are seen as fostering feelings of interconnectedness and grounding feminist community-building. On the other hand, the interviews also highlight how unintended visibility can open one’s Instagram to backlash. In this context, Stories are paradoxically imagined as enabling circumscribed forms of circulation among more restricted and like-minded audiences – a feminist bubble that sustains safer digital spaces. Recognising the impacts of the labour necessary to achieve and maintain platformised visibility, deliberate reductions in platformised visibility – through strategies of partial or temporary disengagement from social media – are also explored as potential practices of feminist self-care.