CP3 Essay Details by

ESSAY TITLE / RESEARCH QUESTION

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-25 11:37:48 UTC

Examining the role of social media in enabling female and minority animators to promote a feminist agenda.

RATIONALE

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-25 11:38:39 UTC

Social media and digital networks are indisputably an integral part of the vast majority’s day-to-day life, and have been since the conception of multiple platforms in the mid-2000s. I have personally noticed a significant increase in the number of female animators creating content with a passionate feminist agenda, and utilising the outspokenness of social and digital media in order to cast their net across a wider audience. As a young woman studying animation and its wider industry myself, I would like to take this opportunity to examine how digital communication is allowing those who are paving the way to put out work with such intent.

INTRODUCTION

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-25 11:39:23 UTC

- Social media platforms have become the chosen way of circulating/promoting animation work
- Increasing number of female/minority animators making work with a feminist message that is then circulated on social media
- This essay will consider individual case studies evaluating the effectiveness of social media in helping animators promote feminism.
- Pre and post social media (Riot Grrrl zines and mass media, Panimation, Caitlin Young?, Maisy Sanderson, Anna Ginsburg)

PART 1: PRE-SOCIAL (MASS) MEDIA, RIOT GRRRL

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-28 19:31:00 UTC

KEY METHODS FOR PROMOTING A FEMINIST MESSAGE USED BY RIOT GRRRLS

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-28 19:35:01 UTC

- Mass Production. Photocopying, gentrified/popular imagery with a personal touch >
- Collage and DIY. Everyone can do it. Made Riot Grrrl zines much more accessible and widespread.

CONTEXTUAL /EVIDENTIAL LINKS

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-28 19:43:39 UTC

Olivia Laing, The Guardian, Riot Grrrl Zine examples

https://www.theguardian.com/music/gallery/2013/jun/30/punk-music

Nicole Emenneger/Jenny Woolworth. Interviews with prominent punk/riot grill figures and digitisation of notebook from the 90s.

https://jennywoolworth.com

https://issuu.com/jennywoolworth/docs/riot_grrrl_notebook

MMU SPECIAL COLLECTIONS ARCHIVE

STRENGTHS + WEAKNESSES MASS AND SOCIAL MEDIA

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-28 20:05:09 UTC

- Social Media reaches a wider audience much quicker
- printed media requires real physical engagement, more devoted fanbase?
- printed media can be kept as a 'souvenir' from a particular era; historical cultural value
- Instant nature of social media means current trends are always acknowledged, trends in feminism highlighted
- moving image and animation creates interest on social media, better reach and engagement.

Effectiveness of communication/ lasting legacy?

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-28 20:43:12 UTC

- Mass produced printed media, physical nature allows it to be passed down/ kept as an artefact
- more sentimental value?
- Animation on social media could be subject to getting lost or forgotten in a space that is oversaturated with work
- Printed media limited with the number of people it can reach; costs for circulation and production whereas internet access is less discriminatory and free
- Commercial links on social media, goes a long way in a consumerist society to peak interest especially if it's underpinned by a feminist message
- Overall social media more effective for communication, although printed media perhaps has more sentimental value, but remains dated in that it's static instead of being in a constant state of flux

Academic Argument

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-28 21:22:32 UTC

Red Chidgey
Handmade Memories: Remediating cultural memory in DIY Feminist Networks

- "The State and mainstream media do not guarantee collective memories of social justice movements, but subject them to distortion, domestication and erasure" p87 (check DuPlessis and Snitow 1998 reference)
- "...media channels (such as blogs, zines, videos and podcasts) enact an archival function: they move feminist memory out of the realm of the institutional and create grassroots memory texts that are mobile, shared and networked." p87
- "As remediation is multi-directional.. analogue forms and practices are also remediated by the digital." p88
- "Beyond mainstream media coverage, Riot Grrrls communicated through their own media and music channels... Riot Grrrl reclaimed feminism and and fostered a girl-positive network that was both personal and political, introducing thousands of young men, women and queers to feminism" p89 (consider adding "the personal is political" academic reference)
- (on Nicole Emmenegger's digitisation of her Riot Grrrl notebook) "This document is a rich historical resource: articles clipped from mainstream publications... sit alongside underground magazine offerings... All the articles are deconstructed, with sexist and sensationalist comments highlighted". p91
- "... Emmenegger's scrapbook as an important counter-memory to mainstream media accounts by contesting patronising frames of teenage rebellion and providing narratives against trend-orientated approaches in the press" p92
- "As a form of feminist memory, it is not only the content of the scrapbook that is significant here, but the process of digitisation" p92
- Nicole Emmenegger's digitised scrapbook process - "This enacts logics of immediacy and hypermediacy... the digitisation of the scrapbook is muted within the interface... whilst the juxtaposition between the yellowing pages of the document and the de-temporalised internet plat form hosting it (where documents do not physically age or deteriorate) serves to emphasise the historical materiality and 'aura' of the original artefact" p92
- "Activists have greater possibilities for researching, producing and disseminating their own memory texts within Web 2.0 innovations. By deploying emerging and residual media forms via the internet, for example, DIY feminists create personal and remediated cultural memories that serve to reinvigorate feminist engagement in the present". p95
- "As third wave feminist histories are still in the making, further documentation and assessment is needed to account for what versions of the feminist past, present and future are being circulated, by which actors, for what purposes, and with what resources" p96
- " ... mediated memory can help map resistance struggles and offer feminists much needed resources to imagine alternative possibilities" p96

Chidgey, R., 2012. ‘Hand-Made Memories: Remediating Cultural Memory in DIY Feminist Networks’ in Zobl E. & Drüeke R. (Eds.), Feminist Media: Participatory Spaces, Networks and Cultural Citizenship, Transcript Verlag, pp. 87-97.
< http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1wxr2f.8 >
(Accessed 8th September 2020)

*MMU Harvard reference*

PART 2: CASE STUDY(IES), PANIMATION TV, MAISY LEWIN-SANDERSON

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-28 21:26:04 UTC

Personal takes on women and feminism in the animation industry. Answers to interview questions, effectiveness of social media in their own career progress and its impact.

Evaluation

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-28 21:30:12 UTC

How effective is social media in these cases? Does it have longevity?

CONTEXTUAL LINKS/IMAGE EXAMPLES

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-28 21:49:52 UTC

- Panimation TV
https://www.instagram.com/panimation.tv/?hl=en

http://www.panimation.tv

http://www.beegrandinetti.com

- Maisy Lewin Sanderson
https://maisysummer.com

Academic argument/ reference

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-28 22:29:59 UTC

Talk from Small Fry Collective
https://smallfrycollective.com/small-fry-chats-goes-on-youtube

Maisy's reply to me:
- "I think it’s important to use our platforms and toolkit of drawing and animation to explore feminist issues. I hope that social media does support in getting these topics discussed more, although I do consider on what scale do these posts change peoples perceptions and makes them take action on the causes."
- "The full story will be released as a zine, alongside animated gifs for social media, which will help deliver the important information and topics covered in an engaging and concise format."
- "Animation can be a powerful tool to explore these tough topics & lesser-known stories of female figures. This intertwined with social media can help in connecting the stories to their local audience & open up conversations that might not have otherwise happened".
- "The use of animation and social media as a platform helps turn research & tough topics into a digestible and accessible format."

POINT 3: (1000 words, week 4)FEMINIST AGENDAS BETWEEN PLATFORMS

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-28 22:33:43 UTC

- effectiveness of image based social media (i.e. instagram) compared to word-based social media (i.e. Facebook) for promoting a feminist agenda
- Is there a need to adjust the feminist message/content of animation between different platforms?
- Does adapting content between platforms dilute the overall feminist message?

CONTEXTUAL LINK FROM CASE STUDIES IN PREVIOUS PARAGRAPH

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-28 22:35:40 UTC

ACADEMIC ARGUMENT

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-28 22:43:28 UTC

Jessalyn Keller
"Oh, she's a Tumblr feminist": Exploring the Platform Vernacular of Girls' Social Media Feminisms

- "Why are girls using particular platforms for feminist activism? How do certain platforms facilitate distinctive opportunities for youth engagement with feminist politics? and How might this shape the types of feminist issues and politics both made possible and foreclosed by some social media platforms?" p2
- "social media platforms are not inherently open, neutral, or egalitarian but instead dis- cursively situated amid the competing interests of users, companies, advertisers, and policymakers." p4
- "While there has been increasingly scholarly attention to online feminisms, there has been little analysis of the ways in which the digital platforms as technological structures shape the ways in which online feminism is practiced and circulated. This lack of attention to the specificities of platforms has resulted in generalized discussions about “online femi- nisms” without a clear articulation of the varied feminist practices that are made possible, encouraged, foreclosed, or even monetized by different platforms." p4
- "girls conscientiously evaluate their social media platforms in relation to the specific kind of post they are producing—in this case, one with a feminist message." p5
- "An expectation of (more) social privacy on Tumblr both shapes and is shaped by the platform’s particular vernacular." p8
- "While there has been a growing scholarly interest in social media feminisms, there has been little sustained attention to the various ways in which social media platforms invite particular forms of feminist engagement through their specific platform vernaculars." p8
- "I do not aim to suggest that a particular platform is “better” or “worse” for feminist girls; instead, I attempt to map both the intertwined opportunities and limita- tions that each platform offers girls for feminist activism. These include opportunities to participate in feminist politics by strategically engaging with different social media plat- forms to publicly perform as feminist activists, mobilize community and peer support, and maintain social privacy when necessary" p9
- "However, this analysis cannot be definitive, as platforms change, their popularity among young people shifts, and new platforms are introduced." p9
- "both Twitter and Tumblr offer opportunities for moving beyond one’s local community" p9
- "While the growth of feminist engagement online by girls is inspiring and encouraging, we must understand this research within our current political reality marked by anti- feminist, White supremacist discourse. Indeed, social media platforms are often used to circulate such hate, placing femi- nist girls and women—especially those who are of color, queer, disabled, undocumented, or poor—at risk for increas- ing harassment online." p9

Keller, J., 2019. ‘“Oh, She’s a Tumblr Feminist”: Exploring the Platform Vernacular of Girls’ Social Media Feminisms’ in Social Media + Society April 2019, doi: 10.1177/2056305119867442.

<https://journals-sagepub-com.mmu.idm.oclc.org/doi/pdf/10.1177/2056305119867442>

(Accessed 9th September 2020)

*MMU Harvard Reference*

POINT 4: ANIMATION'S ROLE ON SOCIAL MEDIA IN RE-DEFINING FEMINISM

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-28 23:18:57 UTC

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-28 23:29:31 UTC

- Issues frequently presented by animation on social media; period equality, body hair, sexual assault, body positivity

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-28 23:30:10 UTC

- Different issues highlighted more than others at different times. Animations on period equality more common at certain points than those on body hair for example. Link to commercial projects; Always advert with Anna Ginsburg

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-28 23:31:10 UTC

- Social media use has forced feminism to change its shape; hashtags, issues surrounding social media use and abuse, technology playing a part. Ideals have also adapted to this.

ACADEMIC ARGUMENT

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-28 23:59:36 UTC

Pamela Flores
'Reviving feminism through social media'

-"The exposure of young women to the feminist debate gives them important tools to work against the discrimination they find in their own lives"
-"the objective is to use the internet as an entrance door, so that new generations of women make a link between their experiences of gender discrimination and feminist theories, providing them a space where they question the discriminatory practices that have been normalised in their own contexts"
-"The advent of social networks is a central event that invites us to examine the individual and collective experiences of women in relation to contemporary feminism"
-" social networks make visible the multiplicity of stories of women who question the dynamics of male power over the feminine, and claim the virtual space as an alternative scenario to narrate from their own perspectives"
-"Today, social networks are innovative tools of feminist activism that amplify/extend women's voices to promote both local and global actions"
-"Even though the impact of social media is still being evaluated, the fact that social media is widely used to express discontent and create communities about situations that were invisible, shows that social media is contributing to new forms of political manifestations"
-"women are increasingly challenging norms that constrain their presence, mobility, and behaviour in public spaces by working to appropriate these spaces at three scales: at the individual scale through everyday behaviour, at the community scale through grassroots organisations, and at the international scale through transnational activism"
-"It is both, in organised responses to women's fear, as well as in their everyday actions, that women are remaking their cities and themselves. In this purpose, social media has proved to be an important tool for communicating between diverse communities with similar problems, creating awareness of the right to the city from a gender perspective"

Flores, P., Gómez, N., Roa, A. and Whitson, R., 2018, 'Reviving feminism through social media: from the classroom to online and offline public spaces' in Gender and Education, 32(6), pp.751-766

< https://www-tandfonline-com.mmu.idm.oclc.org/doi/full/10.1080/09540253.2018.1513454 >

(Accessed 9th September 2020)

*MMU Harvard Reference*

CONCLUSION

emmajdoyle — 2020-09-29 00:26:36 UTC

- Social media has become more effective at communicating feminist ideas that printed media because ---
- The feminist movement has changed to present ---
- The main drawback of using social media to promote feminism through animation is ---
- overall, the combination have done --- to help the feminist movement progress, and --- will help it continue to progress

MARSHALL McLUHAN - THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE

emmajdoyle — 2020-10-14 14:37:22 UTC

From

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan ©1964

-" the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium—that is, of any extension of ourselves— result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology"
- "the “message” of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs."
- General David Sarnoff made this statement: “We are too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the sins of those who wield them. The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value.”
- "There is simply nothing in the Sarnoff statement that will bear scrutiny, for it ignores the nature of the medium, of any and all media, in the true Narcissus style of one hypnotized by the amputation and extension of his own being in a new technical form."
- "The grammar of print cannot help to construe the message of oral and nonwritten culture and institutions"
- Since understanding stops action, as Nietzsche observed, we can moderate the fierceness of this conflict by understanding the media that extend us and raise these wars within and without us."
- " If the criminal appears as a nonconformist who is unable to meet the demand of technology that we behave in uniform and continuous patterns, literate man is quite inclined to see others who cannot conform as somewhat pathetic. Especially the child, the cripple, the woman, and the colored person appear in a world of vis- ual and typographic technology as victims of injustice"
- "The serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology with impunity, just because he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception."
- "Money has reorganized the sense life of peoples just because it is an extension of our sense lives. This change does not depend upon approval or disapproval of those living in the society"
- "Today when we want to get our bearings in our own culture, and have need to stand aside from the bias and pressure exerted by any technical form of human ex- pression, we have only to visit a society where that particular form has not been felt, or a historical period in which it was unknown"
- "Subliminal and docile acceptance of media impact has made them prisons without walls for their human users...For each of the media is also a powerful weapon with which to clobber other media and other groups."
- "The new media and technologies by which we amplify and extend ourselves constitute huge collective surgery carried out on the social body with complete disregard for antiseptics... in operating on

society with a new technology, it is not the incised area that is most affected. The area of impact and incision is numb. It is the entire system that is changed."
- "In the history of human culture there is no example of a conscious adjustment of the various factors of personal and social life to new extensions except in the puny and peripheral efforts of artists. The artist picks up the message of cultural and technological challenge decades before its transforming impact occurs."
- "To re- ward and to make celebrities of artists can, also, be a way of ignoring their pro- phetic work, and preventing its timely use for survival. The artist is the man in any field, scientific or humanistic, who grasps the implications of his actions and of new knowledge in his own time. He is the man of integral awareness"
- "a technological extension of our bodies designed to alleviate physical stress can bring on psychic stress that may be much worse."
- "Perhaps the most obvious “closure” or psychic consequence of any new tech- nology is just the demand for it. Nobody wants a motorcar till there are motorcars, and nobody is interested in TV until there are TV programs. This power of tech- nology to create its own world of demand is not independent of technology being first an extension of our own bodies and senses."
- "Archimedes once said, “Give me a place to stand and I will move the world.” Today he would have pointed to our electric media and said, “I will stand on your eyes, your ears, your nerves, and your brain, and the world will move in any tempo or pattern I choose.” We have leased these “places to stand” to private corporations."

https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/mcluhan.mediummessage.pdf

(Accessed 8th October 2020)