Exploring Ephemeral Feminisms on Portuguese Instagram

Social media platforms, like Instagram, allow for a wide range of people including those outside traditional activist circles to create or engage with feminist content within quotidian social media practices, with political content co-existing with personal, mundane, or aesthetically-oriented content.

This project will explore how online feminist practices take shape in increasingly popular yet under-researched practices of ephemeral social media by focusing on Instagram Stories, exploring the new dynamics these carry. This project explores the under-studied local context of Portugal. Portugal is experiencing a moment of political polarisation, which is reflected in its social media landscape.

Feminist and political discourses are common on Instagram yet often met with backlash from conservative or right-wing voices.

This is a rich and novel site for the analysis of these dynamics, revealing local particularities that are absent from Anglo-Saxon contexts.

This project addresses three research objectives: analyse how feminisms are expressed through ephemeral social media affordances; explore what conventions and concerns underly the creation of feminist content; and examine how audiences engage with feminisms on Instagram. This project proposes an innovative ethics-driven, multi-methodological approach.

It combines qualitative strategies with the use of digital tools for an exploratory analysis of feminist Instagram Stories; in-depth interviews with feminist content-creators; and focus groups with social media users who engage with feminist content on Instagram.