Feminist Media Studies

ISSN: 1468-0777 (Print) 1471-5902 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfms20

Digital Defense: Black Feminists Resist Violence

With Hashtag Activism

Sherri Williams

To cite this article: Sherri Williams (2015) Digital Defense: Black Feminists Resist Violence With
Hashtag Activism, Feminist Media Studies, 15:2, 341-344, DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2015.1008744

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2015.1008744

Published online: 19 Feb 2015.

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Feminist Media Studies, 2015
Vol. 15, No. 2, 341–358

COMMENTARY AND CRITICISM

INTRODUCTION

Feminism, Hashtags and Violence Against

Women and Girls

Susan Berridge and Laura Portwood-Stacer

As the third and final instalment of our recent editions on feminist hashtags, this issue of
Commentary and Criticism explores the relationship between hashtags and feminist
activism around violence against women and girls. Drawing on a range of locally-rooted
and transnational examples, the following six essays emphasise the potential of feminist
hashtags to expose the transnational pervasiveness of gendered violence, creating a space
for women and girls to share their own experiences and, through doing so, challenge
“commonsense” understandings of this abuse and promote gendered solidarity. At the
same time, these scholars are sensitive to the potential dangers of these hashtag
campaigns in over-simplifying complex issues, as well as the threats of gendered violence
that occur within online spaces themselves, raising important suggestions for how we, as
feminist media scholars, can attempt to overcome these limitations.

DIGITAL DEFENSE: BLACK FEMINISTS RESIST

VIOLENCE WITH HASHTAG ACTIVISM

Sherri Williams, Syracuse University

Jada’s sixteen-year-old half-clothed body was sprawled across the carpeted floor: eyes
closed, mouth open, genitals exposed with one leg extended and the other slightly bent.
Photos of the black high school student’s body spread through social media after her
alleged rape. People mocked her by photographing themselves lying on the floor with their
legs bent and they posted those pictures with the hashtag #JadaPose. Quickly after those

q 2015 Taylor & Francis

342 COMMENTARY AND CRITICISM

demeaning photos spread, Jada’s alleged rape went viral in July 2014 after feminists
responded with a bevy of supportive hashtags: #StandWithJada, #JusticeForJada,
#JadaCounterPose, #SupportJada. A photo of Jada holding a sign with the hashtag
#IAmJada in one hand and a raised clenched fist with the other circulated through social
media. The violence committed against Jada became a spectacle on social media but it was
also a catalyst for black feminists to move to use Twitter to combat the sexual brutalization
that black women and girls have experienced throughout history.
Hashtags, especially on Twitter, have emerged as an effective way to share
information and spur action about a demographic that seems to get little support from
its nation—black women. Social media hashtags bring attention to black women’s issues
when traditional mainstream media newspaper articles and television stories ignore
black women’s concerns as they have for decades. Twitter is an important tool to inform
the public of violence against black women because it enables anti-violence advocates
to connect with the public and one another in real time without relying on the
traditional news cycle or the mainstream media’s problematic framing of sexual violence
and black women. After Jada’s alleged sexual assault became public her case did not
gain the same national media attention as the female teenage rape survivor in
Steubenville, Ohio who appeared to be white in online photos and whose rape was also
mocked and displayed on social media. For Jada there were no extensive stories
broadcast on national news or segments with pundits and white feminists speaking on
her behalf. When white feminists miss opportunities to stand with their black sisters and
mainstream media overlooks the plight of nonwhite women, women of color use social
media as a tool to unite and inform. Before national mainstream and online news media
outlets reported on Jada, black feminists on social media were front and center
spreading information about her.
In 1968 the final report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, or
Kerner Commission as it was informally known (named after the Commission’s Chair,
Governor Otto Kerner Jr.), identified the media as contributing to protests that erupted in
the United States during the 1960s. Specifically, the report suggested that the mainstream
media failed to show the nation the complexities and realities of black life. Now, almost fifty
years after the Commission’s report, media scholars continue to find that portrayals of
people of color have not changed a great deal. Images of black criminality still dominate
news coverage and white men maintain leadership positions in newsrooms (Carolyn Byerly
and Clint C. Wilson 2009). Also, the progress gained for black reporters in mainstream
newsrooms has been crushed in recent years. Between 1997 and 2013 almost 1,200 black
journalists in daily newspaper newsrooms lost their jobs (Monica Anderson 2014).
Research consistently shows that black women sexual assault survivors have to fight
not only their assailants when attacked, but also persistently racist stereotypes about their
womanhood while seeking justice; they are judged by gendered and racialized stereotypes
and not their individual actions (Kimberlé W. Crenshaw 1991). The negative images that
circulate about black women render them as “not newsworthy” by many mainstream news
organizations.
The way that black women sexual assault survivors are treated in the courtroom and
the newsroom is another form of violence. The symbolic annihilation, the complete
absence or trivialization in the media, of assaults against black women and girls mutes their
abuse, makes it invisible and erases their humanity thereby further violating black women
and girls and inflicting more pain on them.
 COMMENTARY AND CRITICISM 343

Black feminists’ use of social media fills the gap in national media coverage of black
women’s issues, from the ways that race and gender affect the wage gap to the
disproportionate amount of violence committed against black transgender women. Black
Twitter often engages in critical discussions about gender and its impact on equity and
liberation (Jamilah Lemieux 2014). During President Barack Obama’s 2014 State of the
Union address black feminists on Twitter noted the absence of legislation that could help
black women economically and politically using #BlackFeministFuture. After President
Obama announced his “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative to help young men of color advance,
black feminists noted the need to help black girls now and not later with #WhyWeCantWait.
Once the story of Renisha McBride, a nineteen-year-old black woman who was fatally shot
in the face near Detroit after she knocked on a white man’s door for help, faded from the
national news cycle, black feminists kept her story alive on social media with
#RememberRenisha. The #FreeCeCe hashtag was used to bring attention to the case of
black transgender woman CeCe McDonald who said she defended herself against a violent
transphobic and racist attack that led to her manslaughter conviction. Months before
hashtags supporting Jada emerged, black feminists used #FastTailedGirls to create a
discussion about the hypersexualization of black girls and the dismissal of sexual attacks
against them. That important conversation about black girls garnered seven million online
impressions (Lemieux 2014).
Black Twitter’s use of hashtags prompts the black social media community to
recognize issues and respond to them. Moreover, hashtags reflect Black Twitter’s opinion
on social issues (André Brock 2012). Women and black Americans dominate social networks:
76 percent of women who are online use social media (Pew Research Center 2014) and
blacks are 29 percent of online adults who use Twitter, more than any other racial group
(Maeve Duggan and Aaron Smith 2013). Black women use Twitter more than any other
demographic group (Aaron Smith 2014). Black feminists’ use of hashtag activism is a unique
fusion of social justice, technology, and citizen journalism. It should serve as a fertile ground
for emerging news for journalists, a point of connection for white feminists, and a ripe area
of study for academics. Twitter is often a site of resistance where black feminists challenge
violence committed against women of color and they leverage the power of Black Twitter
to bring attention and justice to women who rarely receive either.

REFERENCES
ANDERSON, MONICA. 2014. “As news business takes a hit, the number of black journalists declines.”
Pew Research Center. Accessed August 1, 2014. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/
2014/08/01/as-news-business-takes-a-hit-the-number-of-black-journalists-declines/
BROCK, ANDRÉ. 2012. “From the Blackhand Side: Twitter as a Cultural Conversation.” Journal of
Broadcasting & Electronic Media 56 (4): 529 – 549.
BYERLY, CAROLYN M., and CLINT C. WILSON. 2009. “Journalism as Kerner turns 40: Its Multicultural
Problems and Possibilities.” Howard Journal of Communications 20 (3): 209– 221.
CRENSHAW, KIMBERLÉ W. 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and
Violence Against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43 (6): 1241 – 1299.
DUGGAN, MAEVE, and AARON SMITH. 2013. “Social media update 2013.” December 30. Pew Research
Center. Accessed December 30, 2013. http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Social-Media-
Update.aspx
344 COMMENTARY AND CRITICISM

LEMIEUX, JAMILAH.2014. “Black Feminism Goes Viral.” Ebony Magazine 69 (5): 126 – 131.
PEW RESEARCH CENTER. 2014. “Social networking fact sheet.” January. Accessed January 6, 2014.
http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/social-networking-fact-sheet/
SMITH, AARON. 2014. “African Americans and technology use.” Pew Research Internet Project.
Accessed January 6, 2014. http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/01/06/african-americans-
and-technology-use/

#JUSTICEFORLIZ: POWER AND PRIVILEGE

IN DIGITAL TRANSNATIONAL WOMEN’S
RIGHTS ACTIVISM

Eleanor Tiplady Higgs, SOAS, University of London

For those who have access to them, social and digital media provide unparalleled
opportunities for crossing borders of all kinds, allowing advocates for women’s rights to
organise around, through, and despite national and cultural divides. In Inderpal Grewal and
Caren Kaplan’s useful and insightful definition of transnational feminism, it is through these
very practices of border crossing—including interactions facilitated via digital and social
media—that unequal power relations within and between feminisms are revealed (2000,
73). Indeed, in its discussions of these media, Feminist Media Studies has considered
feminists’ continuing “struggle with issues of privilege and difference in online spaces”
(Laura Portwood-Stacer and Susan Berridge 2014). In this essay I turn my attention to the
specificities of this struggle in relation to campaigns addressing Violence Against Women,
as illustrated by a recent Kenyan campaign called #JusticeforLiz.

#JusticeforLiz
The story of a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl known by the pseudonym “Liz,” was
reported for the first time in Kenyan national newspaper the Daily Nation on October 7,
2013. In June that year, Liz had been gang-raped by six men, who then threw her into a pit
latrine and left her to die. Thankfully, Liz survived and despite suffering serious injuries, she
was able to make a formal report at the local police station, naming three of her attackers.
In a series of grievous failures on the part of the police, the “punishment” handed to these
three men was to work in the garden of the police station, cutting the grass. The police
made no attempts to identify or apprehend the other three rapists (Njeri Rugene 2013).
The news story, published online as well as in print, immediately caught the attention
of Nairobi-based women’s rights activists including Terry Kunina at the Coalition on
Violence Against Women (COVAW) and Nebila Abdulmelik at the African Women’s