In my third post on this #actDigital blog, I would like to address a third aspect of digital feminist activism: The importance of new media, digital technologies and digital platforms for development and social change in the context of feminist activism.
Introduction
In my first blogpost, “Digital self-defense for activists…in a hurry”, I gave practical recommendations for how we can protect ourselves as political activists in digital spaces; in my second blogpost, “Virtual violence is real”, I wrote about forms of gender-based violence against women and girls that have emerged or been strengthened by digitalization and communication in digital spaces.
In this third blog post, I would like to explore to what extend information and communication technologies (ICTs) could support feminist activism in order to initiate social change, in documenting and making visible social problems, in mobilize and organizie, and thus linking protests in the streets with protests on the web – at local, regional, national and international levels.
As an example of this, I would like to take a look at the Latin American grassroots feminist movement “Ni Una Menos” (that is Spanish for “Not one [woman] less”), a campaign against violence based on gender, that started in Argentina in the year 2015 and spread across several countries in Latin America.
How did this movement use new media and ICT, how did it integrate them into existing communication and cultural contexts? What is the significance of media and communication technology for the movement, and what were its achievements in the society? These questions interest me and I will try to consider them in this blog post.
The #NiUnaMenos movement
On 3 June 2015, 400.000 persons went on the streets in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to protest against femicides and gender-based violence against women and girls. Grandmothers, mothers and daughter shouted “Ni una menos”, protesting side by side with trade unionists and alter globalists. It was a historical protest of feminism and women’s movement in Argentina, a collective cry against femicide violence, considered as a result of multimedia and multisectoral activism (Laudano 2017; Accossatto/Sendra 2018: 121).
Already two and a half months earlier, the first protest against femicides under the slogan “Ni una menos” was organized in Recoleta, a district of Buenos Aires, after the 19-year-old Daiana García had been found dead in a garbage bag on March 16, 2015. (Accossatto/Sendra 2018: 121). But more murders of women and girls followed. On May 11, the 14-year-old Chiara Páez was found buried underneath her boyfriend’s house, beaten to death and a few weeks pregnant. On the same May 11, appeared the hashtag #NiUnaMenos and spread through the Facebook accounts in Argentina (Laudano 2017: 4).
Activists registered 120 Facebook accounts with the name #NiUnaMenos, of which about 70 were started in the first week after the murder of Chiara Páez (Laudano 2017: 7). There were and are several twitter accounts, too. But Facebook had and has been the social network mostly used by activists to share and to post information and images and to viralize them in pages, walls, events and groups (Rosales 2016: 12).
The official Facebook page #NiUnaMenos Argentina recorded at the beginning of June 2015 more than 130.000 “likes”, surpassing the data of followers of the Twitter account. On June 3, the hashtag #NiUnaMenos remained several hours in the first place as a Twitter trend in Argentina (Rosales 2016: 6). Besides, the organizers used messengers, a website, mailing lists, and bulletin boards. Artists published works related to the #NiUnaMenos movement (Roffo 2015).
In November 2022, the official Facebook page of #NiUnaMenos in Argentina counts more than 360.000 followers and almost the same number of likes. The Twitter page of the collective has more than 30.000 followers. Meanwhile, the movement established the website niunamenos.org.ar, an Instagram account with 106.000 followers and a Telegram channel (308 subscribers). So, in recent years, the collective has adapted to new global trends regarding the communication channels and social platforms.
And other change could be noted. On the Twitter page you could see that the group continues to call itself #NiUnaMenos, but now it uses in its Twitter profile name the additional hashtag #VivosNosQueremos, Spanish for “We want us alive”. In addition to this, one of the famous symbols of the movement is the green scarf that symbolizes the fight for the legalization of abortion in Argentina, which #NiUnaMenos has been campaigning for since the large-scale demonstration in 2018 in Buenos Aires. Previously, the movement had used purple scarves at demonstrations. This means that movement has evolved in several ways in recent years, both in its use of digital media and thematically, including the protests for the legalization of abortion into its fights.
The #NiUnaMenos movement grew, exceeded the limits of Twitter and Facebook, and entered into traditional mass media like television and radio. “The massiveness in the on-line world found its correlate en the off-line world”, as Paz Cabral and Juan Antonio Acacio discribed (Cabral/Acacio 2016: 180). #NiUnaMenos became the largest mobilization in the history of Argentina linked to a feminist theme.
Also, the movement managed to organize itself and act consistently: There were further marches in Buenos Aires in the following years, on June 3, 2016, on June 3, 2017, on June 4, 2018 (the first time with the main demand to legalize abortion), on June 3, 2019, and then again after the break caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on June 3, 2022.
And #NiUnaMenos reached international repercussions: First it spread to Uruguay and Chile, from 2016 on inclosing the hashtag #VivasNosQueremos, than to Peru, Mexico, Bolivia and Paraguay, even to Spain and the USA. Social Media accounts of “Ni Una Menos”, exist in many other countries, in Latin America and worldwide.
But what legal and societal accomplishments did the movement achieve in the past seven-plus years of existence? Just one day after the protest in 2015, Argentina created a Registry of Femicides, set up by the Argentine Supreme Court of Justice. A Centre for the Registration, Systematization, and Monitoring of Femicides had been launched by the Argentine Secretariat for Human Rights; it’s objective is to record gender violence cases in order to gather statistics and analyses on the issue, which can be used when it comes to proposing solutions in the process of political legislation.
Another important achievement, which was also accomplished thanks to the protests and political work of #NiUnaMenos, was the legalization of abortion in Argentina in December 2020: Since then, abortion up to the 14th week of pregnancy is legal. Before, abortions had only been permitted in cases of rape or when the mother’s health was at risk. Without access to legal abortions, tens of thousands of women had clandestine abortions each year often performed by people not medically qualified.
And that taken together, #NiUnaMenos actually achieved change, at least in terms of the perception of feminicides, their registration, as well as issues such as the legalization of abortion.
Unfortunately, the societal change that will lead to an end to feminicides has not yet been achieved. In Argentina and all of Latin America, there are still far too many cases of feminicides, the most extrem form of gender-based violence: the killing of a woman or a girl because of her gender.
Conclusion
In my conclusion, I would like to consider the following aspects that were described by Thomas Tufte (Tufte 2017: 14): How are today’s citizens making use of the digital media? And can they sustain their mobilizations beyond the short term?
I think that ICTs have enabled the #NiUnaMenos feminist social movement to mobilize support and, at the same time, build a basis for action both within their own movements and in collaboration with other groups. This helped to organize protest actions online and offline and created hybrid engagements between traditional protest and viral attention.
One apt description of #NiUnaMenos is “offline activism facilitated by ICTs” (Accossatto/Sendra 2018: 125). Why this? The movement put emphasis on the hashtag #NiUnaMenos, and the activists used new and social media. This helped them to achieve the following effects, fast and without big financial or organizational resources: Fast interaction, multiplier effect, international organization, organization of working together, global reach. In addition, the characteristics of the web allowed to accelerate social processes and overcome limitations, getting from “local” to “transnational”, with an increase in the practices of participation.
At the same time, #NiUnaMenos had always a strong focus on the offline world: The campaign was started by a collective of Argentine female artists, journalists and academics, and had grown into a continental alliance of feminist forces with mass demonstrations in Argentina and other countries. Beyond the digital engagement, #NiUnaMenos always put emphasis on face-to-face communication as cultural events, discussions or distributing flyers.
Through this linkage between digital media, traditional media and protests on the streets, #NiUnaMenos, managed to achieve consistency over several years and, as a movement, almost became a kind of international brand and was perceived worldwide as a voice of the feminist movements of the global south, reinforced not least by the popular hashtags #NiUnaMenos and symbols such as the green scarf.
Apparently, despite (or because of) the loose organization, there has been a stabilization of activism: #NiUnaMenos activists participated in the International Women’s Strike 2017 (#8M) and supported the movement for a decriminalization of abortion in Argentina in the summer of 2018. On the internet, there are pictures of protesters carrying #NiUnaMenos signs while wearing the green scarf. This implies that the movement that grew out of protests against the high number of feminicides in Argentina and anger over individual cases in the year 2015, could be activated for other topics of feminist activsm.
At the same time, #NiUnaMenos achieved to evolve thematically and in its use of digital media, picking up on national and global trends.
The #NiUnaMenos movement represents a materialization of social discontent in the face of male violence in Latin American and, particularly, in Argentina (Paz/Acacio 2016). That was one reason why #NiUnaMenos could develop into a transnational movement. The use of the Spanish language enabled a spill over to other Latin American countries; at the same time, the Spanish language of the campaign was limiting: the movement #NiUnaMenos did not become global (as #MeToo did), although its issue prevails in other countries as well.
In both ways, online and offline, the social movement attracted attention to reach mass media and broad sections of the population besides Argentina’s urban centers and beyond the generation that grew up with social media.
But digital divides persist, and there are differences first between countries in the global North and the global South, second between women and men, and also between residents in rural and urban areas, and difference of access and knowledge: “Technology mirrors the societies that create it, and access to (and effective use of) technologies is affected by intersecting spectrums of exclusion including gender, ethnicity, age, social class, geography, and disability”, wrote Amy O’Donnell and Carolina Sweetman regarding this issue (O’Donnell/Sweetman 2018: 217).
Therefore, it would be interesting in a further investigation of the #NiUnaMenos movement to study to what extent different groups of the population, rural or urban, economically privileged or not, younger or older, were able to participate in this movement and were also included in decision-making processes.
“Given technology mirrors realities in society, with the power to exacerbate or enhance, this issue proves that more than ever, feminist analysis is needed to realise the full potential of the digital revolution for social justice, including gender equality”, state O’Donnell and Sweetman (O’Donnell/Sweetman 2018: 227).
It would also be interesting to look more closely at the emergence of #NiUnaMenos in other countries and the reasons behind them. In some Latin American countries where #NiUnaMenos appeared, there had been a regional case of femicide before which had received a lot of attention in the media. It would be interesting to investigate why exactly the movement arose in a country (or crossed the border to Argentina).
In addition to that, it would be interesting to investigate – with a focus on communication – the potential, the connectivity and the mobilization potential of (transnational) movements as #NiUnaMenos for social change and social movements in similar or entirely different areas, as anti-racism or anti-colonialism.
And what we must not forget in the end: NiUnaMenos included activists challenging the government of Argentina using new media and social media, but a further investigation could include how the government reacted and used ICTs. And beyond, it would be interesting to investigate how movements like #NiUnaMenos use “dark social” channels, that means channels that are mostly invisible to the public, as messengers, and what can be drawn from this for other social movements and social fights.
…and some reflections on our blog
This post is also my last on this blog #actDigital. Although I have worked in communications and NGO campaigns, this blog was a new experience for me and it was very interesting to look for a common theme as a group, and to link our knowledge and experiences as a group whose members live on three continents.
This made it necessary for us to coordinate very well as a group, in terms of topics and practical processes, on the blog and also on social media. The group collaborated well together, everyone was engaged and contributed to the blog strategy, the content, and maintenance of the blog to the best of their abilities and availability. In doing so, we tried to provide our readers with an interesting mix of academic reflections, practical recommendations and texts on developments in the fields of “new media, activism and development”, with a focus on women’s rights and feminist activism.
It was challenging to develop a strategy and implement a blog from scratch, and achieve engagement on the blog and social media within six weeks, publishing and using social media. In the process, in which we tried out different formats and ideas, I was able to gain experience that will certainly help me for later projects, be they academic or professional.
One advantage of publishing on a blog is that you don’t use only commercial platforms like Facebook or Twitter, which are closed systems and in which accounts can be closed, but have as a base the blog on a website. Of course, platforms like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube or Facebook are helpful to publish content of the blog, to achieve engagement and to attract readers to the blog. The same applies to activities like a podcast or videos. It would be interesting and important to introduce other authors and/or involve readers with contributions to the blog to make it open and interactive.
References
Accossatto, Romina/Sendra, Mariana 2018: Movimientos feministas en la era digital. Las estrategias comunicacionales del movimiento Ni Una Menos; in: Encuentros, 8, Agosto-Diciembre 2018, p117-136.
Bentley, Caitlin M./Nemer, David/Vannini, Sara (2019): “When words become unclear”: unmasking ICT through visual methodologies in participatory ICT4D, in: AI & Society: Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Communication, 34, p477–p493.
Cabral, Paz/Acacio, Juan Antonio 2016: La violencia de género como problema público. Las movilizaciones por “Ni una menos” en la Argentina; in: Questión, 51 (1), July/September 2016.
Laudano, Claudia N. 2017: Movilizaciones #NiUnaMenos y #VivasNosQueremos en Argentina. Entre e activismo digital y #ElFeminismoLoHizo; in: Seminário Internacional Fazendo Gênero 11 & 13th Women’s Worlds Congress 2017.
O’Donnell, Amy/Sweetman, Carolina 2018: Introduction: Gender, development and ICTs Links to an external site., in: Gender & Development, 26 (2), p217-229.
Rosales, María Belén 2016: #NiUnaMenos y los debates fundantes en comunicación y genero; in: Con X, No 2, Octubre 2016.
Tufte, Thomas 2017: Communication and Social Change: A Citizen Perspective, Polity Press.
