Feminist Media Production in Europe (funded by FWF 2008-2011)
type=project
Women have always played an important role in movements for social justice. Using media to transport their messages, to disrupt social orders and to spin novel social processes, feminists have long recognized the importance of self-managed media. In the past two decades an increasing number of women have taken the tools of media production into their hands; a vital social phenomenon that has gone largely undetected by members of the public, academia, and even sometimes the feminist movement. As a consequence of this invisibility, very little documentation and research has been done so far on women’s own media cultures, especially so in Europe and with a focus on current developments in the digital realm.
To counter this gap and to explore processes, effects, potentials, and limitations of women’s media production in Europe, this study focuses on contemporary feminist grassroots media in the print and digital realm, taking into account not only more traditional media outlets but also present developments in Web 2.0. Building on our previous studies on feminist zines in the German-speaking area, the UK, Sweden and in the international realm, we take independently produced magazines, blogs (web-logs) and e-zines (electronic magazines) as our objects of study. The two main aims of this project are: 1.) to document and describe contemporary feminist grassroots media in Europe, in order to establish a “living history archive”, 2.) to analyze the contents and discursive logics of feminist magazines, e-zines and blogs, so as to evaluate the agenda and techniques of feminist media production.
Archival documentation and analysis, a survey, discourse analysis, and a virtual ethnography with oral history interviewing will provide us with the materials to interpret and contextualise feminist grassroots media production. The contextual background of this study will be drawn from theories of third wave feminism, alternative media, cyberfeminism, poststructuralism, and social change.