Feminismos em 280 caracteres: o twitter como espaço educativo

Abstract

The different forms of social interaction constituted by information technologies and communication, as well as the emergence and growth of digital social networks, have been used by women and men to broaden their political fights, with the objective of giving visibility to their agendas, therefore, contributing to reduce gender inequality. They aim to bring visibility to their agendas and contribute to the reduction of gender inequalities. One of the virtual settings widely used in this context is the social network Twitter, which was the empirical field of this research. Twitter is understood as an educational space as far as it enables the construction and dissemination of knowledge, producing ways of being, living, and understanding gender and feminists’ agendas, among many others. In this regard, following the feminist qualitative approach, this research seeks to understand how educational strategies are activated in the feminists’ agendas, posted on Twitter and targeted to problematize and denounce inequalities between men and women and, consequently, promote education on gender relationships. Regarding the methodological point of view, the research used the educational netnography oriented to cover the social interactions which happen by means of technological interventions. It mapped the most recurrent feminists’ agendas on Twitter, in the period between August and November, 2020, in order to identify how feminists’ agendas have been used on Twitter as educational strategies and to analyze how Twitter has become an educational spaceconducive to the dissemination of feminist agendas. The research, situated in the field of Cultural Studies of Education, is based on the concepts of networked cultures, cyber culture, and feminisms, understanding them in their specific educational dimensions. The empirical material was produced from the observation and screen captures of Twitter trending topics for four months, and analyzed from the perspective of gender communicative analysis with a feminist focus. From the analysis of the empirical material it is inferred that the hashtags which contain feminists’ agendas, either converging or contradicting gender or feminists’ perspectives, are able to educate, since they disseminate social and cultural, as well as scientific knowledge about feminisms and their fights. This way, the research can contribute to trigger reflections and to change some sexism nuances internalized in our society.