Feminist standpoint on social media sites and internet practices

Abstract

Social media sites and the internet have opened up new spaces for self-identity and the construction of social relationships. Technology communications affect human relationships by introducing innovations for individual and collective representations, but the direction and intensity of these changes may be diverse and even reinforce old patterns from the past, particularly from a gender perspective. While feminist utopians heralded the internet as a space free from gender stereotypes, evidence suggests sexist patterns still remain in place today. This work investigates several phenomena on social media sites (egobloggers, YouTubers, influencers) from a gender perspective. This analysis confirms that although some practices on social media sites display new relationships and new constructions of self-identities, others reveal the persistence of sexism and gender discrimination, even though it may be invisible to the actors and the audience. This paper argues that a code of ethics is necessary to regulate users’ activity on social media sites, creating conscious values about the (un)explored consequences of common internet activities. Some guidelines for creating this code of ethics from a gender perspective are presented in the last section.