"Reclaiming Rhetorical Worth: Feminist Blogs as a Space for Equality, Cooperation, and Action"
About the AuthorAmani Husain is a graduate student in the Department of Communication at University of Colorado Boulder concentrating in rhetoric and working toward earning certificates in ethnic studies and women and gender studies. She is also interested in environmental communication, specifically environmental justice. Influenced by critical cultural studies, she enjoys exploring the rhetorical narratives that create the worlds we live in, particularly narratives about race, class, gender, and nation. Contents |
MethodUsing Blythe’s “data coding” technique, I set out to select a set of artifacts to identify an aspect worth analyzing, to create codes for classifying the specific unit, and to make these decisions and other choices and actions within the research process public (Blythe, 2007). Ultimately, the goal of data coding is to “measure the prevalence of some set of phenomena” (Bythe, 2007, p. 205). I chose to code three active feminist blogs, and all of my artifacts were digital. One of my aims of choosing active feminist blogs were their potential for not only inducing cooperation and bolstering solidarity among marginalized communities, but also their potential for resisting mainstream feminist perceptions through discursive activism. Referencing Fine (1992), Shaw (2012) described discursive activism:
Although such activism is not discussed in full here, it is still important to determine the multifaceted goals and implication of studying such blogs. Working with these unique artifacts necessitated determining and adapting a specific method, identifying units of analysis, acknowledging the limitations of my method and study, and establishing an observational procedure. My method of choice was criterion sampling, which required selecting a set of texts that met certain criteria (Blythe 2007). The criteria I identified for selecting these texts included: (a) the blogs must be up-to-date and active (in other words, they must update and post frequently), (b) the blogs must represent alternative perceptions, arguments, and ideologies not represented in or by mainstream feminist culture; (c) the writers and/or contributors must represent minority or marginalized groups, including varying ethnic, racial, and/or gender groups, and (d) the blogs must establish, in their “About” pages or “History,” their goals and aims regarding a feminist agenda. I established these criterion to respect difference and honor feminist research goals of equality, diversity, and compassion. To this end, I will give an honest account of my data collection strategies. As with most contemporary student-researchers, I began my search in Google. Using the search terms “feminist blogs,” the most well-known, mainstream feminist blogs comprised much of the first few pages of results, with blogs such as Feministing, The F-Word, Shakesville, and Feministe among them. However, besides not meeting my criteria of representing alternative views to the mainstream feminist culture, a substantial amount of research has already been conducted on these blogs because of their mainstream status. Therefore, I paid most attention to blogs I had not heard of—an obvious limitation within my research because such blogs ran the risk of being more personal rather than a publicly engaging online space. I skimmed many blogs until I found one: Fuck Yeah, Feminists! (fuckyeahfeminists.com) that met my criteria and selected it as one text for my study. I employed the help of my friend and fellow feminist researcher from the University of North Texas to identify the other two blogs. My friend pointed me to six feminist blogs that she believed met my criteria. Of these six, I chose two based on their relevance and adherence to my criteria: The Cuntmentality and The Crunk Feminist Collective. Units of Analysis The units of analysis that I chose to aid in identifying potential lexicons within the three blogs were all verbal units. Starting with descriptive words/metaphors, I identified those phrases that might indicate the status, condition, or collective identity of a group. My goal here was to discover how each blog sees/presents itself to engage the readers or audience. My second units were inclusive language and collective pronouns like “we,” “us,” and “our” to discover how the writers used language to create a sense of community. Lastly, I examined how many times each blog used overtly political images (either satirical, serious, or other) to actualize the blog’s aims. Observational Procedure Although some blogs may have a mission statement and others a brief biography or history of the writers or contributors, it is important to note how the writers established their blog as a legitimate online space in the cyberworld of feminist activism and politics. Thus, my observational procedure included studying the blogs’ “About” pages and their three most recent pages of posts. Studying the “About” pages helped clarify the blog’s aims and goals as well the target audience. Recognizing that the purpose and aim of the blog would not be sufficient for seeing modes of communication, my study also focused on the blogs’ three most recent pages of posts. The more current the material, the more I could learn about the writers, contributors, and readers’ perspectives regarding contemporary issues. Sensitivity to time and sociopolitical climate is a crucial element when analyzing blogs, particularly feminist blogs, because of their inherently political nature.
Because data coding texts can only analyze products and not processes (Blythe, 2007), there are limitations to the research. Blythe asserted: “data coding may help us explain what is presented in texts, and how often, but it does not help us understand why the texts look like they do” (Blythe, 2007, p. 223). Essentially, the method of data coding looks at the blogs as finished products, which means that I cannot understand or get at the intention of the choices made by the writers of the blog to create a group identity. However, implementing feminist research guidelines grants the method greater credibility—acknowledging the local, situational, and contingent nature of the research does us help us understand, in limited ways, why the texts look the way they do. For example, studying blog posts on feminist blogs may not allow me to analyze the writer’s process, but studying the text does allow me to ask critical questions about why the writer perceives the world in a particular way and, thus, explains the conglomeration of choices he or she made for the particular site and posts. A further limitation of my research is the scope. In this study, I analyzed only three blogs. Of course, three blogs cannot represent all alternative feminist blogs in cyberspace, but it is my hope that conducting this type of research can pave the way for further research on a wider scale. This research is valuable because it can further our discipline’s understanding of feminist blogs as a contemporary and significant mode of communication, cooperation, and action. Description of ArtifactsThe first blog included in my study is Fuck Yeah, Feminists! and it is administered by two women, Wagatwe and Jacquie. Wagatwe is the founder and owner of fuckyeahfeminists.com and a social justice activist (“About Fuck Yeah, Feminists!”). Jacquie is a regular contributor and a “survivor” and activist who has written for publications such as the Examiner, Elevate Difference, and Starpulse (“About Fuck Yeah, Feminists!”). The blog is chiefly a mixture of political images, news articles, feature pieces about race, class, gender, and/or domestic violence, and other forms of consciousness-raising rhetoric. The blog is its own dot com website. The second blog, The Cuntmentality, is run by a 19-year-old genderqueer who claims to use a gender-neutral vocabulary to foster neutrality and equity in life and on this particular blog (“The Cuntmentality”). The Cuntmentality is hosted on Tumblr.com, a popular website on which individuals may create and operate their own blog. The site encourages users to meet and “follow” others, and share, repost (or “reblog”), and comment on others’ posts. Tumblr.com also appears to target individuals ages 15-30. The Crunk Feminist Collective boasts 18 writers whose target audience is people of color, as evident in the mission statement. Because some of the writers do not possess personal photographs and because I wished to protect their privacy, I did not personally discover how many of the writers were of a particular race. The blog is hosted on Wordpress.com, an increasingly popular website for people of all ages to build and operate their own blogs. The site is generally more sophisticated than Tumblr and does not offer the same features that promote reblogging, sharing, or “following” others. |