Progressive Perspectives
Featured Feminism as Aberration: Discourses of Values and Progress in Tradwife Blogs
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ira Solomatina
This paper explores the contradictory portrayal of feminism within the social media narratives of "tradwives" (traditional housewives) on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. The rise of tradwife influencers since the mid-2010s reflects a growing online movement that advocates for a return to clearly defined gender roles, often referencing Christian teachings and 1950s aesthetics. Although originating in the US, this movement has gained traction globally, with influencers in North and Latin America, as well as Europe, promoting a shared traditional lifestyle vocabulary. The analysis focuses on the ambivalence in tradwife narratives, where far-right discourses on liberal danger intersect with rhetoric that could be mistaken as progressive. Specifically, these influencers critique "lean-in" feminism (Rottenberg, 2017), reject neoliberal pressures on women to "have it all," and criticize inadequate parental support. They frame the stay-at-home-mother lifestyle as an act of self-determination, positioning it as a deliberate choice to resist career success and adopt a more submissive family role. Tradwife influencers depict feminism as an oppressive force that suppresses alternative ways of living, such as the traditional housewife lifestyle. They portray (Western) feminism as a dominant, regulatory force, echoing postfeminist claims that feminism has already been achieved (McRobbie, 2009; Gill, 2007, 2016). However, unlike postfeminist sensibilities that present feminism as a positive force (McRobbie, 2004), tradwife discourses view it as harmful. They frame abandoning feminism as a radical act of "freedom" and "choice," rejecting feminist ideals as deceptive constraints on women.
Contesting the Gaze: Affective Arrangements of Queer Nudes
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Luise Erbentraut
Nudes have become a common everyday media practice, integral to the expression of sexuality and a medium of desire. By capturing the sexualized and eroticized body through partial and full nudes on smartphones, these images are at the heart of gendered debates on objectification and empowerment. Central to these discussions is the theory of the gaze, rooted in psychoanalytic traditions, which frames power dynamics in terms of a subject-object dichotomy. This paper offers a media-practice-oriented perspective on queer nudes, revealing more nuanced dimensions. Drawing on interviews with adult individuals from the LGBTQI+ community, I analyze queer nudes within frameworks of affect theory. In doing so, queer nudes are an affective media practice shaped by relations with and within technology—smartphones, platforms— as well as inter- and intrapersonal connections. The findings illuminate diverse affective arrangements that arise in the practices of queer nudes, interweaving technology, subjects, and objects. "Contesting the Gaze" assumes a dual role in this analysis: on one hand, challenging the conceptual boundaries of the gaze by foregrounding the role of affect in digital visual culture; and on the other, showcasing how queer media practices disrupt binary logics of the gaze. This perspective reconfigures understandings of power, intimacy, and agency within contemporary digital visual cultures.
Violent, Inauthentic and Coordinated: Discourse Merchants and Democracy in Costa Rica View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jorge Zeledon Perez
In the theater of operations that constitutes the contemporary public sphere, people and characters share the stage, individuals with their own conscience and purpose and agents who represent others, who disguise themselves as others or impersonate others in order to position particular discourses and interests. This paper explores the tensions between online media, paid discourses and democracy in Costa Rica. It proposes to analyze the systematic and coordinated participation of users in the news coverage of the six most important media (television, radio and print) in Costa Rica, as well as to characterize the type of behaviour and discourses of these users and their relationship with the political actors they claim to represent. It emphasizes en the multiple ways in which users represent these tensions through different forms of imagery, through diverse channels and media forms. It concludes with a reflection on the dangerous relationship between the commodification of speech and discursive antagonism as the driving force behind the political and ideological tensions that underpin political participation in contemporary democracies.
Platforming Dissent on YouTube: Turkey’s Journalistic Exodus from Mainstream Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Oylum Tanriover
According to Reporters Without Borders, as of 2025, 90 percent of national media in Turkey is under government control and the country ranks 159th out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index. Exclusion of dissenting voices from mainstream media over the last decade has led many well-known journalists to leave their jobs and establish their own digital channels. These journalists, who already had a large audience, first started independent journalism with websites they established under their own names and then managed to reach larger audiences by producing daily programs on YouTube. Some of them manage to become a strong voice with more than 1.5 million followers and 20 million monthly views. This study examines how these journalists use YouTube for opinion journalism as a means to bypass political control and rebuild a sphere for public discourse. This analysis also considers the relationship between media and politics within the framework of the concept of digital migration, while also focusing on the transformation of the audience-journalist interaction. Indeed, in this new media practice, journalists are repositioning themselves as actors who not only report news, but also interpret them and guide public opinion. On the other hand, audiences also take active roles in content production processes through comments, subscriptions and donations. The potential of these digital spheres, which are formed outside the conventional media structures, in terms of democratic communication is discussed.
