Feminist media and advancing freedom of expression for women. The feminist movement’s fight for free speech between representation and activism

Abstract

Freedom of expression is instrumental in women’s struggle for equality, as opportunities to speak and be heard are at the heart of the feminist movement’s discursive strategies for collective action. For the feminist movement, free speech is not only a means to further the feminist struggle, but a goal in itself. In the age of networked activism, media constitute a particularly prominent avenue for feminists’ fight for emancipation and social transformation. The present research is interested in scrutinising the relationship between feminism and freedom of expression through an analysis of feminist media, focusing on the ways in which and the conditions under which feminist media are able to not only constitute in themselves but also actively build avenues for women’s free expression. The research will justify the importance of freedom of expression for the feminist struggle through linking the concepts of free speech as self-expression and political expression to the feminist maxim “the personal is political”. Then, it will execute an analysis of successes and shortcomings of feminist media in advancing freedom of expression for women and, more generally, the feminist struggle. Then, adopting a reworked version of Atton’s (2002) typology of alternative media, it will operate a media analysis on two Italian feminist media, namely Femminismo a Sud and Freeda Media Italy, which will provide an empirical feedback for the previous theoretical analysis. Such investigations aim to provide insights into the workings of feminist media and their potential for the advancement of women’s rights, as well as guidelines for their evaluation.