Beauty, baby and backlash? Anti-feminist influencers on TikTok

Abstract

ABSTRACT Grounded in empirical data, this qualitative study analyses how female anti-feminist influencers engage in metapolitics and how anti-feminist practices of metapolitics unfold within visual social media content. Employing multimodal content analysis and netnography this study adds to the research on metapolitics and political influencers. Applying network media logic as an analytical lens this paper is focusing on three female anti-feminist influencers and their metapolitical practices on TikTok. Results show that female anti-feminist influencers use different practices to metapolitize their (supposed) private life while introducing their audience to anti-feminist ideas and other anti-feminist actors, e.g., actors of the so-called manosphere. Further, they use TikTok to commodify their anti-feminist worldview.