“How Can You Be a Feminist if You’re Always Online?” Online Activisms, Ambivalence, and Dis/Connection

Abstract

Digital presence and participation are often imagined as essential for contemporary feminist practices and identities. However, feminist engagements with digital and social media platforms can be tempered by drawbacks and tensions. This leads activists and everyday feminists to the need to negotiate digital dis/connection in their everyday lives. This article explores the affective dimensions of social media dis/connection in feminist contexts, grounding it on 22 in-depth interviews with people engaged with online feminisms and activisms in the Portuguese context. The article foregrounds the relationship between digital activisms and different affective ambiences, both internal and platform-driven. It explores the pressures felt by activists, the sense of disillusionment that paradoxically co-exists with discourses of political potential of social media, and, finally, practices of partial or temporary disconnection that emerge as means to negotiate the affective ambivalences of digital activism.