Community Development > Communities and Social Action
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This chapter draws the analyses from each campaign detailed in the previous chapters to explore overall findings. In short, this research has shown that international Twitter-driven hashtag campaigns can and do have relationships with domestic legal change for women and girls. This research provides crucial evidence-based insight for activists, academics, and campaigners around the world working to improve the lives of women and girls. The data shows that there are certain campaign behaviours which are associated with more positive legal outcomes and characteristics which are linked to negative legal outcomes. Campaigns which are domestically driven, with a high level of foreign attention, showing persistence, engagement, and consistency, are more likely to lead to positive legal outcomes. Conversely, campaigns which lack in domestic drive, can be seen as ‘foreign meddling’ or ‘colonial violence’, and fail to achieve persistence, engagement, or consistency, are more likely to lead to negative outcomes.
With over five billion internet users globally, it is crucial to understand social media activism and legal change for women and girls.
This insightful book examines the impact of international Twitter (now X) campaigns on domestic laws affecting women and girls. Exploring the complexities of legal change for women and girls across seven countries from Latin America to Middle East and Africa, the book offers empirical insights into the effectiveness of hashtag advocacy and sheds light on the role of social media in shaping different outcomes.
This is a key resource for understanding the dynamics driving social media activism and its potential impact on the rights of women and girls worldwide.
This chapter gives an overview of why this book is so important, rooting it in frontline advocacy experience and campaign work. Important global internet and social media statistics are presented to frame the research. The chapter then gives a brief overview of the campaigns studied, the theories used, and a roadmap for the rest of the book.
This chapter explores the two of the eight campaigns in this research which showed negative outcomes after the social media activity – #stopstoning and #letwomengotostadium. Both targeted legal change in Iran. After the #stopstoning campaign there was a change in the law which allowed judges to hand down a sentence of stoning more easily than before the campaign started. Analysis of government statements and legislative reports uncovered indications that the changes to the law were made, at least in part, as backlash against the Western media attention. #letwomengotostadium saw no changes to the law while activists appear to be more rigorously targeted for arbitrary arrests and unnecessarily lengthy detentions, again more so after the campaign started than before. Women’s rights in Iran came to the forefront with the 2022 protests, with hundreds of arrested, killed, or sentenced to death.
The campaign studied in this chapter showed potentially positive results and can, tentatively, be categorized as a possible success. It is a complex story as the campaign did so much for women in Saudi and was considered a milestone success, but in the years since the government has cracked down on activism and activists who use social media. However, some do still see the change as a watershed moment which has paved the way for other opportunities for women in Saudi. This may just underscore the power of the campaign and how it forced the government to change. The campaign may therefore provide critical insight into what an ‘ideal’ hashtag campaign might look like from a feminist perspective.
This chapter sets out the framework and design of the study, first exploring the theories underpinning the work and then moving into the specifics of how data was collected and analysed. This work is underpinned by three main theoretical frames: theories of legal change as specified Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink’s spiral model of human rights change and the critiques thereof, media effects/social media theory based on the work of Castells and the Gladwell–Shirky debate, both viewed through a fourth wave feminism and digital feminist activism lens drawing on the work of Hemmings, Rentschler, and boyd in particular. These three theories, woven together, provide the understanding for research design, structuring the study, and guiding the analysis and conclusions.
The group of campaigns studied in this chapter showed, on balance, little to no change. There were gains in some areas and losses in others, rendering the situation for women and girls on the ground no different than before the campaigns. While the gains and losses differed in each campaign, these campaigns showed striking similarities in Twitter behaviours. They all gained significant attention in the timeframe immediately after the spark incidents, but very quickly faded from public consciousness. It appears this initial mass interest led to some small changes but without continued public pressure or interest the governments were free to ignore the long-term goals of the campaigns, once again manifesting both critiques of the spiral model of human rights change theory and, to some extent, media effects theory. Feminist critiques were perhaps less evident in these campaigns.
The set of campaigns in this chapter showed very similar outcomes as well as Twitter campaign behaviours. Both climaxed near domestic, democratic elections with the possibility of regime change, and in both cases the government in power implemented legislative change extremely quickly (the ‘tactical’ concessions as specified in the theoretical spiral model). The legislative changes were generally seen as responses to the public attention driven by social media and indeed, on paper, met many of the goals of the campaigns regarding the letter of the law. However, likely due to the speed with which the changes were made and the governments’ lack of long-term attention to the issues, little to no change has been seen on the ground. Metrics of institutionalization, in India, underscore the short-term, reactionary nature of the changes.
This chapter maps the higher education (HE) arena three years after the 2021 military takeover. Inside the country, the State Administration Council (the new guise of the Tatmadaw) has not only halted the country’s HE reform but is also creating new conflicts and a politics of fear inside universities, reshaping HE access so it is once again only available to a select few (including students who can afford private colleges). Against this backdrop, various Spring Revolution actors are creating new HE opportunities for themselves and the young people trapped in Myanmar. New, alternative (in relation to the military-controlled universities) education providers are created with two aims. On one side, they are supporting the new Myanmar generations in continuing their studies and Myanmar teachers in maintaining their profession. On the other side, they seek to discredit the junta by proving that the military will not be able to effectively reinstate its old methods of control and fear-based repression. Creating new HE pathways is seen as a way to directly and effectively support the revolution.
This chapter shows how various actors cooperated and competed to shape the 2011–21 higher education (HE) reform during the Union Solidarity and Development Party (President Thein Sein’s party, which won the 2010 elections) and National League for Democracy (State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, which won the 2015 elections) governments. In doing so, it analyses the policy and legislative work leading up to the 2014 ‘New Education Law’ (NEL) and subsequent ‘National education strategic plan – 2016/21’. This chapter demonstrates that President Thein Sein advanced a vision of HE that was more transformative for society at large than the one advanced by State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi. Her approach coupled an elitist vision of education with a very carefully crafted policy meant to deter possible mass, collective action. What reform progress universities were able to make was thus due mainly to the space for agency opened by President Thein Sein and the resilient work of teachers and student activists. The chapter analyses occasions in which the views of student politics clashed with state authority, mainly the 2014/15 protest against the NEL and the 2019/20 protests against the University of Yangon centenary celebrations.
