On Online Activism and the Probabilities of Social Media The Body Positivity Movement, Social Network Sites, and the Production of Discourse
Summary
The Body Positivity Movement is an online feminist movement which contests dominant bodily
norms and beauty ideals. The movement uses social network sites as a platform for online activism,
to subvert repressive discourses on body normativity by expressing their subjectivity and presenting
new representations of marginalized bodies. However, in their online activity, the Body Positivity
Movement participates in the conventions that are distinctive characteristics of social media culture,
what Lev Manovich terms 'probabilities.' The concept of probabilities describes how social media
platform's cultural conventions and technological affordances determine how a platform is used,
and produce dominant discourses and reiterate repressive power relations. This thesis looks at the
Body Positivity Movement and their activity on blogs, Instagram, Twitter and Youtube, and the
paradox that unfolds when a feminist movement finds itself embedded within the discoursed
probabilities of a social media platform. It addresses how the movement utilizes these social
network sites as platforms to spread their message, and how the platforms can affect or even
contradict their activist objective. The analysis applies the methods Critical Discourse Analysis and
Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis in order to reveal what discourses are conveyed in the
movement's social media posts and how they subvert or repressive discourses, and how these
discourses are produced by the platforms' probabilities. Finally, the thesis touches upon a wider
debate on online citizen participation and online activism, to address to what extent it is possible for
subversive online activism to exist on these platforms.