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New Media, Old Misogyny: Framing Μediated Madonna on Instagram from an Ageing Perspective

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Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population. Technology Design and Acceptance (HCII 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12786))

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Abstract

From a feminist perspective, mainstream media representations have always performed disciplinary functions. Particularly, regarding ageing women. On digital platforms, individuals would have a greater agency to perform and shape gender norms and sexual roles. However, scholarship has been expressing scepticism with the liberatory promise of the online realm, as well as cautions with digital network harassment and the so-called nanosphere. Yet, little is known about how exactly misogynistic rhetoric operates on popular social media to discipline ageing women’s feminity. This paper extends the feminist scholarship to the field of Instagram, focusing specifically on representations of the pop star Madonna. It presents an analysis of how ageing women femininities representations are mobilised on Instagram through a case study of posts indexed with hashtags. Applying computational methods and drawing on the insights of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis, it approaches these networked representations by exploring the interplay between sexism and ageism within the misogynistic driven forces targeting Madonna and her ageing feminity.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support from Portuguese national funds through FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) in the framework of the project “Online Violence Against Women: preventing and combating misogyny and violence in a digital context from the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic” (Reference GENDER RESEARCH 4 COVID-19–058).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Rita Basílio Simões & Inês Amaral

  2. NOVA Institute of Communication, Lisboa, Portugal

    Rita Basílio Simões

  3. Communication and Society Research Centre of the University of Minho, Braga, Portugal

    Inês Amaral

  4. Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Sofia José Santos

  5. Centre for Social Sciences, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Sofia José Santos

  6. Lusófona University, CICANT, Porto, Portugal

    Maria José Brites

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  1. Rita Basílio Simões
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  2. Inês Amaral
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  4. Maria José Brites
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rita Basílio Simões .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Qin Gao

  2. Chongqing University, Chongqing, China

    Jia Zhou

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Simões, R.B., Amaral, I., Santos, S.J., Brites, M.J. (2021). New Media, Old Misogyny: Framing Μediated Madonna on Instagram from an Ageing Perspective. In: Gao, Q., Zhou, J. (eds) Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population. Technology Design and Acceptance. HCII 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12786. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78108-8_32

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78108-8_32

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