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Producing deflective online strategies: Lessons from New Zealand women's management of social media engagement

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posted on 2021-11-26, 02:16 authored by Sarah Hendrica Bickerton, Karl LofgrenKarl Lofgren
Public engagement is a gendered experience, whether offline or online, something which is reflected in women’s experiences of social media. In this article, we seek to systematically explore the experiences from politically engaged women twitter users in New Zealand in order to draw some lessons, through a thematic and interpretative analytical approach, at four different strategic levels on how to deflect intimidating and aggressive behaviour. We conclude that understanding strategically how structural social locations like gender effect the ability to contribute to political participation and engagement, if addressed, can produce more inclusive and productive online political and policy spaces. Further, this strategic approach involves connecting together different levels of response to online negativity such as platform tools, space-curation, and monitoring, having these made coherent with each other, as well as with this strategic understanding of how structural social location plays into access and use of online political and policy spaces.

History

Preferred citation

Bickerton, S. H. & Lofgren, K. (2021). Producing deflective online strategies: Lessons from New Zealand women's management of social media engagement. Information Polity, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.3233/ip-210320

Journal title

Information Polity

Publication date

2021-06-18

Pagination

1-16

Publisher

IOS Press

Publication status

Published

Contribution type

Article

ISSN

1570-1255

eISSN

1875-8754