Publisher's Synopsis
This book sets out to explore the relationship between international, Twitter-driven women's rights campaigns and changes to domestic law. There are now over five billion individuals using the internet, with over four and a half billion of these users active on social media. These numbers, however, mask significant inequalities of income, gender and nationality. Concerns are prevalent about the ability of the domestic woman's voice to play a prominent role in the campaign, compounded by social media functionality built on heteronormative patriarchal platforms, which may favour the elite. Are we just seeing a new version of the destructive victim-saviour dichotomy mapped onto social media? The research addressed in this volume takes a unique and innovative approach to measuring and modelling the relationships between Twitter-driven campaigns and legal change for women and girls. It is framed by a critique of the spiral model of human rights change, which has been criticised in scholarship for underrepresentation of domestic voice (with echoes of colonialism) and an overly simplistic view of long-term, meaningful legal change. Significant research is being done in and on the Twittersphere - however, as social media grows and changes, substantial gaps in knowledge still exist. Little is being done to empirically explore the impact (or lack thereof) of international Twitter campaigns on domestic law, looking at the utility of Twitter for transnational advocacy (both organic and networked) for improving domestic women's rights. This research aims to fill this gap through a multi-country study, comparing the differences and similarities across seven countries representing a wide geo-political spectrum. The work draws on international relations theories, theories of legal change and norm institutionalisation, transnational advocacy networks, feminist media studies, media effects theories, and critical postcolonial and decolonial perspectives on justice. This book will both build on and add to existing scholarship and published works examining human rights change, women's rights, and social media activism. With rigorous evidence and theory-based understandings of the role and impacts of Twitter driven campaigns on women's rights, the study identifies campaign characteristics which are more likely to be associated with positive legal outcomes, as well as campaign characteristics and behaviours which are likely to be associated with no change, or, in some cases, potentially dangerous outcomes. This volume can have a significant positive impact on women and girls, through improving our knowledge and understanding of the impact of social media campaigns.
