Gendered Activism and Social Media: Racialized Female Activists Voices on Gaza

Social media has played an important role in questioning, reshaping and denouncing the narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, bringing to light the devastating experiences and sufferings of Palestinians. For decades, the narrative surrounding the so-called Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been shaped significantly by the media, and more often than not influenced by biases . The global popularity and use of social media has, however, led to a notable shift, offering a new lens through which the global community views and engages in this enduring oppression.

One of the central contributions of this paper is to study the humanization and amplification of voices and images of care and solidarity by and among Palestinians in Gaza. Additionally this paper also centralizes the voices of other minoritized and racialized women that are convicting the genocide in Gaza using social media channels. In doing so this paper aims to study the link between gender, media and war by looking at (social) media usage in support of Palestine by racialized and minoritized women in the Low Lands. This paper’s main focus is to study how these racialised women in Belgium and the Netherlands use their social media or other media channels to raise their voice on (gendered) issues regarding the genocide in Gaza.

Conducting in-depth interviews with 10 racialised activist women within the Belgian and Dutch social media landscape, this paper studies their social media use building on critical media studies and post-feminist theory. The selection of the research participants was guided by a variety in terms of focus or topic (e.g. women and health, politics, conflict zones,...), scale of activism and prominence and influence of the activists. In doing so the research participants range from influencers, journalists, therapists and academics focusing on themes such as gender equality, reproductive health, wellbeing and (gender) empowerment.