Popular Feminism in Iranian Instagram Content Analysis of Iranian Women’s Rights Activists Digital Material

The study investigates the manifestation of “Popular Feminism” in the content created and shared by Iranian Women’s rights activists on social media platforms. To do so, it is studied how women’s issues and claims are represented in these digital materials and which solutions are proposed by the activists for the gender inequality. This work is based on qualitative content analysis of sample posts extracted from four popular Instagram accounts which are run by women’s rights activists. Besides identifying the most frequent themes in these accounts, we criticised the content as being involved in feedback loops, emphasizing women’s bodies, presenting an aestheticised version of feminism and proposing simplified individualist solutions for gender inequalities.We also argued that however this sort of digital activism make women’s suppressed and marginalised issues and claims visible on the digital space, it is mainly a way for activists’ self-branding and it could be considered as part of a process in which popular feminist discourse is regenerated and reinforced in the Iranian digital space.