Abstract:

This essay will be researching how Instagram can be used to reinforce society’s beliefs on feminism, which can support feminists by encouraging social changes to occur. The history of feminism has evolved through ‘waves’ over the past decades and the recent ‘fourth wave of feminism’ relies on social media and online activism. However, this essay focuses on Instagram and how its affordances, which influences Instagram’s networking culture, allow feminist movements to boost in gaining support online globally. By strengthening people’s beliefs on feminism which can lead to gaining support from other people such as activists, it allows for social changes to develop. This can also persuade other social media users to partake in supporting the feminist movement by spreading awareness of certain feminist movements. With that, this essay argues that Instagram can be used to reinforce society’s opinions towards feminism, which encourages social changes to develop in support for the feminist cause.

Conference Paper

This essay will be researching how Instagram as a social networking platform can be used to reinforce society’s opinions towards feminism, which then reflects onto society’s approach to this social movement in real life. Feminism can be defined as the strong encouragement and support for establishing equal rights, opportunities and treatment for women (Laith Al, 2025). Being a concept emerged from the notion of supporting women’s rights and equality within social settings, this essay delves deeper into what feminism is about and how it has evolved through various media forms over time. With that, as technology advances and social media has increasingly become a part of our daily lives, the fourth wave of feminism has evolved through internet activism and feminist’s use of online networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

However, this essay will focus on how feminism has remained a relevant topic specifically on Instagram. By exploring the affordances of Instagram that allow users to participate in continuous conversations online, this essay examines how Instagram is used to inspire feminist discourse to grow on this social media platform. As Instagram is a social networking platform, information regarding feminism can be disseminated towards a wide range of audiences through posting media content such as images and videos. With that, this creates a network of users that can view these media contents and interact with it by liking, sharing or commenting on it. Furthermore, the global popularity of Instagram makes it likely that people with varying social and political opinions, interact with feminist content on the platform via photos, videos, Instagram stories and Instagram reels. Their varying opinions help shape the feminist discourse on Instagram which can lead to affecting society’s approach by interacting with this movement. Thus, this essay explores how Instagram can be used to reinforce people’s beliefs on feminism, which encourages social changes to occur.

Feminism is a social and political movement that promotes the establishment for equal rights and opportunities for women. According to Swirsky & Angelone (2015, para. 1), feminism emerged through a “need to disseminate the historical exploitation, devaluing, and oppression of women”. This quote indicates the patriarchal structure, including the undermining of women, needs to be abolished to ensure equal opportunities for women. Moreover, cis-hetero patriarchal structures typically limit the autonomy of women to adhere to certain socio-cultural standards such as being housewives, limiting their options for employment and education and also ensuring women to dress in specific standard clothing. As such, the feminist movement helps to circumvent these rigid notions of what women should be, act and dress like. With that, feminism has become increasingly popular since the so called ‘First Wave’ emerged in 1848 (Pruitt, 2022), and now influences both social and political matters.

Feminism comes in waves where it evolves over time and is progressively acknowledged over the years. According to Lear (1968, cited in Mohajan, 2022) Martha Weinmnan Lear, who was a journalist, came up with the term “the first wave of feminism” in a New York Times magazine article in 1968. The first wave occurred during the 1840s to 1920s when women were mistreated due to being seen as inferior in male-dominated societies. Moreover, through the use of magazines, newspaper articles and bulletins to network with each other, this first wave was to enable women to achieve equal political opportunities and voting rights (Herouach, 2019 as cited in Mohajan, 2022). This was a significant social change for paving a way for the social status of women to be seen as equal to men.

The second wave of feminism occurred during the 1960s to 1990s (Mohajan, 2022), with feminists using newspapers, radios and television to network. The goals of the second wave was to raise support for sexual and reproductive rights. Sexual rights means to have complete freedom of any discrimination in any decision to one’s own sexual health and choices (Amnesty International, 2019). This “movement emerges in the wake of World War II when many women enter the labour force, and challenge current notions of the women’s role in the family, workplace, and society” (Dominelli, 2002, cited in Mohajan, 2022, p. 11). The third wave of feminism occurred during the 1990s to 2000s, with networking methods centred around television, radio, academic journals, magazines and the early internet.

The third wave of feminists campaigned around “issues of heteronormativity and body positivity” (Kurtis, 2016, cited in Mohajan, 2022, p. 13). Heteronormativity is an ideology that centres around compulsory heterosexuality and that everyone is heterosexual. This third wave challenged that notion while also focusing on fighting for reproductive rights and protests against “sexual violence and sexual harassment in workplace, rape and gang rape, and unfair maternity leave policies” (Mohajan, 2022, p. 14).

The most recent ‘fourth’ wave of feminism, which began in 2012, utilises online social media platforms such as Instagram to spread awareness and allows feminists to establish global networks of support. One example of the global networks of support provided by the fourth wave is the #MeToo social movement. While #MeToo had initially started on Twitter, it quickly gained traction on Instagram with 14.6 million Instagram posts related to this movement by June in 2020 (Participedia, 2006). The #MeToo movement became one of the most significant feminist movements on Instagram alongside #TimesUp (Kamei, 2022).

From this, it can be seen that Instagram is used as an additional outlet to gain support from the online audience. As such, this essay argues that Instagram is a significant platform for amplifying the feminist movement on a global scale. Thus, further motivating the movement to be more relevant for the online public. One way that feminism is promoted on Instagram is via the use of hashtags. Hashtags are used to connect to those with the shared opinions and ambitions to support this social and political cause. Thus, it can be suggested that social media like Instagram reinforces the shared beliefs for feminism which has led to impactful outcomes including spreading awareness throughout society, thus strengthening bonds between supporters for the cause to advocate for feminist justice.

Focusing on Instagram, which is one of the social media platforms that contributes to the fourth wave of feminism, this essay will explore the affordances of Instagram that has allowed the topic of feminism to circulate around online discussions. Instagram was launched in 2010 and quickly gained popularity due to its features including abilities of sharing photos and utilising image-enhancing filters (Blystone, 2024). Instagram is appealing for consumers because of the various types of affordances including algorithmic curation, hyper-textuality, interactivity and visuality (Kallio & Mäenpää, 2025).

On Instagram, algorithmic curation manages the media content being selected for specific users based on the data of their preferences and interactions with any media material that piques their interest (Chan et al., 2025). Thus, algorithms controls media content relating to feminism to cater towards users interested in supporting feminist causes. Hyper-textuality touches upon features such as hashtags with words that allow users to access more information through the respective links (Amaral, n.d.). This ties to interactivity, an affordance where users can ‘like’ and share any content on Instagram with others, encouraging users to further engage with the media material (Goodman, 2022). In the case of feminism, hyper-textuality allows users to connect through the hashtag feature with intent to spread awareness for supporting feminist movements. Another affordance that makes Instagram engaging is the visuality of media content uploaded on this media platform, referring to media content in image or video format that is consumable for users people (Kallio & Mäenpää, 2025). This enables the aesthetics of the media content regarding feminist movements to look more appealing for users.

These affordances encourage interactions between media content and consumers, allowing consumers to connect globally (Kallio & Mäenpää, 2025). By utilising Instagram and its affordances, especially through hypertexts like hashtags, feminism discourse online is further promoted and circulated between various users. An example of how feminists use the affordances of Instagram is #NiUnaMenos. This movement, although started from Twitter, used Instagram as an outlet to spread awareness through the use of hashtags on media posts to gain attention from the online audiences and eventually an Instagram account was created for this cause. Through the use of hashtags and spread of information about this cause, the Instagram account for #NiUnaMenos had gained over 200,000 followers (Instagram, n.d.).  Thus, engaging more conversations regarding this movement throughout Instagram to obtain support for this cause.

This suggests that through the affordances of Instagram, media content about feminism can easily spread out across the online audience, connecting those who resonate with this movement’s purpose. To which, it also indicates the effectiveness in motivating more audiences to alter their approach to feminism in real life by partaking in this cause.

Discussing about feminism on Instagram has allowed this movement to reach significant milestones for women that strongly resonates with this cause through the use of multiple affordances of Instagram. Due to how Instagram is a popular networking platform, it enables various feminist movements to catch the attention of the online audience, empowering them to influence social changes from online conversations to actively supporting these causes in real-life. Through Instagram, discussing about the feminist movement allows for the voices of women, especially those who faced discrimination due to their gender, to be heard and acknowledged. This further motivates the sense of importance for women, on a global setting, to provide support for this movement for the aim to establish equal rights for women alongside men.

This can be seen from the earlier example of #NiUnaMenos, that means ‘not one [women] less’ when translated from Spanish (Diaz, 2021). This campaign, that originated in Argentina, establishes reproductive rights for women and eventually gained support from various activists across Latin America (Diaz, 2021). This movement started from a pregnant 14-year-old girl, Chiara Paez, being murdered by her 16-year-old boyfriend due to his refusal to raise the baby. This movement that started out as a slogan had become a popular hashtag circulated on social media platforms throughout Latin America where there were excessive rates of femicide. This, which then inspired an increased amount of popularity with the help of women who are determined to change the situation. This includes gaining the support from women activists throughout Latin America to advocate for the feminist justice over the years (Diaz, 2021). Since Twitter and Instagram are globally used social media platforms, it was natural for supporters of this movement to also choose to use Instagram to reach out to other viewers. Although this movement started on Twitter, Instagram gave this movement a boost in popularity through the active networking culture on this social media platform. This encouraged the users of Instagram to interact with this hashtags even further such as liking and sharing media posts, highlighting this movement.

Observing how Instagram is utilised for the purpose of connecting to other users which then expands this movement’s reach to the online audience on a larger scale, it can be suggested that Instagram can be used to further motivate in empowering the feminist movement through constant networking on this social media platform. Moreover, by displaying the empowerment of women’s voices and the strong ambitions of the activists that advocate for feminist justice across Instagram, it encourages more viewers to see and interact with media posts with this hashtag. This means that Instagram as a platform contributes to shaping and strengthening the influences of the feminist movement on users of this networking media site. Therefore, it drives the influences of Instagram’s networks to reflect onto the social approach towards this feminist movement by encouraging social changes to develop.

In conclusion, the networking culture of Instagram allows for the feminist movement to gain support across the global audience, instigating social changes. Observing how feminism has constantly developed throughout various media forms, it can be seen how it gained an increase in supporters during the fourth wave, allowing for the movement to reach significant milestones such as obtaining the help from various activists to establish social awareness for this cause. Moreover, the affordances of Instagram allows the topic of feminism to reach a global audience, shaping society’s beliefs towards this movement. Through the use of Instagram, various feminist causes has been able to gain the attention of a global online audience to aid in improving situations like femicide in Latin America. Thus, this essay suggests that the networking culture of Instagram encourages real-life social change for feminism.

End-text references

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