@i_love_my_cheetah, @koodiz, @Sondos_aq, @thehala and @themayaahmad are hugely popular social media influencers in the Middle East. These women caught the interest of researcher Zoe Hurley, after hearing of them from her students at the all-female university in Dubai.

Despite skeptics, who belittled the relevance of Instagram as a point of inquiry in social sciences, Hurley collected nearly 25.000 Instagram posts by the influencers. What emerged was an analysis of how these women represent themselves in a space still dominated by patriarchy, traditionalism and Islam. 

This is the story of how these women are making Instagram their key political platform.

Keywords: empowerment, agency, social media, postdigital, Instagram, self-presentations, artifact, affordances, Arab women

• The article discussed in this episode

Hurley, Z. (2021), #reimagining Arab Women’s Social Media Empowerment and the Postdigital Condition, Social media + society, 7(2)

DOI: 10.1177/20563051211010169

Open access: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F20563051211010169

• The researcher featured in the episode

Zoe Hurley is a lecturer at the Zayed University in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. She is a feminist scholar with a focus on social media. She has a doctoral degree from Lancaster University in the UK.

• Further reading

“Why I No Longer Believe Social Media is Cool” by Zoe Hurley

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305119849495

• How to reach out

For comments, feedback and suggestions on articles for future episodes, please reach out to me on Twitter @rasmuskyllonen or by dropping me a letter at rasmus.kyllonen@helsinki.fi

• About the host

Rasmus is a master’s student at the University of Helsinki, where he is majoring in journalism and communication. Earlier, he worked as a journalist and graphic designer at various newspapers and magazines. He has also been a teacher in vocational media education.

• Disclaimer

The articles showcased on Keywords are all published in scientific journals that have received an official classification (level 1, 2 or 3) by the Publication Forum. This means the publications are always peer-reviewed. For more information on the academic classification criteria: https://julkaisufoorumi.fi/en/evaluations/classification-criteria

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