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Individual Commentary
Our proposed research question is: Do individuals unite or separate online in crisis situations?
It was Simone de Beauvoir who confronted the world with the question: “What is gender?”, in 1949. While her claim of gender being a social construct goes back a long time, I argue that not much has changed regarding fixed gender roles.[1]. Eder et al. hypothesized We want to prove this by showing that, while most of us do not consciously assign a role to each gender anymore, we still contribute to gender stereotypes subconsciously through our consumption behaviour on social media. Specifically, the question we want to answer through our research is: To what extent does social media reinforce gender stereotypes already attributed to various professions and/or interests? By conducting a netnography (for example asking students which adjectives they associate with certain displayed female vs male content) but also by conducting academic research following the questions: “What factors determine the type of content we consume on social media?” “How does social media enforce gender stereotypes?” “How do the values conveyed by female influencers differ from those conveyed by male influencers?”
My hypothesis is that social media reinforces gender stereotypes to a very strong extent. For example, simply by examining the 10 most followed women and the 10 most followed men on Instagram, you can deduce that the most consumed content published by women represents submissiveness, creativity, attractiveness, whimsicalness. Meanwhile, the most followed men are mostly athletes and publish content representing activeness, strength, persuasiveness, achievement. [2]. While some of these influencers’ followers are bots, there remain still hundreds of millions of followers who consume their content every day.
Here you can see a screenshot of Christiano Ronaldo's Instagram feed from the 28th of September. He is the most followed man on Instagram as of September 2022. You can see that every sigle one of his posts is centered around his carreer and his achievements within.
This is a Screenshot of the Instagram feed of the most successful female fooball player, september 2022. The vast majority of her posts are centred around her family, shining light on her beauty, her relationships, her friendliness. According to Garlick, she would never gain the same amount of likes if she posted mostly about her football carreer, not portraying her as a perfect "breeder"
In her article Hattie Garlick talks about how Instagram enforces gender stereotypes. She condemns this circumstance, examining it from a personal angle. The questions discussed in the article are sociological pertaining to the field of gender and media studies. The author examines the issue of gender stereotypes on social media by conducting her own small-scale experiment and researching scholars’ theories. She reveals her personal observations and explores how her content behaviour differs from her husbands’. She concludes that not only does Instagram leads to pressure for women to have the perfect family, have an aesthetic feed and look pretty in all their pictures while men are mostly celebrated for their work achievements on Instagram, women also subconsciously take part in this game, feeding into a vicious cycle of sexist content consumption and creation.
The main topic of this article, rigid gender roles and how they are upheld through social media, is a common topic of debate in all parts of life, since it affects our society on a personal, political, structural, economic, and social level. Are men really the stronger gender? Why is it that female politicians get asked about their marriages and outfit colour when attending important conventions while male politicians get asked about the resolutions passed? Why are all verified accounts on Instagram I follow either female singers or male politicians? All these small, subconscious actions we take contribute to the patriarchy which thrives when we assign roles to each gender. I therefore want to explore whether social media simply reflects this gendered society or does if it goes farther and even contributes to reinforcing them. We want to answer the question of why gender roles are still so rigid, despite years of feminist developments and hope to find that social media plays a strong role in conveying gender stereotypes subconsciously. I agree with Hattie Garlick, who argues that not only our behaviour of content consumption but also gendered content creation is to blame.
Bibliography
1. Beauvoir, S. de. (2015). The second sex. Vintage Classics, 2. Found at: this link ↩
2. Lokithasan, Komathi et al. “MALE AND FEMALE SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS: THE IMPACT OF GENDER ON EMERGING ADULTS.” International Journal of Modern Trends in Social Sciences (2019): n. pag. (2021), 2. Found at: this link ↩
3. Garlick, Hattie. "Why Gender Stereotypes Are Perpetuated On Instagram". Ft.Com, 2022, https://www.ft.com/content/2cc5ca3a-6337-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68. 6. Found at: this link ↩