Erratum to: Global Activism or Media Spectacle? An exploration of ‘Bring Back Our Girls Campaign’

Abstract

In April 2014 over 270 girls were abducted from their school in Chibok Nigeria by an Islamist group, Boko Haram. Distraught parents launched #bringbackourgirls on Facebook and Twitter to put pressure on the Nigerian government to act speedily to recover the girls. Picked up by celebrities and world leaders, the campaign went viral and brought to light retrogressive movements rolling back some of the gains achieved worldwide in women’s education. The purpose of the chapter is to analyse the feminist content of the campaign messages. To what extent are gender lenses used to analyse the problem and proposing solutions? The analysis of the campaign discourse on Facebook shows it resonates with that of gender equality. However, the discussion fits more on the liberal-inclusive side than the progressive side of the continuum of feminism. It is widely expected that policy and legislation for gender equality within the current configuration of power will bring the changes needed to uplift the lot of girls. The prospect of transformation of power relations remains largely unacknowledged.

The updated online version of this chapter can be found a http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40949-8_15

Erratum to: B. Mutsvairo (ed.), Digital Activism in the Social Media Era, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40949-8_15

The Publisher regrets that chapter title of chapter 15 is incorrectly published. The correct chapter title is Global Activism or Media Spectacle? An exploration of ‘Bring Back Our Girls Campaign’.