Abstract
This chapter addresses the symbolic violence against women in the South American digital public sphere. Indeed, femicides, rapes, and sexual harassment are pervasive problems in South America, while abortion is still totally or partially banned in most of the countries in the sub-continent. Thus, local feminist organizations heavily deployed multimedia strategies alongside traditional grassroots practices in claiming women’s rights. Eventually, this agenda has made its way into traditional media coverage, too. Nonetheless, conservative forces are contesting them with misogyny, hate speech, and trolling in a rather fragmented digital public sphere. The authors examine the visual representations in comments’ sections of articles uncovering high-profile cases of abortion and femicides in contemporary South America, and content shared through social networks about those cases.
This chapter is part of the research project “Chilean society against abortion: Relationship between media and public opinion” lead by Dr. Irma Palma and funded by Universidad de Chile’s Interdisciplinary Research Program of the Bicentennial Initiative.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, Francisca Solar, journalist and writer, shared her own sexual harassment experience in Santiago, Chile, after her workday on her Facebook timeline and was echoed by mainstream media.
- 2.
This was the case until January 2015, when the Chilean government proposed a legal reform in order to decriminalize abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy under three circumstances: in case of a mother’s life being at risk, a non-viable fetus, and when pregnancy is a consequence of rape. The bill became law in September 2017. Medical coverage of abortion became available in early 2018, but a new administration has already promised to revise and reconsider the new legal framework.
- 3.
Translation by the authors.
- 4.
Recent research shows how pervasive this frame is among high school students educated in institutions oriented to Chilean elites. The idea that the world is divided between “women who you marry” and “women who you have sex with” is still traversing gender and class identities in twenty-first-century Chile. See Madrid (2016).
- 5.
Chávez herself was killed in 2011. Prosecutors identified underage gang members as her killers, and assured her murder had nothing to do with Chávez’s work as activist.
- 6.
Capitals in the original.
- 7.
Our thanks to Jimena Krautz for sharing this reference.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to highlight that several examples of media coverage, social networks memes, violent comments, and content ridiculing violence against women or pro-choice campaigns were provided by our own personal online contacts, such as colleagues, friends, and even anonymous readers. The references suggested by Gabe McCoy and Kristopher Weeks on online research, trolling, and online hostility were very useful as well.
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Lagos, C., Antezana, L. (2018). Online Framing on Abortion and Violence in South America: Dissonant Sense Making. In: Harp, D., Loke, J., Bachmann, I. (eds) Feminist Approaches to Media Theory and Research. Comparative Feminist Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90838-0_9
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