Article @ Anticapitalist Initiative, published 20 November 2012

It is impossible to deny the impact that new media has had on journalism and on the propagation of news. The new tools provided by the internet – from social networks like Facebook, to blogging and Twitter – have created a space where grassroots, often amateur, journalism has thrived. The widespread access to recording devices and image editing software, as well as the increasing worldwide literacy in the English language, have made sure that anyone anywhere can voice their opinions and share their experience of any given event, in the matter of minutes. In our day and age, the restrictions imposed by political agendas and their mainstream media outlets no longer rule. The relationship between news-stories and subjects has become fluid, as the world turns to a wider, more holistic way of sharing information.

Sociologist Manuel Castells argues that acceleration of information-sharing through the medium of the internet has allowed counter-hegemonic movements, like Occupy or the Arab revolutions, to spread their message and their appeal wider and quicker than ever before. He writes in his latest book, Networks of Outrage and Hope (Polity 2012):

“From the safety of cyberspace, people from all ages and conditions moved towards occupying urban space, on a blind date with each other and with the destiny that wanted to forge as they claimed their right to make history”.

But how has this affected ‘older’ political struggles like women’s rights? Are we to, at least partially, thank blogs for the return of the feminist movement? Is there a link between 140 character messages and SlutWalk?

Back in 2007, Jess McCabe, now one of the journalists of the editorial collective behind The F-Word, hailed the sudden upsurge of six British feminist magazines. Most of these were online based, but some had also ventured into the printed sphere – a phenomenon long since unseen in the UK, but still rather popular in the United States, where copies of Bust and Ms, to name but a few, have a combined distribution of over 200.000. Some of these initiatives have closed down since, but with the birth of The Vagenda blog earlier this year and its unprecedentedly swift and notorious success, the trend seems to be far from over.

While it is true that modern features journalism has often put brilliant female writers in the limelight – including all kinds of self-defined feminists, from Germaine Greer to Caitlin Moran – the numbers of blogs written by feminists and/or dealing with women’s liberation, many of which hosted by major mainstream publications (see Laurie Penny’s new space in The Independent), has never been this great or this popular.