Social Media and the Mexican Feminist Movement : Leading or Impeding the Fight Against Gender-Based Violence?

The internet has shaped democratic structures and especially the sphere of protest organization, leading to the emergence of social (media) movements like Me Too and NiUnaMenos (Argentina). The present work seeks to contribute to existing research by filling a knowledge gap on social media use of feminists fighting gender-based violence in Mexico. Gender-based violence and rising numbers of femicides lead to increasing activism in Mexican cities and are discussed to have created a so-called ‘fourth wave’ of feminism. This work operates under the main question of “How does the Mexican feminist movement use social media to address gender-based violence in Guadalajara?”. An inductive approach leads the qualitative research design of semi-structured, in-depth interviews with feminists and experts from the Metropolitan Zone of Guadalajara addressing purpose, use and evaluation of their social media utilization. The study has found that the main purposes of social media use are to inform, share and interconnect. Feminist activists and experts perceive social media as “very useful” in their activism, especially in times of social distancing and the Covid-pandemic, as well as a security aspect has to be taken into account in the attempted application of Western theories since feminists receive threads from antifeminist groupings.