New media within the process of making the voice of feminist activism heard: An examination through expert sentiments on opportunities and barriers

With the new media environments taking place in daily life practices, a new field has been opened for activist movements. Feminist activism has also found a place in these new fields of action. Early online activist practices, which started with e-mail lists, websites and forums to inform other women, brought new forms of action with the expansion of internet technologies from static web pages to interactive social media platforms. Thus, feminist activism, which became widespread through forums, websites, blogs and social media platforms, was described as the "fourth wave" and started to be mentioned with the new media. The fact that feminist activists tend to express themselves in new media and reach other individuals provided opportunities for subjects to be speakers, to establish solidarity with other individuals and to spread opposing narratives by creating public pressure. However, participating in feminist activism in the new media has barriers as well as opportunities. In this context, it is important to identify the opportunities and barriers offered by the new media to feminist activism so that feminist activists can make their voices heard more loudly. In this context, based on expert sentiments, this study aims to reveal the opportunities and barriers encountered while participating in feminist activism in the new media on a Turkish scale and to present a perspective on how the opportunities offered by the new media to feminist activism can be used more effectively. For these purposes, semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 26 participants who are experts in digital feminism, based on the qualitative research method. Thus, the experiences and sentiments of experts on the Turkish scale were determined, and the opportunities and barriers presented by the new media in the process of participating in feminist activism in Turkey were revealed. In this context, suggestions on what can be done so that the voices of the activists can be heard more loudly are also included. Keywords: New media, digital media, digital feminism, fourth wave feminism.