This PhD project sets out to understand emerging hashtag activism on Instagram amid the community of Iranian women that addresses issues around the body and sexuality. The objective of the research is to explore “agency’ and “resistance” –their characteristics and roles- in hashtag practices that are enacted by Iranian women in and through Instagram. Throughout the thesis, it will be tried to explore how Iranian women are questioning, challenging, and negotiating dominant body and sexual norms on Instagram, and how the features of this social media particularly hashtags contribute to connect them together and make public. With this regard, the "sociomaterial configuration" concept will be adapted to analyze hashtag practices as hybrid organizational forms. Furthermore, considering agency and resistance on Instagram addresses key gaps in the social movement literature, which has paid little attention to the affective nature of activism, as well as embodiment. This qualitative study will be done through "virtual ethnography". Participatory observation in the field of the study, online or offline interview and media content analysis (images, captions, and comments) will be employed to analyze data of the study. The results of the research will be disseminated in the forms of thematic analysis.

2021