"If your institution refuses to provide what you need, create it yourself”: Feminist praxis on #AcademicTwitter.

Abstract

Previous research has demonstrated the impact that Twitter can have for promoting and discussing a feminist agenda. Given the gendered neoliberalism that exists within academia, tweets under the hashtag ‘#AcademicTwitter’ may also be an important space for feminist praxis. Yet, to our knowledge, there is no empirical work analysing the function of ‘Academic Twitter’ from a distinctly feminist perspective. Thus, we asked “How is Academic Twitter used for feminist praxis?”. We conducted a reflexive thematic analysis of 596 tweets containing the hashtag #AcademicTwitter. This generated four themes showing how Academic Twitter can be a valuable site for feminist praxis, by enabling academics to 'give testimony to academia', 'access the hidden curriculum’, and engage in both 'academic kindness' and 'resistance and advocacy'. Despite these benefits, we also observed a tension between Academic Twitter as a site for feminist practice, yet 2 also as potentially complicit in promoting the competitiveness and overwork that pervades academia. We recommend that future feminist research interrogates the ways in which more diverse forms of feminist praxis, including more negative experiences, are negotiated on Academic Twitter.