20,000 pissed off women online: Challenging gendered representations of women in Australia's mainstream media through social media platforms

This thesis analyses how contemporary feminist and women’s-based campaigns have used social media platforms to challenge and resist dominant gendered discourses of women in the Australian mainstream media. Informed by post-structural feminist theories of discourse and power within a wider media studies approach, this thesis uses qualitative interviews and three separate case studies to analyse and contrast the assorted methods used by each case study to resist gendered discourses. It then contends that feminist and women’s-based campaigns can use social media to effect change, but that groups also need to be aware of issues related to intersectionality, and understandings of change within and outside of structural organisations.