Cyber-activism Against Sexual Violence: #BringBackOurGirls

Authors

Keywords:

extreme violence, digital campaigns, gendered violence, post-colonial

Abstract

Over the last few years, many successful campaigns have both denounced women’s vulnerabilities and protested against gender violence. The success of these campaigns can be gauged by the number of their followers, spreading the message and involving celebrities and agencies around the world. Those campaigns have put gender inequality and women’s protests against sexual abuse firmly on the agenda. However, this still raises questions as to both the limits to and opportunities for cyber-activism in general and in war-torn areas in particular. This paper addresses the influence of digital campaigns against sexual violence, exploring the impact of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, which covers the kidnapping of a large group of girls in Nigeria by the Boko Haram terrorist group. Among other things, we find that the campaign narrowly focuses on a group (‘The Chibok Girls’), ignoring the vulnerability of many other girls and young women in Nigeria.

Author Biographies

  • Ana M. González Ramos, Universidad Pablo Olavide

    González is a Associated Professor at the Pablo de Olavide University. She graduated in Sociology from the University of Granada in 1994 and was awarded a PhD from the University of Cádiz in 2004 (Department of Statistics and Operations Research). She has directed the research group GENTIC: Gender Relations and Information and Communication Technologies, a consolidated group of the Generalitat (2014-2017).

  • Beatriz Revelles-Benavente, University of Granada

    Revelles-Benavente is an Assistant Professor of the Department of English and German Philologies at the University of Granada and a Professor of the Erasmus Mundus GEMMA Master: Women's Studies and Gender Literature at the University of Granada. She is co-editor of the scientific journal Matter: Journal of New Materialist Research and of the book Teaching Gender: Feminist Responsibilities and Pedagogies in Times of Political Crisis, published by Routledge (2017).

  • Verònica Gisbert-Gràcia

    Gisbert-Garcia has a PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Valencia. She studied the Erasmus Mundus GEMMA Master: Women's Studies at the Universities of Granada and Utrecht (2010). Her main areas of research include Women's Collective Actions, Cultural Studies, and the Politcs of Affect. She is the author of several articles in national and international magazines, as well as chapters of various books.

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Published

2020-12-30

Issue

Vol. 5 (2020): Annual Review 5

Section

SPECIAL ISSUE 2

License

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How to Cite

González Ramos, A.M., Revelles-Benavente, B. and Gisbert-Gràcia, V. (2020) “Cyber-activism Against Sexual Violence: #BringBackOurGirls”, Debats. Journal on culture, power and society, 5, pp. 233–244. Available at: https://revistadebats.net/article/view/2803 (Accessed: 2 November 2026).