Arab women’s veiled affordances on Instagram: a feminist semiotic inquiry

Abstract

Feminist semiotics is developed to explore Arab women’s self-presentations on Instagram. The novel framework enables interpretive theorising of a corpus Instagram posts by Arab women in the Middle East and North African region (MENA). Qualitative analysis zooms in on the accounts of four Arab women influencers, defined as microcelebrities monetising content online. Self-presentations are theorised as a process of semiosis, which involves signs, objects and interpretants of visual meanings. This perspective is contextual rather than universalising and addresses the lack of theoretical perspectives for considering Arab women’s palette of self-presentations. Simultaneously, the study is reflexive of tensions surrounding feminist semioticians’ positionalities. Unique theorising reveals situated micro-practices and ‘veiled affordances’ of modest while sometimes highly politicised self-presentations by Arab women.

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