THE F-WORD | Saher Suthriwala

ETHYLENE MIDDLE EAST CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION

THE F-WORD

2021

ABOUT THE F-WORD

The campaign, The F Word was initiated by 14 members to raise awareness on how modern feminism has posed as a challenge for feminism itself. It was important to review the problems as it remains a danger or creates a sense of ‘irresolution’ as Morley and MacFarlane (2012) describe, to the seriousness of this issue.

Our campaign objective was to redefine feminism as a theory of gender oppression and inequality (Halberstam, 1991) and protect it from this fake, less accessible, and Western version of feminism (Ebert, 1991; Song and Moon, 1998; Cabrera et. al, 2021). While the digital age feminism has introduced valid concepts such as call-out or cancel culture, it also chooses to ignore issues faced by the queer community, intersectionality, and toxic masculinity (Wehler and Rayborn, 2020; Shiva and Kharazmi, 2019; Garrison, 2000; Munro, 2013).

Looking back at the course of the campaign, it is evident how theories of power and the concept of neoliberalism can be applied to the misleading practices of the fourth wave of feminism. For instance, the capitalization and commercialization (Rordan, 2001) of the movement may seem like a step towards achieving true feminism, but it in fact puts a smoke screen on real issues that are faced by all genders. The campaign concluded with the better understanding of power and how it has been abused socially and economically (Mason, 2013; Bruff, 2013).

Before we had decided on tackling feminism, our plan was to work on thrift culture. I saw no risks working on a campaign like that, especially considering the ethical side of our project. Nevertheless, being part of The F Word gave me an opportunity to step out of my comfort zone and get involved in addressing sensitive issues, eventually changing the narrative from this neoliberal form of feminism to the right ideology we have forgotten about (Phipps, 2020; Loke et. al, 2015).

Our main target audience for this campaign was Gen-Z and we used the right means to do that, which is social media. Despite the limitations that brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe that the campaign turned out to be a success.

Throughout the two-month course of this online campaign, we made big decisions as a group, and individually, and I will be using academic references to analyze those suggestions and ideas.

CRITICAL REFLECTION

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND DECISION MAKING

Forming a 14-member team, we recognized the need for effective infrastructure to navigate the campaign's initial phases (Maarek, 2011). Four departments emerged: Research, Copywriting, Graphic Design, and Social Media & PR, in a matrix organizational structure to foster interdepartmental communication (Gregory, 2015). To alleviate confusion prevalent in online communication (Giansante, 2015; Trent et al., 2016), I developed a structured plan (fig. 1.1) with deadlines post the second week. With the shift to online interaction, I assumed a pivotal role in social media, considering its political significance (Sahly et al., 2019; Householder and LaMarre, 2015).

Amid uncertainties about Instagram responsibilities, I devised a fair distribution system (fig. 1.2; fig. 1.3), ensuring each team member engaged in diverse tasks weekly, minimizing conflicts and enhancing flexibility (Howard, 2005). Acting as the group's point of contact, I reported progress to our professor, aiding strategic awareness creation by identifying necessary steps forward.

PLANNING AND RESEARCH

One of the most vital steps in curating an online campaign is planning and research as it acts as a blueprint to managing and addressing every element of our campaign in a systemic manner (Smilansky, 2018). Our first step was to create a brief (fig. 2.1) based solely on this campaign and so I participated in the initial research work in the form of a document on which I added my findings on conversations built around modern feminism after which I designed the creative brief (Hackley, 2005).

Furthermore, I also did individual secondary research on a list of content ideas for Instagram posts and stories by looking at what other organizations worked on (Smith, 2013) which was presented to the group (fig. 2.2) during the first week. Likewise, a favourite task was coming up with a TikTok calendar (fig. 2.3) because video content is an easy way to get involved in the conversation online and I was quite familiar with the works of the platform (Coker et. al, 2017).

I recall suggesting a point to my team as well as the research department about how we need to post twice a day given the amount of time we had and the broad topics that we needed to cover, and they found that it would be tiresome (fig. 2.4). However, when one of our other peers pointed it out, they were open to trying it out, which made me feel like my ideas were being ignored. I knew that the only way to resolve this is by having regular meetings and consider the opinions of everyone in the group (fig. 2.5).

Mid-campaign, I also did some of my research by going to a bookstore cum library and reading through theories on feminism to which I found a list of topics we could cover in the latest posts such as Pink Tax and politicians that made sexist remarks, amongst others (fig. 2.6).

MEDIA STRATEGIES & TACTICS

Being selective of the appropriate social media platforms was key to our campaign (Clow and Baack, 2014), particularly because we had to target the Gen-Z and it would be a chunk of our time, wasted, if we settled on a platform that would not provide us with intense engagement.

As a team, we orchestrated our campaign through two main channels which are Instagram and TikTok. Instagram was our primary medium as it is a great tool to publish political data using powerful visuals, as explained by Tedesco (2004) and, Lalancette and Raynauld (2017). However, there were brief discussions regarding the launch of the campaign on LinkedIn which I took charge of completely, as I did with Twitter as well because I did not mind working on it (fig. 3.1; fig. 3.2). Inarguably, Twitter is well-known for its easy use and accessible analytics (Kim, 2016; Aelst et. al, 2017).

Most of the group was quite enthusiastic about using Twitter as a platform for the campaign but I had this intuition that it would not work out and that turned out to be right. Perhaps, I should have pointed it out sooner. Even by the end of the campaign, we were only able to gain a total of 15 followers which is incomparable to the hundreds of followers on Instagram. Nevertheless, I thought it would be resourceful to do daily research, as a team, and tweet out updates on gender inequality or basically, any news concerning feminism, to get more traction on Twitter (fig. 3.4). Some appreciated the idea and acknowledged to participate but eventually did not. This was disappointing to me as I felt that I was not being taken seriously. Slightly discouraged, however that did not stop me from pushing out content. It was also a great way to keep our Instagram community updated on the news and I did this in the form of brief stories, with a call to action which was the link in our bio.

Our followers would have easy access to not only the articles but also the other platforms we use, by taking advantage of the free tool, Flowpage (fig. 3.3), that I was able to create. When it came to Instagram stories, I was active in bringing up engaging ideas that could involve third parties, in other words our followers because it provides us ability to reshare (Bainotti et. al, 2020).

Managing the stories happens to be task I liked and was appreciate for the most. It gave me the independence to design and communicate with our audience. Few of the ideas that I pitched and executed was the Mother’s Day screenshot idea (fig.3.5), the quiz based around the content we posted, which I thought was an apt way to understand our audience’s content preferences (fig. 3.6), the #IWD2021 ‘Tag 5 women’ concept (fig. 3.7) as well as the initial Q&A regarding our campaign (fig. 3.8).

COMMUNICATION

Social networking and communication online have become an integral part of the media landscape (Edkins and Zehfuss, 2019).

Communicating through social media is how the problems in modern feminism erupted which is why it was important to get our target audience back on track by reminding them that popular culture and mass media has modified the narrative and we need to change it back for the sake of the marginalized and oppressed (Berger, 2016).

Having already covered the platforms we decided to build on, I will now be unfolding on other ways we tried to engage with our followers and overall audience. Being familiar with TikTok was a plus for me and my team as I knew the technical bits of editing a TikTok, using trending hashtags and ‘duetting’ the most popular videos (Serrano et. al, 2020). I uploaded three such videos independently (fig. 4.1) and captioned our other TikToks which initiated a lot more conversation that we had on Instagram, even if we didn’t have much content on there, which wasn’t a surprise to me as I was well aware of the importance of the platform today.

Another internet-based idea that I was proud of was the Netflix Party for a new movie, Moxie (Clow and Baack, 2016) which fit quite well with the theme of our campaign as the movie was based on starting a movement on feminism (fig. 4.2). My takeaway from this was that creating conversation doesn’t necessarily have to be through social media and one would always be up for what is unique. It also gave me a chance to bond with our audience and understand how they view feminism.

Talking about building conversations, I also thought that asking to share stories would be a brilliant approach to know more about what we could possibly convey about through our posts (fig. 4.3). Many had stories to tell and experiences to share which was frankly an emotional but real moment for me as I finally felt like we were being represented as an authentic campaign that had the potential to make a difference.

NETWORKING & PUBLIC RELATIONS

Being part of the social media team meant that we were directly in touch with the ones that were truly engaging with our campaign. I had the chance to attain professional experience in public relations through this campaign (Davis, 2010) as we were challenged by a few social media users that raised their views against the delivery of the campaign message.

Reflecting on the way I was able to handle the PR crises (fig. 5.1), I am quite proud of how it was solved as I was able to implement one of the key teachings about lobbying and political crisis management from our professor in Year 1 (Duvignaud, 2018) and suitably yet quickly respond to negative publicity (fig. 5.2) (Andrews and Shimp, 2017; Tech and Yeomans, 2017). Dealing with crises, head-on, will help me in the long term when I am a PR professional.

When it came to hosting the conference and inviting professionals and influencers to express their views on modern feminism, I took up the opportunity to get on call and elaborate about the campaign and the conversation that will take place, to one of the speakers (fig. 5.3). I was able to convince him to attend as a speaker which was a favorable outcome for the entire team as we were able to get brilliant insights from him. The skill that I acquired from doing this, is communicating, and building a bond with the target audience.

In light of the global celebration of women on the 8th of March, I decided to attend an event hosted by PRCA MENA (Dunn,2021), from which I developed potential research topics. I also learned about TikTok trends and the use of hashtags, and the logistics of its algorithm through the 2021 Digital Marketing Trends event hosted by Falcon.io (Yang, 2021). Another salient event that was held by the university was the Zero Discrimination Day talk on the 1st of March by Kazmi (2021) (fig. 5.4). This not only provided me with multiple insights but also gave me the ability to network which brought value to our efforts as well.

Getting a chance to talk about The F Word with new connections, though virtually, proved useful and helped me understand how relevant networking is, in the media industry.

MEASUREMENT & EVALUATION

One of my regrets when working on this campaign is not celebrating the smallest achievements and always being concerned about the next big steps to take (fig. 6.1). I perhaps came off as demanding or inconsiderate as I was too focused on being productive, which isn’t necessarily the worst-case scenario but doesn’t make me appear as a supportive team player.

However, better late than never; this was done primarily through evaluation and measurement from which I discovered that we made immense progress, were able to achieve our set objectives and do much more than we planned (Kerzner, 2013; Stevens et. al, 2016). Working on the AMEC Measurement Framework, I was able to gather what we covered in a span of 45 days (fig. 6.2).

In my opinion, a difficult situation was having to handle and progress with an entire campaign, online. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, we were unable to create a greater bond as a team and launch initiatives on campus such as stalls or hosting events or discussions outside the screen. Another greater advantage of bringing this campaign to life would be the consistency in curating video content. Nevertheless, campaigning online or participating in cyberactivism counts as new experience, and that to me, matters the most (Powell, 2013).

Being a pro-active participant in this campaign, I have gained knowledge of not only the subject matter but also my performance, personally and professionally. I acquired the craft of gaining trust which plays a huge role in public relations, a field that I aspire to take up in the near future.

I have also built on my decisionmaking skills and staying organized. The biggest outcome from practicing and working in a group is that I now know what it takes to be a team player and that is appreciating your team and building on trust as a foundation of professional relationships.