The Facebook page Are We Dating the Same Guy? (AWDTSG) has expanded to 200 groups, and 3.5 million members, across US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand, since its emergence in 2022. These groups have been controversial, attracting hostile media coverage and multiple legal cases. However, AWDTSG positions itself as a feminist, peer-led community that empowers and protects women’s emotional and physical safety through documenting women’s dating experiences.

While many studies have explored gendered perceptions of risk in dating apps and dating culture, this paper examines how AWDTSG operates as an intimate digital public (Kanai, 2017), where single women build solidarities and forms of affective belonging through experiences and identities as single women. I borrow from Kanai’s understanding of intimate digital publics as being where ‘the self is remade through new mechanisms of affective commonality’ (Kanai, 2017). Through a discourse analysis of popular media discourses about AWDTSG and posts from the UK London site, the paper explores how single women are positioned in media coverage of AWDTSG and how women use such groups to build collective, gendered identities and solidarities. It argues these groups offer the potential to generate profound ‘affective resonance’ or emotional connection between women (Lorenzana, 2018), and establish collective solidarity through, and in response to, single women’s experiences of harassment, violence and abuse. Thus, in contrast to its media construction, AWDTSG constitutes a rapidly emerging online space which resists norms around single femininity, celebrates and reworks single feminine identities, and troubles the marginalisation of single femininities.

This study investigates evidences of cross-platform gendertrolling in a high-profile Brazilian sexual harassment case. Gendertrolling is a form of technology-facilitated gender-based violence where individuals become targets of coordinated cyber harassment. It aims to destabilize victims, manipulate organic interactions, and disrupt women's participation in social media. While online misogyny has been the subject of recent studies, little research has examined its cross-platform dynamics, particularly in the Global South. In this paper, we propose a case study of one of Brazil's most prominent sexual harassment allegations involving celebrities from the country's largest television network, Rede Globo. In 2019, twelve women accused their former boss of harassment and/or attempted rape. The research analyzes 164 YouTube videos about the case, posted by the accused man and a supporter, and 64.7K comments, posted between June 2022 and July 2023, along with 1,436 Instagram comments from marketing campaigns featuring the main accuser. Using anomaly detection algorithms, natural language processing, and network analysis, we identify spikes in hostile comments following pro-defendant YouTube live streams. Engagement on Instagram surged after YouTube discussions, suggesting cross-platform incitement. Findings indicate that 84% of Instagram comments were attacks on the victim, with repetitive phrases and emojis signaling potential coordination. However, the right-skewed comment distribution suggests a mix of orchestrated and organic participation. Live streams acted as mobilization points, reinforcing narratives that fueled reputational attacks. This study provides empirical evidence of cross-platform misogynistic campaigns, highlighting the role of live streams in digital gendered violence.

The Women, Life, Freedom (WLF) movement in 2022 marked a historic shift in Iranian politics by centring gendered dynamics and issues in public discourse. During and after the uprising, digital platforms have become battlegrounds where competing political forces struggle to frame and control narratives around women's issues and national identity. Within this contested space, feminist activists have played a crucial role by appropriating affordances of digital spaces to challenge dominant narratives, constructing counter-narratives that reframed women’s issues and gendered debates.

In this context, this research investigates how competing gendered narratives were constructed and contested on digital platforms, examining feminist activists’ media and discursive strategies in navigating and disrupting digital patriarchal nationalist narratives inside Iran and across the diaspora. Applying a multi-sited mobile ethnographic approach, this study analyses an archive of textual and visual materials published online to explore key gendered discussions and highlight how different political actors shaped, resisted, and reframed dominant gendered narratives.

It is argued that digital platforms in the Iranian context have emerged as contested and paradoxical spaces, simultaneously enabling political mobilisation and reinforcing digital nationalism as a mechanism of discursive control. By analysing feminist engagement with these platforms, this research highlights the nuanced interplay between digital activism, gender politics, and nationalism, contributing to broader debates on the role of digital media in shaping contemporary political struggles.

Digital platforms and social media shape social, economic, and political life, making participation nearly unavoidable (Van Dijck et al., 2018; Steinberg, 2019). This platformization, driven by datafication, records and commodifies user activity for corporate profit (Myers West, 2019). While users perceive their engagement as private, they enact public personas subject to scrutiny, facilitating both commercial and political surveillance (Baym & boyd, 2012; Zuboff, 2015).

LGBTQ+ users, in particular, experience a paradox: social media is crucial for identity formation, community-building, and self-expression (Pullen, 2010; Duguay et al., 2023), yet they also face heightened algorithmic surveillance, including shadowbanning, demonetization, and account suspension (Are & Briggs, 2023; Bivens & Haimson, 2016). This study, part of a PhD project, analyzes how LGBTQ+ users in Montréal and Berlin navigate platform regulations and resist algorithmic oppression through qualitative interviews with cultural producers, activists, and performers.

Findings highlight two key themes: being seen and looking back. LGBTQ+ users are acutely aware of surveillance, as illustrated by Astra, a Berlin-based activist, whose account was deleted after managing a queer collective’s social media. Faced with inevitable monitoring, users develop strategies—creating backup accounts, using alternative promotional methods, and deliberately defying censorship. Yet, this resistance is exhausting, as Sasha Kills, a Berlin-based drag artist, states: “We don’t have a choice, and it is really unfair.”

This research complicates discussions on data justice by illustrating that resistance is not merely emergent but an embedded, mandatory practice for LGBTQ+ users navigating digital spaces.