Sorry to Burst Your Bubble : An analysis on how content by @thegirlslikeme organize resistance against anti-feminist narratives through humor and wellness fuelling participation in Nigerian feminist discourse on Instagram

Sammanfattning: In this study, I look at the content and interpretation of posts by a feminist meme account on Instagram called @thegirlslikeme, from the perspective of a sample size of Nigerian female followers through a focus group discussion, along with a visual social semiotic analysis of the posts. This study set out to answer three research questions:  i) How do the posts on TGLM use humor and wellness to portray feminism?  ii) How is the content on TGLM challenging antifeminist narratives in a Nigerian context? And finally,  iii) How do the Nigerian followers relate to the brand of feminism represented on TGLM? The theoretical approaches theories employed to help think through the data gathered in form of thematic blocks from the interview, and the textual and visual content are participatory culture, work of representation, and filter bubbles and echo chambers. The findings of this research show that there are comparable trends in the language and terms being used in conversations being held by Nigerian feminists, and within an online community of feminists, in particular @thegirlslikeme. While fashion, rest, luxury, wellness, and self-empowerment self have abundant in the representations in the content published by @thegirlslikeme, the seven feminists engaged in a focus group discussion echoed concerns of equity versus equality, religion, culture, career ambition, and domesticity. Although there is a switch in perspective and language being used to address sexism and societal oppression of women, the representation of a diverse range of women on @thegirlslikeme is a push to include a wider vocabulary in the language of feminism for all women.