”#allastorlekarärvackra” -En kvalitativ textanalys av hur könsstereotyper utmanas eller upprätthålls av kroppsaktivister på Instagram.

Sammanfattning: This study is about how body activists use the social media platform Instagram to convey activistic messages and also how these activist’s messages relate to gender stereotypes in the patriarchal society. The aim of this study is to investigate how semiotic resources are used to convey activistic messages through text and images respectively. The study is based on thirteen posts from four different Instagram accounts run by self-appointed body activists; @sarasongbird, @fitnessfeministen, @lindamariie and @stinawollter. The study adopts with a qualitative text analytic approach with a semiotic framework. The theoretical approaches of this study are gender, third wave feminism and gender stereotypes. The results of the analysis showed that there were some consistent similarities in how activists conveyed their messages, but also some differences. The results are presented through six themes; normalization of the body, sexualisation of the body, community informative, stereotypes and norm breaking. The analysis also shows that the activists both challenge and sustain gender stereotypical attributes.