Sofia P Caldeira
Biographic Data
| ID | 292189 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sofia P Caldeira |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sofia P |
| FAMILY NAME | Caldeira |
| SIGNATURE | CALDEIRA S P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Universidade Lusófona |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7681-6952 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 50 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
“We Go Online to Call Them to the Street”: Multidirectional Flows in Hybrid Digital Feminism
Although contemporary feminist practices tend to be imagined as “digital by default,” these engagements are often hybrid in nature, combining online and offline settings and actions. Using the 2023 International Women’s Day march in Portugal as both case study and methodological entry point, this article explores how hybrid feminist practices are engaged and negotiated within this context and how this is shaped by affective experiences and emotio…
(Re)sharing Feminisms: Re-Sharing Instagram Stories as Everyday Feminist Practices
Contemporary experiences of everyday feminisms often include the use of social media platforms like Instagram. The introduction of Instagram Stories created a space for emerging feminist engagements, allowing for practices of re-sharing content that serve as small acts of political engagement, accommodating the participation of otherwise reluctant users. This article explores the feminist potential of these re-sharing practices, grounding it on t…
“Want Boyfriend ❌❌❌”: Porn Bots, Authenticity and Social Automation on Instagram
Whenever a celebrity posts a photo on Instagram, it is almost inevitable that the first comment on it will be made by a porn bot (Alvarez 2020). Observations of this kind – some focusing on the distorted perception of ‘sexiness’ and social media authenticity (Thing 2020; Salim 2023), others contesting Instagram’s community guidelines prohibiting both nudity and automation (Santos 2023) – have been ubiquitous in online tech reports for years. In a…
More safeguarded and among friends’: Negotiating platformised (in)visibility in feminist Instagram Stories
In the context of contemporary feminisms, platformised visibility is often understood in a positive light, potentiating practices of visibility politics and algorithmic activism. However, visibility can be unequally distributed and even carry risks when extended to unintended or hostile audiences, particularly in a climate of growing anti-feminist pushback and backlash. Drawing on 18 in-depth interviews with a varied group of feminist Instagram u…
Instagrammable feminisms: Aesthetics and attention-seeking strategies on Portuguese feminist Instagram
This article presents an exploratory analysis of feminist practices on Portuguese Instagram, questioning how online feminisms are represented on Instagram, in light of its conventions, aesthetics, and popularity logics. Starting from a theme-oriented dataset – collected using the hashtags #feminismoportugal (feminism Portugal), #igualdadedegénero (gender equality), #naopartilhes (don’t share it), and #portugalmaisigual (a more equal Portugal) – t…
Horny&training’: Porn bots, authenticity, and social automation on Instagram
This article presents a conceptual and methodological account of a small porn bot network, focusing on its embeddedness within Instagram use. The analysis explores the gendered design of bots as platform-native personas, particularly their capacity to perform within the confines of Instagram's increasingly strict sexual content controls. We address three performative trajectories in the bot-exploited 'Instagrammatics' of identity play, social inf…
Exploring feminisms on Instagram: Reflections on the challenges and possibilities of incorporating digital methods strategies in feminist social media research
Over the past decade, Instagram has become increasingly popular and embedded in the contemporary experience of everyday feminisms. The platform allows for the co-existence of political, personal, mundane, and aesthetically-oriented content, created by both established feminist actors and “ordinary” people (i.e. not activists, career politicians, or celebrities). While feminist media studies have long studied similar practices of online feminism, …
How Can You Be a Feminist if You’re Always Online?” Online Activisms, Ambivalence, and Dis/Connection
Digital presence and participation are often imagined as essential for contemporary feminist practices and identities. However, feminist engagements with digital and social media platforms can be tempered by drawbacks and tensions. This leads activists and everyday feminists to the need to negotiate digital dis/connection in their everyday lives. This article explores the affective dimensions of social media dis/connection in feminist contexts, g…
(Re)sharing feminisms: Re-sharing Instagram Stories as everyday feminist practices
Contemporary experiences of everyday feminisms often include the use of social media platforms like Instagram. The introduction of Instagram Stories created a space for emerging feminist engagements, allowing for practices of re-sharing content that serve as small acts of political engagement, accommodating the participation of otherwise reluctant users. This article explores the feminist potential of these re-sharing practices, grounding it on t…
Situating #MeToo: A comparative analysis of the movement in Catalonia and Portugal
Since its re-emergence in 2017, the #MeToo movement has been adopted across the globe. #MeToo has a transnational dimension, transcending its initial US context and placing international issues alongside national concerns. This article aims to contextualize and situate #MeToo, providing a critical review of the movement in two local contexts – Catalonia (Spain) and Portugal. The analysis is grounded on empirical observations on social media, draw…
The red lipstick movement: Exploring #vermelhoembelem and feminist hashtag movements in the context of the rise of far-right populism in Portugal
During the 2021 Portuguese presidential election campaign, far-right candidate André Ventura insulted the feminine presentation of left-wing candidate Marisa Matias, linking her use of red lipstick to a perceived lack of professionalism and implied sexualization. The Portuguese public reacted to this insult by launching the feminist hashtag movement-#VermelhoEmBelem (translated as #RedInBelem), which quickly became one of the few national feminis…
The Pluralization of Feminist Hashtag Landscapes: An Exploratory Mapping of Feminist Hashtags on Portuguese Instagram
Feminist hashtags are often studied in the context of concise and highly visible hashtag movements. However, most social media and hashtag use exist outside the narrow confines of such movements. This article broadens the scope of exploration of hashtag feminisms, encompassing not only well-defined hashtag movements but also generic hashtags where feminist action might not be overtly or strategically mobilized. It grounds these explorations on th…
“It’s Not Just Instagram Models”: Exploring the Gendered Political Potential of Young Women’s Instagram Use
With over one billion monthly users worldwide (Constine, 2018) and being embedded in the everyday lives of many young people, Instagram has become a common topic of discussion both in popular media and scholarly debates. As young women are amongst the predominant active users of Instagram (WeAreSocial, 2019) and the demographic stereotypically associated with online self-representation (Burns, 2015), Instagram carries an underlying gendered polit…
‘Everybody needs to post a selfie every once in a while’: Exploring the politics of Instagram curation in young women’s self-representational practices
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms worldwide, reaching (as of 2018) over 1 billion monthly active users. One of the major affordances of Instagram is the creation and posting of pictures. This allows for the production of photographic self-representations – one of the central aspects of contemporary everyday social media practices. Yet, these practices, deeply intertwined with the politics of gender representation, are of…
Photographable femininities in women’s magazines and on Instagram
This article explores the intertextual relationship between women’s glossy fashion magazines and Instagram. As the boundaries between the two formats are becoming increasingly porous – with visual conventions and discourses flowing bi-directionally between women’s magazines and Instagram – this article questions how they mutually reshape each other and the representations of femininities they carry. It explores the tensions emerging from these me…
“Shop it. Wear it. ‘Gram it.”: A qualitative textual analysis of women’s glossy fashion magazines and their intertextual relationship with Instagram
This article focuses on the intertextual relationship between women’s glossy fashion magazines and Instagram, questioning how magazines and their representations of femininity are shaped by their co-existence with Instagram. This study is based on a textual analysis of a theoretical sample of three monthly glossy magazines—Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Vogue—collected between April and September 2017.These magazines have partially adopted, and adapt…
Between the Mundane and the Political: Women's Self-Representations on Instagram
Women's self-representation on Instagram is often discussed in popular media in polarizing terms, as either an empowering practice or as boring and mundane. However, the political and the mundane are inevitably interwoven. This article grounds the discussions on how 'the political' can be expressed through mundane Instagram practices on the analysis of individual self-representations of 'ordinary' Instagram users (i.e., not celebrities or Insta-f…
A Different Point of View: Women's Self-representation in Instagram's Participatory Artistic Movements @girlgazeproject and @arthoecollective
This article explores the political potential of self-representation in Instagram's participatory artistic movements. It understands this political potential in a broader sense of “everyday politics” in which seemingly mundane issues, like Instagram self-representation, have the potential to enact societal change, affecting the politics of mass media representation. It uses as examples the @girlgazeproject and the @arthoecollective Instagram acco…
Exploring the Politics of Gender Representation on Instagram: Self-representations of Femininity
This article presents an analysis of the politics of gender representation on Instagram. It adopts a broad understanding of the political in terms of “everyday politics” and “everyday activism”. This allows for exploring the political potential of self-representation on Instagram and Instagram's ability to enable more diverse forms of gender representation. It starts from the assumption that Instagram can play a role in reproducing and reinforcin…
Representing diverse femininities on Instagram: A case study of the body-positive @effyourbeautystandards Instagram account
This article focuses on a critical analysis of alternative representations of femininities on Instagram through a case study of the @effyourbeautystandards account. This body-positive account aims to promote self-love and questions beauty ideals by sharing self-representations of ‘ordinary’ women (i.e. non-models or celebrities) who feel that they do not live up to the current beauty standards. We focus on the political potential of these diverse…
As potencialidades do estudo da imagem fotográfica na antropologia visual
Numa sociedade cada vez mais visual, torna-se compreensível que disciplinas como a antropologia tenham começado a manifestar um crescente interesse nas questões da visibilidade. Embora esta preocupação não seja exatamente recente, o problema de "O que fazer com a imagem?" tem sido fonte de constantes inquietações. Durante décadas, a antropologia visual continuou confinada a práticas tradicionalistas e limitativas, que viam as tecnologias visuais …
Exploring the Politics of Gender Representation on Instagram: Self-representations of Femininity
This article presents an analysis of the politics of gender representation on Instagram. It adopts a broad understanding of the political in terms of “everyday politics” and “everyday activism”. This allows for exploring the political potential of self-representation on Instagram and Instagram's ability to enable more diverse forms of gender representation. It starts from the assumption that Instagram can play a role in reproducing and reinforcin…
The red lipstick movement: Exploring #vermelhoembelem and feminist hashtag movements in the context of the rise of far-right populism in Portugal
During the 2021 Portuguese presidential election campaign, far-right candidate André Ventura insulted the feminine presentation of left-wing candidate Marisa Matias, linking her use of red lipstick to a perceived lack of professionalism and implied sexualization. The Portuguese public reacted to this insult by launching the feminist hashtag movement-#VermelhoEmBelem (translated as #RedInBelem), which quickly became one of the few national feminis…
(Re)sharing feminisms: Re-sharing Instagram Stories as everyday feminist practices
Contemporary experiences of everyday feminisms often include the use of social media platforms like Instagram. The introduction of Instagram Stories created a space for emerging feminist engagements, allowing for practices of re-sharing content that serve as small acts of political engagement, accommodating the participation of otherwise reluctant users. This article explores the feminist potential of these re-sharing practices, grounding it on t…
Between the Mundane and the Political: Women's Self-Representations on Instagram
Women's self-representation on Instagram is often discussed in popular media in polarizing terms, as either an empowering practice or as boring and mundane. However, the political and the mundane are inevitably interwoven. This article grounds the discussions on how 'the political' can be expressed through mundane Instagram practices on the analysis of individual self-representations of 'ordinary' Instagram users (i.e., not celebrities or Insta-f…
Situating #MeToo: A comparative analysis of the movement in Catalonia and Portugal
Since its re-emergence in 2017, the #MeToo movement has been adopted across the globe. #MeToo has a transnational dimension, transcending its initial US context and placing international issues alongside national concerns. This article aims to contextualize and situate #MeToo, providing a critical review of the movement in two local contexts – Catalonia (Spain) and Portugal. The analysis is grounded on empirical observations on social media, draw…
The Pluralization of Feminist Hashtag Landscapes: An Exploratory Mapping of Feminist Hashtags on Portuguese Instagram
Feminist hashtags are often studied in the context of concise and highly visible hashtag movements. However, most social media and hashtag use exist outside the narrow confines of such movements. This article broadens the scope of exploration of hashtag feminisms, encompassing not only well-defined hashtag movements but also generic hashtags where feminist action might not be overtly or strategically mobilized. It grounds these explorations on th…
Exploring feminisms on Instagram: Reflections on the challenges and possibilities of incorporating digital methods strategies in feminist social media research
Over the past decade, Instagram has become increasingly popular and embedded in the contemporary experience of everyday feminisms. The platform allows for the co-existence of political, personal, mundane, and aesthetically-oriented content, created by both established feminist actors and “ordinary” people (i.e. not activists, career politicians, or celebrities). While feminist media studies have long studied similar practices of online feminism, …
How Can You Be a Feminist if You’re Always Online?” Online Activisms, Ambivalence, and Dis/Connection
Digital presence and participation are often imagined as essential for contemporary feminist practices and identities. However, feminist engagements with digital and social media platforms can be tempered by drawbacks and tensions. This leads activists and everyday feminists to the need to negotiate digital dis/connection in their everyday lives. This article explores the affective dimensions of social media dis/connection in feminist contexts, g…
A Different Point of View: Women's Self-representation in Instagram's Participatory Artistic Movements @girlgazeproject and @arthoecollective
This article explores the political potential of self-representation in Instagram's participatory artistic movements. It understands this political potential in a broader sense of “everyday politics” in which seemingly mundane issues, like Instagram self-representation, have the potential to enact societal change, affecting the politics of mass media representation. It uses as examples the @girlgazeproject and the @arthoecollective Instagram acco…
Representing diverse femininities on Instagram: A case study of the body-positive @effyourbeautystandards Instagram account
This article focuses on a critical analysis of alternative representations of femininities on Instagram through a case study of the @effyourbeautystandards account. This body-positive account aims to promote self-love and questions beauty ideals by sharing self-representations of ‘ordinary’ women (i.e. non-models or celebrities) who feel that they do not live up to the current beauty standards. We focus on the political potential of these diverse…
As potencialidades do estudo da imagem fotográfica na antropologia visual
Numa sociedade cada vez mais visual, torna-se compreensível que disciplinas como a antropologia tenham começado a manifestar um crescente interesse nas questões da visibilidade. Embora esta preocupação não seja exatamente recente, o problema de "O que fazer com a imagem?" tem sido fonte de constantes inquietações. Durante décadas, a antropologia visual continuou confinada a práticas tradicionalistas e limitativas, que viam as tecnologias visuais …
Representing diverse femininities on Instagram: A case study of the body-positive @effyourbeautystandards Instagram account
This article focuses on a critical analysis of alternative representations of femininities on Instagram through a case study of the @effyourbeautystandards account. This body-positive account aims to promote self-love and questions beauty ideals by sharing self-representations of ‘ordinary’ women (i.e. non-models or celebrities) who feel that they do not live up to the current beauty standards. We focus on the political potential of these diverse…
As potencialidades do estudo da imagem fotográfica na antropologia visual
Numa sociedade cada vez mais visual, torna-se compreensível que disciplinas como a antropologia tenham começado a manifestar um crescente interesse nas questões da visibilidade. Embora esta preocupação não seja exatamente recente, o problema de "O que fazer com a imagem?" tem sido fonte de constantes inquietações. Durante décadas, a antropologia visual continuou confinada a práticas tradicionalistas e limitativas, que viam as tecnologias visuais …
A Different Point of View: Women's Self-representation in Instagram's Participatory Artistic Movements @girlgazeproject and @arthoecollective
This article explores the political potential of self-representation in Instagram's participatory artistic movements. It understands this political potential in a broader sense of “everyday politics” in which seemingly mundane issues, like Instagram self-representation, have the potential to enact societal change, affecting the politics of mass media representation. It uses as examples the @girlgazeproject and the @arthoecollective Instagram acco…
Exploring the Politics of Gender Representation on Instagram: Self-representations of Femininity
This article presents an analysis of the politics of gender representation on Instagram. It adopts a broad understanding of the political in terms of “everyday politics” and “everyday activism”. This allows for exploring the political potential of self-representation on Instagram and Instagram's ability to enable more diverse forms of gender representation. It starts from the assumption that Instagram can play a role in reproducing and reinforcin…
“Shop it. Wear it. ‘Gram it.”: A qualitative textual analysis of women’s glossy fashion magazines and their intertextual relationship with Instagram
This article focuses on the intertextual relationship between women’s glossy fashion magazines and Instagram, questioning how magazines and their representations of femininity are shaped by their co-existence with Instagram. This study is based on a textual analysis of a theoretical sample of three monthly glossy magazines—Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Vogue—collected between April and September 2017.These magazines have partially adopted, and adapt…
Between the Mundane and the Political: Women's Self-Representations on Instagram
Women's self-representation on Instagram is often discussed in popular media in polarizing terms, as either an empowering practice or as boring and mundane. However, the political and the mundane are inevitably interwoven. This article grounds the discussions on how 'the political' can be expressed through mundane Instagram practices on the analysis of individual self-representations of 'ordinary' Instagram users (i.e., not celebrities or Insta-f…
“It’s Not Just Instagram Models”: Exploring the Gendered Political Potential of Young Women’s Instagram Use
With over one billion monthly users worldwide (Constine, 2018) and being embedded in the everyday lives of many young people, Instagram has become a common topic of discussion both in popular media and scholarly debates. As young women are amongst the predominant active users of Instagram (WeAreSocial, 2019) and the demographic stereotypically associated with online self-representation (Burns, 2015), Instagram carries an underlying gendered polit…
‘Everybody needs to post a selfie every once in a while’: Exploring the politics of Instagram curation in young women’s self-representational practices
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms worldwide, reaching (as of 2018) over 1 billion monthly active users. One of the major affordances of Instagram is the creation and posting of pictures. This allows for the production of photographic self-representations – one of the central aspects of contemporary everyday social media practices. Yet, these practices, deeply intertwined with the politics of gender representation, are of…
Photographable femininities in women’s magazines and on Instagram
This article explores the intertextual relationship between women’s glossy fashion magazines and Instagram. As the boundaries between the two formats are becoming increasingly porous – with visual conventions and discourses flowing bi-directionally between women’s magazines and Instagram – this article questions how they mutually reshape each other and the representations of femininities they carry. It explores the tensions emerging from these me…
Situating #MeToo: A comparative analysis of the movement in Catalonia and Portugal
Since its re-emergence in 2017, the #MeToo movement has been adopted across the globe. #MeToo has a transnational dimension, transcending its initial US context and placing international issues alongside national concerns. This article aims to contextualize and situate #MeToo, providing a critical review of the movement in two local contexts – Catalonia (Spain) and Portugal. The analysis is grounded on empirical observations on social media, draw…
The red lipstick movement: Exploring #vermelhoembelem and feminist hashtag movements in the context of the rise of far-right populism in Portugal
During the 2021 Portuguese presidential election campaign, far-right candidate André Ventura insulted the feminine presentation of left-wing candidate Marisa Matias, linking her use of red lipstick to a perceived lack of professionalism and implied sexualization. The Portuguese public reacted to this insult by launching the feminist hashtag movement-#VermelhoEmBelem (translated as #RedInBelem), which quickly became one of the few national feminis…
The Pluralization of Feminist Hashtag Landscapes: An Exploratory Mapping of Feminist Hashtags on Portuguese Instagram
Feminist hashtags are often studied in the context of concise and highly visible hashtag movements. However, most social media and hashtag use exist outside the narrow confines of such movements. This article broadens the scope of exploration of hashtag feminisms, encompassing not only well-defined hashtag movements but also generic hashtags where feminist action might not be overtly or strategically mobilized. It grounds these explorations on th…
Instagrammable feminisms: Aesthetics and attention-seeking strategies on Portuguese feminist Instagram
This article presents an exploratory analysis of feminist practices on Portuguese Instagram, questioning how online feminisms are represented on Instagram, in light of its conventions, aesthetics, and popularity logics. Starting from a theme-oriented dataset – collected using the hashtags #feminismoportugal (feminism Portugal), #igualdadedegénero (gender equality), #naopartilhes (don’t share it), and #portugalmaisigual (a more equal Portugal) – t…
Horny&training’: Porn bots, authenticity, and social automation on Instagram
This article presents a conceptual and methodological account of a small porn bot network, focusing on its embeddedness within Instagram use. The analysis explores the gendered design of bots as platform-native personas, particularly their capacity to perform within the confines of Instagram's increasingly strict sexual content controls. We address three performative trajectories in the bot-exploited 'Instagrammatics' of identity play, social inf…
Exploring feminisms on Instagram: Reflections on the challenges and possibilities of incorporating digital methods strategies in feminist social media research
Over the past decade, Instagram has become increasingly popular and embedded in the contemporary experience of everyday feminisms. The platform allows for the co-existence of political, personal, mundane, and aesthetically-oriented content, created by both established feminist actors and “ordinary” people (i.e. not activists, career politicians, or celebrities). While feminist media studies have long studied similar practices of online feminism, …
How Can You Be a Feminist if You’re Always Online?” Online Activisms, Ambivalence, and Dis/Connection
Digital presence and participation are often imagined as essential for contemporary feminist practices and identities. However, feminist engagements with digital and social media platforms can be tempered by drawbacks and tensions. This leads activists and everyday feminists to the need to negotiate digital dis/connection in their everyday lives. This article explores the affective dimensions of social media dis/connection in feminist contexts, g…
(Re)sharing feminisms: Re-sharing Instagram Stories as everyday feminist practices
Contemporary experiences of everyday feminisms often include the use of social media platforms like Instagram. The introduction of Instagram Stories created a space for emerging feminist engagements, allowing for practices of re-sharing content that serve as small acts of political engagement, accommodating the participation of otherwise reluctant users. This article explores the feminist potential of these re-sharing practices, grounding it on t…
(Re)sharing Feminisms: Re-Sharing Instagram Stories as Everyday Feminist Practices
Contemporary experiences of everyday feminisms often include the use of social media platforms like Instagram. The introduction of Instagram Stories created a space for emerging feminist engagements, allowing for practices of re-sharing content that serve as small acts of political engagement, accommodating the participation of otherwise reluctant users. This article explores the feminist potential of these re-sharing practices, grounding it on t…
“Want Boyfriend ❌❌❌”: Porn Bots, Authenticity and Social Automation on Instagram
Whenever a celebrity posts a photo on Instagram, it is almost inevitable that the first comment on it will be made by a porn bot (Alvarez 2020). Observations of this kind – some focusing on the distorted perception of ‘sexiness’ and social media authenticity (Thing 2020; Salim 2023), others contesting Instagram’s community guidelines prohibiting both nudity and automation (Santos 2023) – have been ubiquitous in online tech reports for years. In a…
More safeguarded and among friends’: Negotiating platformised (in)visibility in feminist Instagram Stories
In the context of contemporary feminisms, platformised visibility is often understood in a positive light, potentiating practices of visibility politics and algorithmic activism. However, visibility can be unequally distributed and even carry risks when extended to unintended or hostile audiences, particularly in a climate of growing anti-feminist pushback and backlash. Drawing on 18 in-depth interviews with a varied group of feminist Instagram u…
“We Go Online to Call Them to the Street”: Multidirectional Flows in Hybrid Digital Feminism
Although contemporary feminist practices tend to be imagined as “digital by default,” these engagements are often hybrid in nature, combining online and offline settings and actions. Using the 2023 International Women’s Day march in Portugal as both case study and methodological entry point, this article explores how hybrid feminist practices are engaged and negotiated within this context and how this is shaped by affective experiences and emotio…
Gender, Feminism, and Media (19 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Gender Studies (15 works) · Media studies (11 works) · Art (10 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Social Media and Politics (9 works) · Aesthetics (8 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Gender Studies (8 works)