Feminist activists discuss practices of monetisation: Digital feminist activism,neoliberalism and subjectivity

Abstract

This article explores the politics of ‘freelance feminism’ by drawing on 30 qualitative in-depth interviews with digital feminist activists. By documenting and analysing the different ways in which digital feminist activism can be monetised, the article shows that the potential to generate income is frequently discussed by, and contemplated among, activists. As this article argues, the monetisation of digital feminist activism goes beyond the application of market principles to political protest movements. When activism is monetised, activists’ emotional investments and passion become mobilised and tied to income generation. At the same time, and through emphases on self-branding and ‘authenticity’, activists’ selves are formed and rearranged in line with neoliberal values of entrepreneurialism and market competition. This article therefore shows that the workings of neoliberalism in digital feminist activism play out on an economic level, and also on the levels of affect and subjectivity.

In recent years, feminism has experienced a wave of unprecedented popularity in North America and Western Europe (Banet-Weiser, 2018; Gill, 2017; Rottenberg, 2018). This resurgence variously manifests itself in renewed media interest in feminist stories, celebrities embracing feminism and a swell of activism that increasingly – though not exclusively – takes place in digital spaces. As Hester Baer (2016) pointed out, ‘digital activism constitutes a paradigm shift within feminist protest culture’ (p. 18) and there is now a sizable body of research in feminist media studies, which highlights the benefits and pitfalls of such activism (e.g. Jackson et al., 2020; Mendes et al., 2019; Steele, 2021). For instance, in terms of access, researchers have highlighted exclusions around age and class due to a lack of media literacy (e.g. Fotopoulou, 2016), while others have demonstrated that certain sites provide a platform for hitherto marginalised groups, such as black women and trans communities (e.g. Jackson and Banaszczyk, 2016; Jackson et al., 2020; Steele, 2021). In addition, research into digital feminist activism has shown that social media’s affordances can be exploited to reach a large audience across different localities, facilitate open engagement with feminist ideas, raise consciousness and re-frame dominant cultural narratives (Mendes et al., 2019). Researchers have also demonstrated that digital feminist activism can have tangible effects. According to Sarah Jackson et al. (2020), ‘such hashtags as #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo have had far-reaching influence, moving debates about identity politics, inequality, violence, and citizenship from the margins to the center and into places as crucial as presidential agendas’ (p. xxxii).

Existing research has, thus, provided a range of perspectives on the ways in which digital feminism operates. However, comparatively less attention has been paid to the dimension of labour in digital feminist activism, understood here as ‘the productive, purposeful, task-oriented, and value-generating function of these activities’ (Duffy, 2017: 8). As Veronika Novoselova and Jennifer Jenson (2019) have observed, ‘the immaterial labor performed by and for feminist publics has not been sufficiently explored (p. 260)’. This is a significant oversight, since the labour of digital feminist activists exhibits many of the feminised – for example, unpaid, invisible and affective – features of labour in the digital economy that scholars have problematised (Richardson, 2016). A labour perspective is also useful because it enables us to explore the kinds of subjectivities that are configured in contemporary digital feminist activism. As Laurie Ouellette has argued, work is not just an economic practice but also fundamentally a process of subjectification (Andrejevic et al., 2014). By adopting a labour perspective, this article and the study it is based on seek to examine the subjectivities that are (per)formed in digital feminist activism.

More recent scholarship on digital feminist activism has begun to explore the dimension of labour (e.g. Mendes, 2021, 2022; Novoselova and Jenson, 2019; Pruchniewska, 2018) and this special issue, with its focus on freelance feminism and precarious labour, signals a timely interest in the work that feminist activists do online. This article contributes to scholarship on digital feminist labour by exploring the various ways in which feminists can or do monetise their activism. Based on 30 qualitative in-depth interviews with feminist activists who are mainly – though not exclusively – active online and based in Germany and the United Kingdom, this article explores the different ways in which activism can be monetised. For the purposes of this article, I conceptualise monetisation broadly as referring to various ways of generating income through activism, including directly monetising activist activities on one hand, and/or using the skills gained through activism to develop one’s career and/or skillset on the other. As an illustration, one activist may make a living from their blogging, while another may secure a book contract because of their activism. I consider these different forms of capitalising on one’s activism under the heading of monetisation to highlight the different ways in which activists can benefit economically from their activism. To be sure, the feminist activists that I spoke to were differently positioned in relation to the ability to monetise their activism. Some were already making an income from their activism, others were planning on doing so, and yet others were still contemplating it.

By critically exploring the monetisation of digital feminist activism, this article builds on existing scholarship that has demonstrated that feminist activists ‘have harnessed digital technologies to creatively generate income or earn a living from their activism’ (Mendes, 2021: 2). I add to this field of inquiry by showing that the monetisation of digital feminist activism does not only revolve around income generation, but that it also involves the mobilisation of affect and passion, as well as activists’ selves. By drawing on Foucauldian conceptualisations of neoliberalism (e.g. Brown in Cruz and Brown, 2016; Foucault, 2008), including approaches in feminist cultural studies that view neoliberalism as not only a social and economic phenomenon, but also a psychic and affective one (Kanai and Gill, 2020; Scharff, 2016), I show that neoliberalism is at work on various levels when digital feminist activism is monetised: economically, due to intensifying trends towards making money from one’s activism (as both actuality or potential); affectively, because activists’ emotional investments and passion for making political change become linked to income generation and on the level of subjectivity, as the digital economy calls upon digital workers, including activists, to engage in practices of self-branding, therefore performatively producing neoliberal subjectivities.

After a discussion of the study’s research methodology, I begin the presentation of my empirical data by highlighting the research participants’ emotional investment in their activism. As the first empirical section shows, the research participants became feminist activists because of deeply held feelings and convictions. Interestingly, statements about being emotionally invested in one’s activism frequently occurred in the context of deliberating the monetisation of feminist activism. This means that emotional investments and passion become linked to income generation which, I argue, is illustrative of the affective operation of neoliberalism. The second empirical section demonstrates that the monetisation of feminist activism was not a marginal, but quite a central phenomenon. By illustrating the various ways in which the research participants sought to capitalise on their activism, the article builds on existing research to show that the monetisation of feminist activism has intensified in the neoliberal digital economy. The third, and final, empirical section focuses on the emphasis put on self-branding and ‘authenticity’ in digital feminist activism. By demonstrating that the research participants engaged in practices of self-branding and were eager to ‘be authentic’ online (as well as offline), I further develop my argument about the interplay between neoliberalism, digital feminist activism and subjectivity. This article therefore shows that the workings of neoliberalism in digital feminist activism play out on an economic level, and also on the levels of affect and subjectivity. As I argue, this process is not absolute; while neoliberalism is a structuring force, it does not fully determine feminist activists’ sense-making and actions.

Research methodology

The empirical data analysed in this article stems from 30 qualitative in-depth interviews with feminist activists who were politically active online and based in Germany (15) and the United Kingdom (15). Qualitative in-depth interviews provide insight into processes of subjective meaning-making and were an appropriate method given my focus on subjectivity. Interviews were conducted in early 2022 and I used Instagram as a recruitment tool. As such, most of the activists I spoke to were mainly active on Instagram, though many also had accounts on other social media platforms and some had run or were running personal blogs and websites. The study recruited research participants who self-defined as activists; ‘activist’ and ‘activism’ were not defined for the purpose of this research. Instead, I invited the research participants to share their understanding of activism, which mostly revolved around making structural, political change. More specifically, the research participants’ activism ranged from raising awareness by creating and/or sharing content on Instagram, devising educational materials or producing creative outputs and disseminating these through workshops, publications or events, to running campaigns that aimed at triggering legislative change.

My wider interest in the dimension of labour prompted me to approach feminist activists who were active in the field of care work and, more specifically, mothering/parenting. As Kylie Jarrett (2016) has demonstrated in her important work on the ‘digital housewife’, ‘the forms of immaterial and affective labour that are exploited in the economic circuits of the commercial web can be usefully interrogated using frameworks already identified as relevant to understanding domestic labour’s role in capitalism’ (p. 3). As aforementioned, there are many overlaps between digital and reproductive labour – both tend to be invisible, unpaid and affective – and I therefore wanted to recruit feminists who, through their activism, had reflected on and/or were living the highs and lows of doing care work. The emphasis on care work was particularly timely during the Covid-19 pandemic, when women did more care work than men (Bailey, 2022), which is not a new trend (The Care Collective, 2020). The focus on what I have termed ‘care activists’ thus made sense theoretically, politically and also methodologically. Digital feminist activism is a vast and varied field; by speaking to care activists, I was able to hone in on a particular sub-group of feminist activists.

The areas of care activism that the research participants were engaged in ranged from raising awareness about pregnancy and baby loss among black women and women of colour; providing financial and legal advice to single mothers/parents; supporting black and ethnically diverse parents in raising neuro-diverse children; educating about feminist parenting and parenting for social change; advocating for recognition of the importance of care work; offering advice on raising bi-racial children as well as living in multicultural families and using art and other creative outputs to highlight the central, but devalued role of care work. As this overview of the activists’ areas of engagement illustrates, the activists were politicised, motivated to make change and highlight links between individual experiences and wider sexist, racist and classist power structures. I will come back to this point throughout the article but emphasise it here as mothers’ activism can be trivialised (see Chen, 2013 for earlier discussions about ‘mommy-blogging’). This was a markedly political space, and the activists were mindful of a range of intersecting power-dynamics.

When research participants expressed an interest in taking part in the study, I sent them an information sheet and consent form, ¹ which stated that participation in the study was voluntary, that research participants had the right to withdraw and that participation was anonymous. All research participants consented to taking part in the research. The interviews were conducted online (via Zoom) and lasted between 45 minutes and 2 hours. Interviews were conducted in German or English and subsequently transcribed for data analysis. All statements discussed in this article that were originally in German were translated by the author. To protect the research participants’ anonymity, I use pseudonyms and remain vague about the campaigns that individual activists were involved in. I provide information about the research participants’ racial and class backgrounds, but not their age, location, sexuality, nationality or other markers of their identities.

The research aimed to recruit women and non-binary people, who identified as a feminist and activist; were 18 or above and currently based in Germany or the United Kingdom. The sample that I arrived at was composed as follows: five research participants were black, three Asian, two mixed race (Asian and East African, as well as white/black Caribbean, respectively) and 20 white. Of those research participants who were white, three – all based in Germany – had a ‘Migrationshintergrund’ ² and had immigrated to Germany from Central and Eastern Europe in their childhood. Just over half (16) described their class background as middle-class, though several research participants emphasised the precarity of this status. Ten research participants described their class background as working-class, three as lower middle-class and one stated that her background was working-class, but that she is now middle-class. Almost all (28) research participants had children (between one and three) and the research participants were evenly divided between metropolitan and rural areas. The youngest research participant was 31 and the oldest 62, with the majority being in their late thirties/early forties. Six research participants identified as LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual, and more) and all as women. None of the research participants stated they had a disability, but several identified with other, marginalised groups, such as living with a mental health issue.

Mobilising emotional investments and passion

The research participants’ reflections about their motivations for being politically active online highlighted deep emotional investments in activism. Resonating with Kaitlyn Mendes’ (2021) research on digital feminist activism, ‘feminist participants shared feelings of “deep attachment” and “affective bindings” to their work’ (p. 8; see also Mendes et al., 2019). When asked about her motivation for doing digital activism, Judy (Asian, middle-class) said: ‘It’s to let the world know that an older Indian woman also belongs in that world of social media. [. . ..]. It is a place to assert myself. I love social media’. Taking part in activism was described as ‘cathartic’ and ‘therapeutic’ (Patricia, black, working-class) because it facilitated ‘human-connection’ (Nina, black, working-class) and a sense that one was not alone. Indeed, most research participants emphasised that their activism enabled them to feel connected to people who had undergone similar experiences. As Ezichi (black, working-class) put it,

It’s about the bonds I form with people who I have never seen, because they simply had similar experiences or feelings and who have gone through something similar, especially in relation to racism. And I’ve always felt very alone with this, because I grew up in a very white environment and did not have any other black friends.

Social media was also seen as useful by those who lived in rural places, did not have the financial means to travel to attend events, and/or had young children and therefore felt isolated. As Susanne (white, lower middle-class) pointed out,

I am in remote places [. . .] so I think it’s a really smart tool with low barriers, especially if you’re following different hashtags and stuff. You can get a sense of what is happening that otherwise I wouldn’t be able to get.

Sharing a similar experience, Isabelle described being active on Instagram as ‘opening doors, even though I am here in [small German town], with a baby on my arm’.

Resonating with the emotional investment in activism, the research participants frequently employed the term ‘passion’ to discuss their activist work:

So far, it’s never ever been a matter about any financial gain or anything. It’s just something I feel passionate about and I feel that people need to know. (Nina, black, working-class).

The work I do is very personal due to my background, my family life, the things that I’m passionate about. (Patricia, black, working-class)

It was like a passion, and an urge to scream it into the world, this injustice. I can’t really explain it. It really is a kind of obsession. (Olga, white/Migrationshintergrund, lower middle-class)

The references to ‘passion’ are striking and reminiscent of how cultural workers (McRobbie, 2016) as well as content creators (Duffy, 2017) describe their work. As has been shown in research on creatives (McRobbie, 2016) as well as social media producers (Duffy, 2017), artists, cultural workers and content creators frequently express passionate attachment to their work or to ‘what you love’ (Duffy, 2017). In the following, I aim to highlight the complex ways in which activists’ passion becomes mobilised and even monetised in the digital economy.

Several research participants discussed the passion for their activist work in the context of monetising their activism. Jessalynn (white, middle-class), who had turned her activism into an income stream, shared the following reflection:

It’s nice that I found a way to use my interests and those connections as a form of work. I wasn’t sure how that would work out. I knew I wanted to do work for myself somehow and work around doing things with parents and mothers and feminism. And I feel really lucky that I’m able to connect with people like that and to work doing something that I love.

Uchenna (black, working-class), by contrast, told me that she had not yet made ‘any money’ from her activism:

And that’s probably where the labour of love or the passion comes into it. Because it’s something that I’ve personally experienced and it’s something that I do think awareness needs to be raised about and also, there’s certain gaps within this particular subject matter that I want to help bridge. Having said that, the more time that I spend on it, the more I would want to have some renumeration for it. Because it’ll be taking the place of how I make my income.

Equally, Tina (white, middle-class) established a link between her deep attachment to activism and earning an income. Discussing her interest in inequalities related to mothering/parenting, Tina said,

It clearly comes from a private place and I just realised that it’s preoccupying me so much that I cannot really avoid it. And I actually got a stipend to do some research and to publish a series of articles on [details omitted; inequalities related to mothering/parenting]. I try to connect the two, because it is on my mind so much, that I cannot let go of it.

These passages illustrate the research participants’ passionate investments in the activist work they do. While Jessalynn, Uchenna and Tina occupy different positionings in relation to monetising their activism, their statements show that doing activism and generating income have become ‘connected’, to use Tina’s words. By, first, underlining the research participants’ emotional investments in their activism and, second, exploring how the passion for their activist work is, or may be, monetised, I seek to bring to the fore how deeply felt political concerns become enmeshed with income generation (as an actuality or potential). To be clear, and as Catherine Knight Steele (2021) has argued, the point is not to ‘critique any individual’s relationship with capitalism’ (p. 3). Rather, my aim is to show how emotional investment and passion become tethered to income generation. In this context, activism and affect have become embedded in a market logic. As Wendy Brown (Cruz and Brown, 2016) reminds us, neoliberalism ‘has economised everything and everyone, it’s rendered everything as a market and it’s rendered everything we do as market action (p. 72)’. By monetising their activism, or by contemplating doing so, the research participants orient to market principles. Neoliberalism is at work, in this context. Crucially, it does work not only on an economic level, but also on an affective one (Kanai and Gill, 2020) because it mobilises emotional investments. We can explore the affective workings of neoliberalism by tracing how passion, activism and market logics intersect in the context of digital feminism.

The intensification of monetising feminist activism

To be sure, feminists’ earning an income from their activism is not a new phenomenon but stretches back ‘to the suffragette shops which sold goods such as jewellery and crockery to support women’s suffrage’ (Mendes, 2021: 14). However, as Mendes (2021) argues in her research on ‘fempreneurs’, defined as ‘enterprising individuals or collectives who identity as feminists’ (p. 12), fempreneurial activities are ‘increasingly normalised and capitalised upon’ (p. 14). My findings resonate with Mendes’ research; I did not set out to interview activists who generated income from their activism. Indeed, and as this section will demonstrate, the activists participating in my study were differently positioned in relation to making a living from their activism. However, the potential to monetise activism was frequently discussed and widely contemplated. Resonating with existing research on digital protest movements (see also Novoselova and Jenson, 2019; Steele, 2021), digital feminists can leverage their activism in various ways to generate income. This is not a new trend but, as I seek to show, one that has intensified.

Several research participants had made money from their activism. Petra (white/Migrationshintergrund, working-class) stated,

I’m conscious, for example, that all my income from the last two years, except for stipends or something like that, has come through acquaintances and people who have become aware of me through Instagram.

Similarly, Beatrix (white, middle-class) told me that she had generated income from her Instagram: ‘Yes, I did. I did all right the year before last [. . .] I think it was fine, it paid my bills. But it was a lot of time and energy for the amount of money I was getting back’. Silvia (white, middle-class) too stated that ‘for a while, I actually made a living from blogging’. She received a pair of children’s shoes for her first sponsored post, and ‘could have lived off’ her blogging for a while. However, she did not continue because she did not want to ‘instrumentalise’ her children. Another reason for discontinuing this work was that she was now employed as a social media manager, ‘which came from blogging’. Silvia, thus, had not only generated income from her blogging, but had also gained paid employment due to the knowledge and expertise she had acquired when running her blog. Karen (white, middle-class) and Sarah (white, lower middle-class) had similar experiences: their current employment came about because of the knowledge, connections and know-how accumulated in their activist work.

Several research participants described how their activism had enabled them to further existing careers. Vera (white/Migrationshintergrund, working-class), a journalist, got a book contract based on her activist work:

I would say that I have done activism with daily posts for about four years, since 2018. And when I got the book contract one and a half years ago, I had done a lot, and very activist, and quite regular work on Instagram for two and a half years.

Reflecting on her activism, Teresa (white, working-class) surmised: ‘It gives me competencies to, somehow, yes, to be qualified in different areas too. I’ve applied for one, two jobs, where I would not have gotten an interview if I had not done all of this’. The research participants’ activism allowed some to build a reputation. This was particularly helpful to those who were freelancers or precariously employed. Tina, a freelance writer, Tamara, a precariously employed academic, Olga, a freelance photographer and Isabelle, an artist/freelancer, all referenced career opportunities that arose from their feminist activism on Instagram (and other digital media). As Isabelle (white, middle-class) put it: ‘I recently received a big prize. It all came through Instagram’. The research participants’ experiences raise the question of who can capitalise on activist expertise to further their careers, and the extent to which the ability to mobilise ‘activist capital’ (Chidgey, 2021) is racialised and classed. As wider research on digital labour has shown (Duffy, 2017), the hope and aspiration to make money online by ‘doing what you love’ is widely shared; the reality of who succeeds in this endeavour, however, cuts across all too familiar gendered, racialised and classed power relations (Duffy and Hund, 2019). My comparatively small sample of thirty activists does not allow me to draw generalisable conclusions, but I note that the three activists who gained employment were all white and lower middle-class/middle-class.

The research participants were aware of the economic facets of their activist work. Indeed, the potential to make money from one’s activism was discussed by many. At the time of interview, Maya (Asian, middle-class) had recently left full-time employment to pursue her activism full-time:

So last October I resigned, which again was pretty huge. As an Asian woman with a secure job and a pension, you don’t chuck it all for zero income to start up your own business as a speaker. I’m not a coach, I’m not a therapist, I’m not a doctor. I’m just a woman who has a voice, but who can also read legal things and policy things and can also relate to being a parent.

Joanna (white, middle-class) had not quit her job, but had gone part-time to be able to reflect on how to take her activism further: ‘Stepping away from full-time work to be able to work out “Is this something that I can make a monetary . . . like, can I monetise this?” Do I want to monetise it?’

Maya and Joanna were the only ones who had given up employment or reduced working hours to focus more on their activism. But many research participants contemplated generating an income from their activist work. Samantha (black, middle-class) told me:

Initially, it was just that I realised that there was a gap and I wanted to provide information [. . .]. And initially, I didn’t ever think of providing services, or anything like that, but people have approached me [. . .]. So in that respect, it has made me think ‘Okay, this is again something that I could do something about [. . .]. So if I could put this into packages and personalised services for individuals who want it or need it, then why not?’ [. . .] I don’t know if I’d necessarily give up my job, because you’d always like to keep your skills up to date, physically and practically. But I’d definitely look at doing it maybe part-time.

Judy (Asian, middle-class) equally stated: ‘I’m not a coach or anything like that, but I’ve taken courses in self-development, and I have stopped myself from putting those out there because I think maybe one day, I’ll use that as monetised content’. Ezichi (black, working-class) also shared her thoughts about generating income from the content she created: ‘It takes time. But I have thought about it, yes. But I don’t see it now. I have to study for another year and then we’ll see where I’m at’. These statements demonstrate that many research participants considered monetising their activism. As I have illustrated in the preceding section, they had become involved in digital feminist activism because of a passion for making change. They did not set out to make money from their activism. Interestingly, however, the potential to monetise one’s activism was discussed in many interviews; it was very much ‘in the air’. By illustrating the various ways in which the research participants sought to capitalise on their activism, I aim to show that monetisation is not a marginal but quite a central phenomenon. In the next section, I will hone in on practices of self-branding and performing authenticity to argue that it is not only feminist activism that has become increasingly rearranged in line with economic principles, but also – and crucially – the selves of feminist activists.

Self-branding and authenticity: performances of neoliberal subjectivity

Resonating with existing research on digital media culture (e.g. Duffy and Hund, 2019; Khamis et al., 2017; Marwick, 2018) as well as digital feminist activism (Pruchniewska, 2018), ‘social media aids the creation of a self-branding feminist subject’ (Novoselova and Jenson, 2019: 260). Self-branding ‘involves individuals developing a distinctive public image for commercial gain and/or cultural capital’ (Khamis et al., 2017: 191) and is a facet of doing feminist activism online. As Urszula Pruchniewska (2018) found in her interviews with 11 feminist online writers, ‘the practices of digital feminism are intricately connected with the contemporary cult of self-branding’ (p. 823; see also Steele, 2021). While two research participants said that they did not engage in practices of self-branding (Carola and Uchenna), most regarded it as a facet of their activist work. According to Judy, ‘branding is very important. It’s incorporating the capitalist structures to make yourself stand out’. Branding involved spending time and effort on running campaigns professionally. Olga (white/Migrationshintergrund, lower middle-class), for example, made it clear that she and her colleague had set up their feminist campaign ‘super professionally’, ‘from the start. We set it up like, yes, almost like an enterprise’. Other research participants, such as Hannah (white, middle-class) used ‘SEO [search engine optimisation] and marketing strategies and things like that in order to attempt to reach more people’. Indeed, becoming visible and maintaining visibility stood out as one of the key aims of branding. Vera (white/Migrationshintergrund, working-class) stated that she was now well-known ‘because I do personal branding and am much, much more visible than other women’. The activists’ self-branding on Instagram often involved using visual imagery, such as ‘always taking photos and selfies to show, or to inform about, if I give a talk somewhere or a workshop’ (Karen, white, middle-class). Indeed, several research participants talked about the importance of selfies. As Joanna (white, middle-class) put it: ‘Posts where my face is on them, do the best’. Given Instagram’s ‘visual [emphasis in original] focus’ (Leaver et al., 2019: 1) and that the platform is ‘all about imagery, it’s all about pictures’ (Samantha, black, middle-class), the emphasis on the visual in self-branding is not surprising. Crucially, self-branding also involved communicating with one’s followers and doing relational labour (Baym, 2015). As Silvia (white, middle-class) stated, ‘if you want for your post to have impact, you have to engage with your audience’. Finally, self-branding entailed self-promotion (see also Duffy, 2017). Isabelle told me she used Instagram ‘to make advertisements, in that sense, for me’.

Many research participants talked about their struggles with self-branding, ranging from the amount of ‘unpaid’ work involved in being ‘always on’ (Susanne, white, lower middle-class), ‘imposter syndrome’ (Joanna, white, middle-class) about ‘trying to take up more of that space’ and awareness of excluding those who do not take part in digital forms of activism and/or forms of self-branding (Tamara, white, working-class). Crucially, the research participants were also acutely aware and critical of the capitalist logic underpinning their branding activities on social media. Sarah (white, lower middle-class) had established the feminist collective she was part of ‘as a brand, from the beginning’. Expanding on the branding in more detail, she went on to say:

Well, social media is totally capitalist stuff. It functions according to a capitalist logic. Attention is a capitalist value, which means that I have to follow these mechanisms or logics in one way or another. Even if I am really critical of capitalism and I say that I find this really stupid. But if I want to reach people, if something has to happen, then I have to somehow cater to that.

As Tamara (white, working-class) put it when discussing her online activism:

I become an enterprising self [Unternehmerin meiner selbst] and in its worst form, yes, really. And I sometimes have to say that it embarrasses me. In fact, there is a component of shame, because I find it really problematic and because I don’t want that others think that you have to go about it in this way.

Susanne (white, lower middle-class), too, was aware that

Your name has to function as a brand. You have to build that brand by continuously being present on different platforms and by making posts and through that connecting to others [. . .] So I know I have to be there. And I don’t say it’s a hypocritical account that I don’t mean what I say there, but I know it’s a labour that I have to do in order to be able to generate any other kind of income.

The statements by Sarah, Tamara and Susanne show that the research participants were not only aware of, but critically reflected on, the ways in which their activism was driven by the logic of the market. I highlight this awareness to avoid giving an impression of the research participants as duped, unpolitical or uncritical. To the contrary, our conversations demonstrate that they were attuned to a range of political issues, including the ways in which practices of doing feminist activism online are informed by capitalist principles (see also Curran, this volume).

Against this backdrop, it is interesting to note the extent to which branding practices encompassed the self. While some activists, such as Olga and Sarah, used branding for the feminist collectives they had set up, many talked about themselves as being the brand that their activism promoted. Ruminating on how to take her activism further, Joanna (white, middle-class) said ‘if I want to monetise this, people have to buy into the brand, which is me’. Tasha (white, middle-class) used similar phrasing:

I’m developing a brand on social media, which is all tying into the brand of this book that I’m hopefully going to put out there, but the brand is me and that’s really, really important to the integrity of the work.

Judy (Asian, middle-class) also discussed self-branding:

I use branding and I brand myself. Rather than a product, I am branding myself and how I brand myself is to work out what my values are, what my belief system is, what it is I want to get across and what I can get across that will make me stand out in people’s minds.

Reflecting on her activism, Samantha (black, middle-class) equally stated that it ‘involves self-branding’. She elaborated by saying,

It’s very difficult when you’re branding yourself though, because in the real world, in the general world, I’m quite used to seeing products or brands, actually brands themselves, names, Apple or iPhone, these kinds of things. But it’s difficult to brand yourself, as a human being. I don’t necessarily know what people are looking for, or what they want from me. So I definitely think it involves self-branding, but I think that is quite a difficult concept in itself. I can’t necessarily change myself to become more appealing to others.

While the research participants were overwhelmingly critical of the market logics underpinning their activism, many simultaneously constructed and portrayed themselves as a brand. Joanna, Tasha, Judy and Samantha all referred to their selves when discussing what they brand and promote in the context of pursuing feminist activism online. To be sure, there was an understanding that presentations of the self ‘online’ were partial and staged, just as they are ‘offline’ (e.g. Goffman, 1990 [1959]). Petra (white/Migrationshintergrund, working-class) pointed out that her ‘Instagram account is not ‘Petra’s world’ (. . .) It’s all framed; it’s not my life what is shown there’. Likewise, Susanne (white, lower middle-class) reflected on the partial nature of self-presentation online, stating: ‘You build a brand by promoting something (. . .) but then, of course, I’m more than that’. Petra’s and Susanne’s statements remind us – just as other media scholars have done (e.g. Banet-Weiser, 2021) – that representations and performances of self are always partial. In tracing the mobilisation of self in the context of monetising feminist activism, I do not propose that a ‘complete’ or ‘authentic’ self is drawn upon and seamlessly integrated into practices of self-branding. Neither do I propose that the activists engage in these practices uncritically. What I want to highlight is that the monetisation of feminist activism does not only encompass various ways of generating income from one’s activism, but that it also involves the mobilisation of the self, however, partial, staged and reluctant. As is the case in the wider digital economy (Abidin, 2018; Marwick, 2018), the self is tapped into to generate income. In the digital economy, feminist activism does not only economise the passion for making change, but also draws on the self. By mobilising feelings, passions and the self, neoliberalism works at the level of affect and also subjectivity. The self-branding self is a neoliberal self. It is this self that is both mobilised, and also – and simultaneously – performatively produced in the context of doing activism online (and talking about it).

The research participants did not only produce neoliberal selves through their self-branding, but also by performing ‘authenticity’. As Brooke Duffy and Emily Hund (2019) have pointed out, content creators ‘are expected to project themselves authentically while carefully adhering to the tenets of online self-branding’ (p. 4988). Successful self-branding relies on the ability to be authentic; ‘[i]ndeed, authenticity has a heightened, and complex, significance in the context of social media’ (Banet-Weiser, 2021: 142), including digital feminist activism (Novoselova and Jenson, 2019; Savolainen et al., 2022). According to Pruchniewska’s (2018) interviews with feminist content creators, being and coming across as authentic is one way in which digital feminists ‘reconcile the individualistic undertakings required to succeed in the digital economy and their collective feminist values’ (p. 810). Resonating with these findings, the activists interviewed for this study emphasised the importance of being authentic online. Nina’s (black, working-class) statement elucidates the link between self-branding and authenticity:

Even if you’re being yourself, that in itself is a brand, because then you’re known for being authentic, you’re known for telling it like it is or whatever. It’s still branding, but it’s authentic branding rather than just jumping on everything, speaking on everything because it’s trending.

Echoing Nina’s stance, numerous research participants made it clear that they were authentic online:

I always say that I’m as authentic and real as I possibly can. (Patricia, black, working-class)

For me, it’s just, be myself. I share positives. I share things that have not gone so well. But bar the swearwords it’s pretty authentic. (Maya, Asian, middle-class)

Authenticity for me is the be-all and end-all. (Ezichi, black, working-class)

The research participants’ investment in being authentic raises difficult questions about the ‘labor of authenticity’ (Banet-Weiser, 2021: 143), of who counts, and is seen as authentic, and who is liked when they act ‘authentically’. It is notable that Samantha, a black research participant who I cited at the beginning of this section, reflected on the difficulties of self-branding by stating ‘I can’t necessarily change myself to become more appealing to others’. Similar to my argument about the ability to monetise activism, we need to build on existing research (e.g. Banet-Weiser, 2021) to find out more about the ways in which the ability to do authenticity online, and to get recognition for it, is gendered, racialised and classed. The emphasis on ‘authenticity’ raises the question of who can put themselves out there in an ‘authentic manner’, and the kinds of power relations that structure who counts as, and who can be perceived as, authentic.

By stating that they are authentic, the research participants do not only show that they share the value of authenticity, but also do authenticity. As such, and in line with my argument about the research participants’ discussion of self-branding, their statements can be read as performatively producing ‘authentic selves’. As I pointed out before, presentations of self are necessarily curated, both in online and offline interactions. In that sense, the research participants’ performances of authenticity are partial. Nevertheless, the self – as both branded and authentic – is performatively brought into existence in the research participants’ statements, as well as in the wider context of their digital activism. I am interested in tracing the constitution of the self to add to our understanding of the interplay between neoliberalism, social media and subjectivity. Neoliberalism works at the level of subjectivity; in the context analysed here, it does so through the formation of branded and authentic selves. This, of course, is not a top-down process but, in a Foucauldian manner, one in which activists participate in, and through which they partially come into being as activists and neoliberal subjects. Consequently, the interplay between digital feminism and neoliberalism does take place not only at the level of feminists seeking to generate income from their activism but also – and crucially – at the level of subjectivity. The activists’ critical reflections on monetisation and self-branding signal that this is not an uncontested dynamic and that there is the possibility to challenge the dominance of the neoliberal ethos in the digital economy. It is thus crucial to distinguish between neoliberalism as a structuring or determining force; in highlighting neoliberalism’s structuring force, my analysis traces the various levels on which neoliberalism works, but leaves room for agency. For example, the research participants’ critical self-awareness indicates that there is an outside to neoliberalism. While the neoliberal ethos structures digital feminist activism, it does not fully determine it.

Concluding remarks

In this article, I explored the monetisation of feminist activism to gain an enhanced insight in the various ways in which neoliberalism structures digital feminist activism. By analysing activists’ emotional investments in their activism, and the ways in which passion has become connected to income generation, the first empirical section demonstrated that neoliberalism works on an affective level. Emotion, feeling and affect are mobilised in the context of making change and also money. The second empirical section foregrounded that the monetisation of feminist activism is not new, but that it has intensified in the context of the digital economy. Many research participants were engaged in monetisation in one way or another, both as an actuality or potential. The final and third empirical section zoomed in on the level of subjectivity, by exploring the kinds of selves that are required to succeed as a ‘fempreneur’ (Mendes, 2021). As I argued, the self-branding and yet authentic activist self is a neoliberal subject. This article has therefore shown that the workings of neoliberalism play out on at least three levels in the context of digital feminist activism: (1) by contemplating or engaging in practices of monetisation, activists apply a market logic to their activism, (2) by mobilising emotional investments and passion in the context of monetising feminist activism, neoliberalism operates at the level of affect and (3) through the emphasis on self-branding and authenticity, activists performatively produce neoliberal subjectivities.

In tracing the various ways in which neoliberalism affects and structures digital feminist activism, it is not my intention to portray or describe the activism as insufficiently radical or somewhat tainted. As Hester Baer (2021) has pointed out, scholarship on digital feminist activism has been characterised by a dualism ‘that expressed either a sense of hopefulness about the participatory potential of new technologies or a pervasive scepticism about these technologies as tools of commodification, surveillance, and repression’ (p. 2). Like Baer, I aim to push at this dualism to explore the complexities of digital feminist activism, including its political and emancipatory potential, as discussed early on in this article, and also the ways in which it is embedded in the logics of the neoliberal digital economy. As such, I see the findings and arguments presented here as shedding light on one facet of digital feminist activism; it is not my aim to critique digital feminist activists because of the ways in which their activism is inflected by neoliberal rationality. Such a stance would presume that it is possible for activists to step out of or somewhat supersede powerful socio-economic as well as psychic constellations such as neoliberalism. In line with my previous research (Scharff, 2016), I am interested in how wider socio-economic constellations and related power relations structure practices and the constitution of subjectivities. It is this line of inquiry that I hope to pursue: one that places the more specific arguments presented here in a wider context that acknowledges digital and freelance feminism’s transformative potential, and also the ways in which they are shaped by the ethos of neoliberalism.