Designing a post-humanist theoretical model for the analysis of femininity in social networks

Document Type : علمی وپزوهشی

Authors

1 PhD in Communication Sciences, Allameh Tabataba'i University

2 communication studies faculty, Allame Tabatabee university

3 Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism, Faculty of Communication, Allameh Tabataba'i University

10.22059/jsr.2025.368937.1923

Abstract

Research on women and social media has become a rapidly expanding field in communication and media studies in Iran and globally. In Iran, however, most existing studies have been framed within a humanist paradigm. The humanist paradigm centers the human subject and largely overlooks the relational agencies of media and technological infrastructures. In contrast, posthumanist approaches theorize phenomena as emergent effects of assemblages of human and nonhuman actors. From this perspective, femininity on social media is not a stable, pre-given, purely human category inherited from the past; rather, it is continuously produced through relational entanglements with actor-networks and material–discursive forces.
The aim of this article is to advance such a theoretical orientation in order to better conceptualize the complexity and dynamics of the becoming of femininity on social platforms. Using a descriptive-analytical approach, we develop a theoretical model for posthumanist analysis of femininity in social media. The model draws on key posthumanist contributions, including Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, Karen Barad’s agential realism, and Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory.

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