Feminist Media Studies

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“Hope in a hashtag”: the discursive activism of

#WhyIStayed

Rosemary Clark

To cite this article: Rosemary Clark (2016) “Hope in a hashtag”: the discursive activism of
#WhyIStayed, Feminist Media Studies, 16:5, 788-804, DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2016.1138235

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Feminist Media Studies, 2016
VOL. 16, NO. 5, 788–804
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2016.1138235

“Hope in a hashtag”: the discursive activism of #WhyIStayed

Rosemary Clark 
Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Hashtag feminism, or feminist activism that unfolds through Twitter Received 18 August 2015
hashtags, has become a powerful tactic for fighting gender inequities Revised 21 December 2015
around the world. Feminist media research, however, has yet to grasp Accepted 1 January 2016
the implications of this new form and social movement research KEYWORDS
has yet to model the conditions under which activists successfully Hashtag feminism; Twitter;
mobilize online. This article builds on research regarding the potential digital media; social
and limitations of hashtag feminism to consider a question that movements
remains understudied: what is the process through which a feminist
hashtag develops into a highly visible protest? Through a case study
of #WhyIStayed, which arose in response to a 2014 NFL domestic
violence controversy, I frame hashtag feminism as an extension
of the movement’s historically rooted discursive tactics. Hashtag
feminism’s narrative form implies that the conditions for a successful
online feminist protest parallel the elements of an effective dramatic
performance. Using data collected from Twitter and news media, I
identify the dramatic elements that propelled #WhyIStayed tweets
from online personal expressions to online collective action.

Imagine one hundred thousand domestic violence survivors, each shouting one reason why
she stayed with her abuser, in a direct affront to the overly simplistic victim-blaming logic
that dominates news coverage of violence against women. One hundred thousand voices
reverberating in the streets would surely be powerful, but, in the age of social media, they
would be no less powerful if they were to rumble through the Twittersphere. This is what
happened when, in a single day, more than ninety thousand Twitter users responded to a
2014 NFL domestic violence controversy involving Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice
under the hashtag, #WhyIStayed.
Activists and scholars have referred to this type of protest as “hashtag activism” (e.g.,
Caitlin Gunn 2015). Those cases concerning gender equity are known as “hashtag feminism,” a
practice within the burgeoning sphere of online feminism that has become so widespread in
recent years as to merit its own digital archive, hashtagfeminism.com, curated by digital media
analyst and commentator Tara L. Conley. The #WhyIStayed protest followed the lead of many
other feminist hashtag campaigns, including #EverydaySexism, #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen,
and #RapeCultureIsWhen, among others.

CONTACT  Rosemary Clark  rclark@asc.upenn.edu

© 2016 Taylor & Francis
 Feminist Media Studies   789

Recognizing the significance of this new phenomenon, Feminist Media Studies has featured
three special sections of essays on the topic. Rosemary Clark (2014), Michaela D. E. Meyer
(2014), and Tanya Horeck (2014) highlight hashtag feminists’ ability to intervene on oppres-
sive discourses produced by commercial, news, and entertainment media, respectively. Ryan
B. Eagle (2015), Carrie Rentschler (2015), Michelle Rodino-Colocino (2014), Samantha C. Thrift
(2014), and Sherri Williams (2015) show that hashtag feminism’s discursive power is vital for
activism surrounding violence against women, given the ways in which popular discourse
enables a culture in which sexual violence is accepted as part of the norm. Hashtag cam-
paigns such as #YesAllWomen, #SafetyTipsForLadies, and #StopStreetHarassment have shed
light on women’s everyday encounters with rape culture and the victim-blaming discourse
that sustains it. Although powerful, hashtag feminism is not without risks and limitations.
Kristi K. Cole (2015) exposes the violence women may face from misogynist trolls spewing
hate speech and threats online, while Heather S. Woods (2014) cautions hashtag feminists
against overexposure of vulnerable victims for the sake of political causes. Esma Akyel (2014)
and Eleanor T. Higgs (2015) argue that hashtag activism has opened up new spaces for groups
who are marginalized or silenced in global feminist movements. Still, Daniela Latina and
Stevie Docherty (2014) remind readers that, while Twitter may be a free platform, structures
of inequality prevent certain social groups from accessing it.
Here, I build on this wave of research to explore further the features and significance of
hashtag feminism through a case study of #WhyIStayed. While scholars have begun exca-
vating hashtag feminism’s cultural and political dimensions, I will focus on one aspect that
remains understudied—the social mechanisms behind hashtag feminism. What is the pro-
cess through which a feminist hashtag develops into a highly visible protest? How to explain
its dynamics? Analyzing these questions will deepen our understanding of the meaning and
significance of hashtag feminism.
I argue that a hashtag’s narrative logic—its ability to produce and connect individual
stories—fuels its political growth. The online telling and connecting of personal stories dis-
tinguish hashtag feminism from earlier forms of feminist personal politics, although, as I will
show below, important continuities remain. My case study of #WhyIStayed suggests that in
the initial stage, hashtags that express outrage about breaches of gender justice are likely
to invite online participation, while the escalation into online collective protest depends
on the nature of interaction among multiple actors and their sociopolitical contexts. The
dramatic qualities of online participation and interaction are especially conducive to the
formation of feminist hashtag protests, given the movement’s historical emphasis on dis-
course, language, and storytelling. I draw on the concepts of social drama (Victor Turner
1982), discursive activism (Frances Shaw 2012; Stacey Young 1997), and connective action
(W. Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg 2013) to outline an analytical framework that
captures hashtag feminism’s dramatic features.
I begin with an overview of the rise of hashtag feminism.

The rise of hashtag feminism

The state of online feminism was the focus of a 2013 report titled, “#FemFuture: The Online
Revolution.” This report resulted from a meeting at Barnard College’s Center for Research
and Women, which brought together nineteen feminist bloggers “to create a sustainable
force that would build on existing alliances among feminist movements and between online
790    R. Clark

feminists and their institutional counterparts; and to develop an infrastructure of support for
these important voices” (Courtney E. Martin and Vanessa Valenti 2013, 2). Controversy arose
when its authors invited readers to discuss online feminism on Twitter under #FemFuture.
Hashtag users critiqued the report for prioritizing dominantly white online spaces and eras-
ing the contributions of marginalized feminists, who work without “institutional counter-
parts” or an “infrastructure of support” (Jessica M. Johnson 2013). The report overlooked
feminists whose outlets are free social media platforms that enable independent activists
to reach audiences without the support of a steady flow of capital. Despite the hashtag in
its title, the report’s biggest blind spot was Twitter.
The #FemFuture controversy highlights two aspects of contemporary feminism in the
United States. The first is its discursive nature, demonstrated by the report’s focus on feminist
“voices.” While previous generations of feminists relied on discursive tactics, or tactics focused
on communication, such as consciousness-raising circles, speak outs, and alternative press
publications, this current generation’s activism often takes place online and, at times, exclu-
sively through social media platforms, leading to a heavier reliance on text-based interactions
via social media (Clark 2014). The hashtags cited above, for example, never snowballed into
street demonstrations.
The second aspect stems from the first: digital media have provided feminists of color
and feminists working outside of formal organizations with a new, effective means of
exposing their work and connecting with others. While feminists of color and those
without organizational backing have always been active within feminist movements,
these important voices have been marginalized within historical narratives of US fem-
inism’s development. This is due largely to their exclusion from the highly structured,
well-resourced, and predominantly white, middle-class organizations that became focal
points for feminism during the 1960s and 1970s, such as the National Organization for
Women, the Women’s Equity Action League, and the National Women’s Political Caucus,
alongside more radical but still structured groups like the New York Radical Women and
the Redstockings (Jo Reger 2012). Digital media, however, have eclipsed feminist move-
ment organizations, providing access to a visible platform and wide audiences without
necessitating membership within a formal organization, league, or caucus. Organizations
no longer structure communication within the feminist movement; rather, communica-
tion, itself, from blog posts to Twitter hashtags, has become an important organizational
structure for the movement.
These features of contemporary feminism, however, have not been fully acknowl-
edged by those feminists who inherited the organizational tactics of previous gener-
ations (Reger 2012)—the white, middle to upper class, college-educated women who
historically dominated feminist organizations at the expense of feminists occupying
various intersections of difference along axes of gender, race, class, sexuality, and ability
(Kimberle Crenshaw 1989). The impetus to move toward a #FemFuture that includes
infrastructural support stems from the movement’s tradition of organizational strate-
gies. And yet, as the recent surge of hashtag feminism shows, diverse voices of protest
can turn into collective action on Twitter and other online platforms in the absence of
traditional forms of feminist organizing. How does digitally mediated discourse grow
into collective action without the leadership of structured organizations? What is the
political meaning and significance of this phenomenon? I draw on several theoretical
concepts to outline an analytical perspective.
 Feminist Media Studies   791

Discursive activism and connective action

The rapidly growing amount of research at the intersection of social movements and digital
media has yet to offer a framework that highlights the political nature of the discursive tac-
tics driving online feminism. Online social movement research has demonstrated the role
of digital networks in informing activists (Paolo Gerbaudo 2012), diffusing political frame-
works (Manuel Castells 2012), decentralizing leadership (Sandra González-Bailón 2014),
and decreasing the costs of participation (Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport 2011). Digitally
mediated discourse is typically viewed as a cultural resource to be mobilized for political
action offline, as opposed to being political in its own right. Even work that focuses on narra-
tives or feminism has upheld this political/cultural binary, presenting discourse as a framing
mechanism for later demonstrations (Francesca Polletta 2006), a tool for building collective
identities that serve as the foundations for action (Alberto Melucci 1989), or a resource to
maintain ideologies during periods of abeyance (Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor 1987). This
reification of the political/cultural binary is problematic for US feminists, who are motivated
by the 1960s-era feminist declaration that the personal is political. Feminist activism relies on
articulation to make visible the hegemonic, taken-for-granted power structures that infuse
daily life. Feminist social movement research, then, requires frameworks that highlight the
political nature of discourse, on- and offline.
Shaw (2012) indicts the existing literature for underplaying the political potential of digital
activist communities, whose movement activities take place often exclusively online. While
most research on social movement actors’ use of digital media focuses on the logistical
organization of protests, Shaw argues that online discourse can be a “mode of activism”
(373) capable of triggering sociopolitical change with or without the help of collective action
offline. Through a case study of the Australian feminist blogosphere’s response to a radio
station’s exclusion of women from a poll ranking the best rock musicians of all time, Shaw
demonstrates that communication within online communities can produce offline results.
Citing Young (1997), Shaw refers to this process as feminist discursive activism, action “directed
at promoting new grammars, new social paradigms through which individuals, collectivities,
and institutions interpret social circumstances and devise responses to them” (Young 1997,
3). Young understands discourse as political in its own right, linking discursive activism’s
“new grammars” to change in the form of reinterpretations of and, consequently, revised
responses to sociopolitical situations. Young’s definition of discursive activism draws atten-
tion to what sociolinguists refer to as feminists’ linguistic activism, or activism that, working
from the assumption that language and society are co-constitutive, aims to document sex-
ist language and implement alternatives (Anne Pauwels 2003). In Shaw’s study, Australian
feminists used blogs, Twitter, and Facebook not only to create their own women-centric
rock music canons, but also to promote alternative discourses that highlighted the systemic
erasure of women in the rock music industry. Their online action led the station to highlight
women artists on its website, demonstrating online communities’ potential to enact real-
world change through discourse.
But how does discursive activism go beyond isolated personal expressions to form
collective action? Bennett and Segerberg (2013) offer one answer. Collective action hap-
pens, they argue, when personal action frames, or “easily personalized ideas” (37), are linked
together through digital networks. They call this type of collective action connective action,
a form of activism that unfolds within communication networks, rather than organizational
792    R. Clark

membership structures. Bennett’s and Segerberg’s theory of connective action highlights

the mechanisms through which tweets, despite their brevity, can, via hashtag networks,
become the building blocks for collectively constructed, thematically linked narratives in
140 characters or less. With respect to hashtag feminism, however, the question remains
as to why some hashtags, or personal action frames, evolve into connective action but not
others. I draw on theories of social drama to address this question.

Hashtag feminist protests as social dramas

According to Turner’s (1982) theory of social drama, all interactions have dramatic, perform-
ative qualities. Daniel A. McFarland’s (2004) definition of resistance, however, points to the
heightened dramatic qualities of collective action. According to McFarland, resistant acts are
“a type of nonconformist behavior that questions the legitimacy of the current social order”
by “challeng[ing] the definition of the situation and, in more dramatic instances, attempt[ing]
to supplant it through appeals to a different normative cognitive framework of interaction”
(1251). Collective action, McFarland argues, pursues a prognostic framework for change
through “a dramatic series of events,” or a social drama. Following Turner (1982), McFarland
argues that a social drama’s sequence of interactions “resembles a story with discernible
phases and stages of development and resolution” (1252). This framework highlights the
performative nature of collective action, especially protest that, like hashtag feminism, aims
to deconstruct and implement alternatives to dominant discourse (Andrew Parker and Eve
Kosofsky Sedgwick 1995). Before an audience, social movement actors interrupt normative
frameworks shaping interpretations of social identities and phenomena to articulate new
ones, constructing alternative possibilities for sociopolitical life and driving the social drama’s
development forward.
McFarland’s theoretical framework can easily be applied to the realm of online activism,
where actors clash on the public stage of digital networks, despite never meeting face-to-
face. Acts of resistance begin with a “ceremonial deconstruction” (Turner 1982, 1252) phase,
when a breach of social order, norms, or discourse initiates a social drama. The breach later
escalates to crisis among actors with competing interpretations of the situation. Activists may
engage in frame alignment processes to win audience members to their cause. Audience
members can be proximal or distant (David A. Snow, Louis A. Zurcher, and Robert Peters
1981) and general or specific (Kathleen Blee and Amy McDowell 2012). In the case of hash-
tag feminism, Twitter users may be viewed as proximal spectators, who, due to digital net-
works’ blurring of the public and private (Zizi Papacharissi and Maria de Fatima Oliveira
2012), can easily be mobilized as active audiences (Daniel Kreiss, Laura Meadows, and John
Remensperger 2014). Mass media are both distant and general audiences (Ruud Koopmans
2004) with the potential to validate or undermine a movement’s counter-frame through news
and editorial coverage. As audience members side with either the movement actors or their
targets, the frame contestation’s dramaturgical qualities become evident.
Finally, the social drama moves through a stage of reintegration. The reintegration period
may result in a number of outcomes. One interpretive frame may achieve dominance over
the other, actors may negotiate a mutually agreeable solution, or the schism among actors
may remain unresolved. Regardless of its outcome, the reintegration stage has significant
implications for social life because it can set a precedent for conflict resolution. Should a
similar situation arise in the future, participants can invoke the collective memory of the
 Feminist Media Studies   793

narratives that shaped their social drama as a historical lens through which to understand
the present (McFarland 2004). In this way, resistant narratives become important resources
for future social movement actors making similar or corollary demands.
The three stages of McFarland’s Turner-inspired model for analyzing the dramatic qual-
ities of collective action—breach, crisis, and reintegration—parallel the plot elements of
beginning, middle, and end. This model is particularly well suited for studying online fem-
inism, whose discursive tactics often call on participants to collectively build narratives of
resistance. Notably, McFarland’s model aligns well with Pauwel’s (2003) four-stage model for
feminist linguistic activism, which involves documenting sexist language, planning and imple-
menting alternatives, and evaluating their impact. Combining McFarland’s collective action
model with Pauwel’s, hashtag feminism can be understood as a particular form of feminist
linguistic activism that, due to the immediacy of Twitter, is event-oriented and focused on
the discourse surrounding a highly visible social phenomenon unfolding in the moment.
The aggregative nature of hashtag protests makes them especially fruitful for analyzing the
dramatic elements and structure of online feminism.

Data and method

#WhyIStayed tweets published between September 8 and September 30, 2014 were ran-
domly selected for inclusion in the sample using the Annenberg Twitter Project at the
University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. Since August 2012, the
Annenberg Twitter API has randomly selected and archived approximately 1 percent of all
public tweets. The following search terms were used to identify tweets related to the Ray
Rice controversy: #WhyIStayed, #WhyILeft, and #WhenILeft. The query resulted in an output
of 2,522 tweets, including duplicates (retweets). To foreground the hashtag protest within
the broader context of the Ray Rice controversy, I collected data from news stories related
to both the controversy and the hashtag protest.
By analyzing data from Twitter and news media, I identified the discursive context of the
initial breach that sparked #WhyIStayed, the movement’s framing practices that emerged
during the crisis stage of the hashtag protest, and, finally, the reintegration of the movement’s
discursive contestation into social life (Lasse Lindekilde 2014; McFarland 2004; Turner 1982).
Data from news websites provided the primary source material for understanding the
discursive context that sparked the breaching event, as well as the state of public discourse
following the protest’s first and most active month.
The crisis period is the most pivotal, because it is at this point that movement actors
stake their definitional claims over the social situation that sparked their protest (McFarland
2004). During the crisis stage, resonant frames are vital to the protest’s outcome. For this
reason, the crisis stage calls for more in-depth analysis. To identify the framing practices that
emerged at this stage, I used a manual, inductive coding approach to analyze my sample
of #WhyIStayed tweets. First, I identified major themes that emerged from the content of
half of my sample as counter-frames for interpreting domestic violence and the discursive
practices used to communicate those themes; these themes were then used as coding cate-
gories, which were applied to the complete sample. Seven major frame categories emerged
from the data: (1) personal stories of experiences with domestic violence; (2) commentary
on the relationship between domestic violence and broader systems of injustice; (3) tweets
from audience members calling attention to the hashtag; (4) tweets that directly addressed
794    R. Clark

domestic violence survivors; (5) tweets that violated or policed the hashtag’s etiquette; (6)
tweets describing social media as a feminist platform; and (7) tweets commenting on domes-
tic violence cases in the news.

Setting the stage for #WhyIStayed

On February 15, 2014, Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice and his then fiancée, Janay
Palmer, were arrested and charged with assault after an allegedly mutual attack at an Atlantic
City, New Jersey casino (CNN 2014). Four days later, celebrity gossip website TMZ (2014a)
leaked security footage of Rice dragging Palmer’s unconscious body out of a casino elevator.
Atlantic City police stated that they had obtained additional footage showing Rice knocking
Palmer unconscious (Kevin Conlon 2014). The Ravens issued a statement condemning Rice’s
behavior, though head coach John Harbaugh defended Rice’s character (CNN 2014) and
promised that Rice would remain on the team (Louis Bien 2014).
On March 27, prosecutors presented the case to a grand jury. The charges against Palmer
were dropped and Rice’s charges were increased to aggravated assault. Palmer chose not to
press charges, but the state of New Jersey moved forward with the prosecution. The next
day, Rice and Palmer were married. On May 21, prosecutors, with Palmer’s support, allowed
Rice to enter a twelve-month counseling program, which spared him prosecution in court
and even struck the case from his record, a course of action typically reserved for nonviolent
and victimless crimes (Bien 2014). Two days later, at a Ravens press conference, Rice and
Palmer both apologized for their roles in the incident.
Rice’s disciplinary hearing with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell took place on June 16,
during which Palmer advocated on Rice’s behalf. It remains unclear whether NFL officials
viewed complete footage of the assault prior to the hearing. Various news outlets reported
that Goodell had seen the footage, but the commissioner claimed that these reports were
erroneous (Ryan Van Bibber 2014). Goodell announced on June 24 that the NFL would sus-
pend Rice for two games, a punishment of equal severity to that given to previous domestic
violence offenders on the Ravens’ roster (Bien 2014).

Beverly Gooden tweeted a message

The controversy surrounding Rice intensified when, early in the morning of September 8, TMZ
leaked additional security footage that captured the events that unfolded inside the casino
elevator, prior to Rice dragging Palmer through the elevator doors (TMZ 2014b). The footage
shows the couple having a verbal argument, during which Rice spits in Palmer’s face twice,
leading Palmer to attempt to push him away. Rice then punches Palmer in the face, knocking
her unconscious, before dragging her limp body out of the elevator. The video’s exposure of
Rice’s violent behavior, however, did not directly spark the #WhyIStayed movement. News
media’s focus on Palmer’s, rather than Rice’s, character and choices ignited the hashtag users’
outpouring of deeply personal narratives, in addition to messages expressing support for
domestic violence survivors and frustration with mainstream media discourse and the NFL.
One particularly noteworthy example of victim-blaming media coverage occurred the same
morning TMZ leaked the footage from inside the elevator. During a Fox & Friends segment, Fox
News broadcasters Steve Doocy, Anna Kooiman, and Brian Kilmeade pointed out that Palmer
“still married” Rice, sending a “terrible message” to other women; the segment concluded
 Feminist Media Studies   795

with Kilmeade glibly suggesting that the key “message is, take the stairs” to avoid getting
caught abusing your partner (Sasha Goldstein 2014).
The hashtag protest’s breaching event occurred when, shortly after TMZ leaked the foot-
age, Beverly Gooden, an activist, writer, and domestic violence survivor, joined a Twitter con-
versation with other survivors. Gooden and others had been sharing their stories in an effort
to complicate the victim-blaming discourse in the media coverage of Rice and Palmer. At one
point during the discussion, Gooden tweeted under the hashtag for the first time: “I stayed
because I thought it would get better. It never got any better. #WhyIStayed” (@bevtgooden,
September 8, 2014, 11:42am). In rapid succession, Gooden shared her survivor story through
a litany of reasons explaining why she stayed, garnering hundreds of retweets in the process.
Later that afternoon, in response to the additional security footage and resulting public
outcry, the Ravens announced that they had terminated Rice’s five-year, $500 million con-
tract, and Goodell announced that he suspended Rice indefinitely. According to Trendinalia
USA, the hashtag became a trending topic in the United States approximately three hours
after the NFL announced its revised punishment for Rice (Beverly Gooden 2014). Within its
first twenty-four hours of existence, users tweeted under the hashtag more than ninety-two
thousand times (Eliana Dockterman 2014).
The breaching event—the creation of #WhyIStayed—directly challenged dominant dis-
course surrounding domestic violence while also resonating with a wide audience. Gooden’s
initial #WhyIStayed tweets appealed to a wide audience because the sentiment behind them
leveraged a discursive window of opportunity in news coverage of the Ray Rice controversy
(David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford 1988). Domestic violence is not an issue restricted to
the realm of radical feminist politics; due in large part to the work of US feminists during the
1970s, partner abuse is no longer a taboo personal concern relegated to the private sphere,
but is instead generally understood to be reprehensible by the public at large (Rory C. Dicker
2008). Gooden would likely have had less success if she started a hashtag movement around
a more controversial feminist topic, such as abortion.
Gooden’s hashtag was also rhetorically appealing. Not only did the hashtag evoke
heartrending stories, it also co-opted a narrative genre that Gooden’s audience likely
recognized—the victim-blaming news story. In her essay on the hashtag campaign
#SafetyTipsForLadies, Rentschler (2015) refers to this tactic of parody as a “media hijack”
(354), a rerouting of news media discourse away from victims’ behavior and toward the
actions of perpetrators. Media hijacks make for especially compelling hashtag campaigns
because readers are generally familiar with the discursive frameworks they attempt to
dismantle. Gooden’s hashtag satirized the news headlines surrounding Palmer, who, at
the time, was just the latest high-profile female victim of domestic or sexual violence to
receive the victim-blaming treatment from mainstream media (Joanne Ardovini-Booker
and Susan Caringella-MacDonald 2010). Weary of hearing journalists repeatedly question
why Palmer stayed with Rice as if staying with an abuser is a simple choice to make,
Gooden decided to answer the question for herself, with the goal of shedding light on
the complex conditions surrounding domestic violence situations. While the “I” behind
the initial #WhyIStayed tweets was Gooden, her stories commented on the general
underexposure of perpetrators’ roles in keeping victims locked in domestic violence sit-
uations. In this way, the hashtag offered both a diagnostic and prognostic counter-frame
for interpreting the Ray Rice controversy (Snow and Benford 1988). #WhyIStayed tacitly
critiqued mainstream media coverage of domestic violence victims while also using
796    R. Clark

Twitter hashtag conventions to push others to act by sharing their own reasons for
staying. The hashtag, in other words, took the erroneous victim-blaming frame that
most audiences are familiar with and held it up for comparison against domestic vio-
lence victims’ realities. Its resonance, then, came from the disjuncture survivors’ stories
revealed between the media’s hegemonic discourse and the hashtag’s counter-frame.
Data from the sampled #WhyIStayed tweets suggest that the hashtag’s dramatic con-
tention revolved around two major performances: (1) personal stories of experiences with
domestic violence; and (2) expressions of support from audience members. Out of the 2,522
sampled tweets, 765 were coded as personal accounts of why a survivor chose to stay with an
abuser and 416 were coded as supportive commentary. While users who fell into the former
category constituted the social drama’s main actors, users in the latter category advanced
the narrators’ counter-frames through vocal support.
I discuss these two categories of actors in detail below.

The power of the hashtag form

Survivors who shared stories under the hashtag demonstrated the power of the narrative
form. As Akyel (2014) argues, a hashtag is “always already incomplete … a rhizomatic form that
connects diverse texts, images, and videos” (1102). In the case of #WhyIStayed, the hashtag
acted as an easily personalized storytelling prompt, which provided a particular narrative
focus for survivors to frame their diverse experiences in a compelling manner in 140 charac-
ters or less. This way, the hashtag maintained the poignancy of Gooden’s initial dark parody
of mainstream media discourse while remaining open-ended enough for users to customize
it with their personal narratives. Through the ritualistic repetition of a Twitter hashtag, the
#WhyIStayed movement united a huge variety of abuse stories under a single counter-frame:1
@galvanized: Because he managed the cash. #WhyIStayed. (September 8, 2014, 12:52pm)
@SCrystal: Because he separated me from all my friends and family and I had nowhere to turn.
#WhyIStayed. (September 8, 2014, 5:00pm)
@MegaMay: Because I grew up in an abusive family, why would I expect the person I was mar-
rying not to #WhyIStayed. (September 11, 2014, 6:50pm)
The vast majority of sampled tweets that offered personal accounts of domestic violence
followed this form, answering the hashtag’s subversive parroting of mainstream media’s
problematic question for victims—why did you stay with your abuser?—with first-person
narratives beginning with “because.” The repetition of form through the hashtag provided
an easily customizable frame that networked thousands of deeply personal, highly specific,
and often devastating reasons why users stayed in abusive relationships, countering the
media’s oversimplification of the choices available to victims.
Others used quotation marks to make visible the interpersonal discourse between abusers
and victims, or between victims and their social circles, creating dramatic, public restagings
of private injustices involving an implied cast of characters:
@teeflo: “You’re damaged goods. Who could want you?” #WhyIStayed. (September 8, 2014,
5:35pm)
@bloticious: “You act like I’m killing you. You’re not even bleeding.” #whyistayed he convinced
me I was overreacting. (September 8, 2014, 8:18pm)
@nerdkid: “you’re lucky I let you go to work. I could keep you locked up and nobody would ever
look for you.” #whyistayed. (September 8, 2014, 5:48pm)
 Feminist Media Studies   797

Still others posted the intrapersonal narratives that circulated through their thoughts while
they remained in abusive situations:
@ATnicci: #WhyIStayed bc I thought that since it was my fault, I could fix it. (September 8, 2014,
5:45pm)
@MomNeedsaDrink: #WhyIStayed Because I thought that each instance of abuse would be the
last. (September 8, 2014, 5:25pm)
@scienceisrad: #WhyIStayed he destroyed my confidence to the point that I thought I couldn’t
do any better. (September 8, 2014, 7:10pm)
Importantly, the #WhyIStayed protest provided a platform for a great diversity of voices. While
some nonprofit organizations and media outlets were among the users in my sample, the vast
majority were private individuals. By linking together numerous individual voices without
relying on organizations, hashtag activism enabled a more intersectional movement against
domestic violence than that of previous generations. As Bess Rothenberg (2002) shows in
her analysis of feminist activism against domestic violence in the 1970s and 1980s, personal
narratives were crucial to the construction of the “battered woman,” a victim deserving of
social and legal support. The narratives highlighted during these decades, however, painted
a narrow portrait of who qualifies as a deserving victim. Feminist anti-domestic-violence
media published during this time often focused exclusively on violence against white, mid-
dle-to-upper class heterosexual women, erasing the realities of victims of color and of lower
socioeconomic status, as well as male and queer victims. Without privileged gatekeepers con-
trolling the movement’s counter-discourse, the #WhyIStayed protest challenged conventional
understandings of who can be a domestic violence victim and abuser. Of the 2,522 tweets in
my sample, I coded 127 as detailing the stories of survivors excluded from dominant domestic
violence narratives on the basis of their gender, sexuality, race, ability, or class:
@landaybarret: #Transgender, #qtpoc, #disabled #sick people are told they are not desirable.
Love only comes in scarcity. #whyistayed #ableism #racism. (September 8, 2014, 4:47pm)
@ClDorey: Because when I told my friends & family that I was being emotionally & physically
abused they called me a faggot. #WhyIStayed. (September 9, 2014, 2:16pm)
@Jedi_Dad2: #whyistayed she was the mom of our children & i wanted to save them from a
broken home. domestic violence knows no gender. (September 9, 2014, 2:02am)
While the tweeted narratives depicted a wide range of personal circumstances, they collec-
tively shifted the burden of blame for domestic violence away from the abused and onto the
shoulders of abusers. In this process of staking new definitional claims over domestic violence
situations, the hashtag’s aggregation of personal stories had the dual effect of challenging
victim-blaming discourse while providing a resource for other victims. Narrators often used
the two sequential hashtags—#WhyIStayed and #WhyILeft—to dramatically juxtapose their
situations during and after abusive relationships, creating succinct yet rhetorically power-
ful stories of survivorship. These narratives, for example, were among the most retweeted
tweets in my sample:
@doree_a: My children needed a dad, #whyistayed. My children needed a mom, #whyileft.
(September 9, 2014, 11:06am)
@w_wolf2: #whyistayed I thought I could change him #whyileft he changed me. (September
9, 2014, 10:09am)
@kirian_rosemary: #whyistayed: He told me “no one will love you like I do” #whyileft: I realized
that no one should ever “love” me like he did. (September 9, 2014, 1:13am)
798    R. Clark

The survivorship stories shared under the hashtag politicized the personal through acts
of public testimony that challenged the victim-blaming myths framing the dominant dis-
course concerning domestic and sexual violence. Following Susan Gal’s (1995) definition of
domination through language, the power of the victim-blaming discourse is made manifest
when “even those who do not control these authoritative forms consider them more credible
or persuasive, more deserving of respect than the forms they do control” (174), than their
own narrative perspectives. The power of the victim-blaming narrative format leads to the
“symbolic domination” (Gal 1995, 175) of the media representation of victims as responsible
for their own abuse, which in turn shapes how victims conceptualize their personal expe-
riences of abuse. Victims internalize the victim-blaming discourse promulgated by main-
stream media and other sociocultural institutions, by abusive family members or partners,
and by people in victim’s social circles, leading them to feel responsible for their own abuse
and, consequently, too ashamed to seek help (Avigail Moor 2007). Through co-constructing
first-person narratives via Twitter, however, victims reclaim agency over the production of
their own stories. As Lisa Capps (1999) argues, through narration, “interlocutors attempt to
construct themselves from a particular point of view, both as protagonists acting and feel-
ing in the past and as narrators acting and feeling in the present” (85). Survivors’ tweeted
retrospective narratives not only deconstructed problematic interpretations of their past
experiences with domestic violence, but also staked new definitional claims over a present
social issue, mobilizing change in the form of new interpretations that call for new responses
to domestic violence. Beyond the hashtag’s ephemeral moment of virality, the aggrega-
tion of these narratives through the hashtag’s network resulted in a searchable archive of
­experiences. While each narrator’s experience is unique, their stories share connections that
enable the formation of “theories about experiences” and, in turn, “create opportunities for
negotiating identities and worldviews, for resisting, challenging, and perpetuating the sta-
tus quo” (Capps 1999, 86). Hashtag feminism, in its form, content, and production process,
empowers its users to take control of the sociocultural narratives associated with their iden-
tities and subjective experiences.

Twitter audience and news media

In addition to hashtag users’ personal stories, the coding process shed light on the role
of the audience in the dramatic action of #WhyIStayed. Social media enables active
audience participation as opposed to passive consumption (Kreiss, Meadows, and
Remensperger 2014). Twitter users watching the viral drama of #WhyIStayed unfold
demonstrated this by imploring other users to read the tweets published under the
hashtag and by addressing the domestic violence survivors sharing their stories through
the hashtag:
@MegaChloe: If you take a look at #WhyIStayed and #WhenILeft, you’ll see what it’s like to be a
domestic violence victim. (September 8, 2014, 7:09pm)
@brass_y: NEVER feel guilty for your abuse. NEVER think you should have known or should have
been more aware. That’s not on you. #WhyIStayed. (September 8, 2014, 8:24pm)
Active audience participation increased the #WhyIStayed movement’s ability to advance
its definitional claims not only by drawing attention to the hashtag, but also by visibly sup-
porting the actors primarily responsible for constructing its counter-frame. For example,
188 sampled tweets connected survivors with resources like crisis hotlines, and shelters.
 Feminist Media Studies   799

Consequently, #WhyIStayed audience members not only demonstrated what Susan Berridge
and Laura Portwood-Stacer (2015) refer to as hashtag feminism’s power to “promote gen-
dered solidarity” (341), but also made evident feminist hashtags’ ability to empower users
with material resources. These tweets advanced the movement’s counter-frame by recog-
nizing victims’ complex struggles while also going a step beyond recognition, implicitly
demonstrating the potential impact of domestic violence discourse that supports rather
than shames victims.
News media also amplified the movement’s message. Not only did popular news websites
favorably cover the #WhyIStayed movement and offer editorial space to Gooden (2014),
major outlets adopted the central premise of the movement’s counter-frame, publishing
stories that worked from the assumption that domestic violence victims should not be
blamed for their own abuse. The Huffington Post performed the most extreme version of
this direct adoption, publishing an interactive series of stories that occupied the top half
of their home page and featured narratives from six domestic violence survivors (Melissa
Jeltsen 2014). In the introduction to the series, published four days after Gooden initiated
#WhyIStayed, The Huffington Post attributed inspiration for the series to the “remarkable”
hashtag and the “national conversation” it triggered (Jeltsen 2014). Other instances of main-
stream media outlets adopting the movement’s counter-frame included daytime talk show
host Meredith Vieira sharing her experience with domestic violence on her program, telling
her audience, “I want to explain to you why I stayed” (Emanuella Grinberg 2014). Even Fox
News, the network cited earlier for its victim-blaming coverage of Janay Palmer, adopted
the movement’s ­counter-frame; Fox anchor Lauren Ashburn fired back at the “pundit prog-
nostications” criticizing Palmer by stating that “how Janay Rice reacts to Ray Rice’s actions is
none of our business” before reading a selection of especially powerful #WhyIStayed tweets
on air (Fox News 2014).

Integration and impact

Given the #WhyIStayed movement’s emphasis on discourse, it follows that the reinte-
gration stage of its social drama would entail a discursive shift. By the end of September,
Commissioner Goodell announced plans to thoroughly investigate Rice’s case and to over-
haul the NFL’s domestic violence policies, a marked shift from the discourse characteristic
of the early stages of the controversy (Ray Sanchez 2014). The NFL also partnered with No
More, a domestic and sexual violence awareness campaign, to produce a series of public
service announcements aired weekly during football game broadcasts beginning October
23 (No More 2014). The organization is primarily a marketing agency. With no full-time staff,
No More is a network of corporations seeking to alter their public image through commer-
cial messaging against domestic violence (Diana Moskovitz 2015). The ads featured NFL
players condemning victim-blaming discourse and encouraged viewers to take a pledge
against gender-based violence under the Twitter hashtag, #NoMore, a co-optation of the
tactics practiced under #WhyIStayed. A press release on the NFL’s website indicates that
these changes came in direct response to the “overwhelming public outcry” following TMZ’s
security footage leak (NFL 2014).
While all the charges against Rice were officially dismissed on May 21, 2015, the NFL’s
co-optation and mainstream media’s amplification of the #WhyIStayed movement’s coun-
ter-frame constitutes a successful resolution for the hashtag protesters’ social drama (Aaron
800    R. Clark

Wilson 2015). Prior to social media, these institutions would likely have drowned out a protest
against the victim-blaming discourse they promote, given their access to larger platforms
and audiences. By leveraging the discursive activist community Twitter enables, #WhyIStayed
users pushed their counter-frame until it became a central referent for the public’s under-
standing of not only the Ray Rice case, but domestic violence more generally. #WhyIStayed
grew into what Thrift (2014) calls a “feminist meme event” (1091), a digitally mediated episode
that not only references a specific incident—in this case, the Ray Rice controversy—but
itself evolves into a reference point for interpreting other phenomena. When future cases
gain mainstream news media’s attention, their reporters and audiences may draw on the
movement’s interpretive framework to understand domestic violence. Most importantly,
#WhyIStayed has become a pivotal reference point for domestic violence victims, who, prior
to the hashtag protest, may have felt shamed into silence. Several states reported significant
increases in calls to domestic violence hotlines and state-funded programs during September
2014, the hashtag’s first and most active month (Bryce Covert 2015; Gregg Doyel 2014;
Jackie Valley 2015). All three ripple effects—the NFL’s alteration of its public image, news
media’s adoption of a framework that supports survivors, and individual victims’ newfound
voices—represent discursive shifts with tangible effects, illustrating the dialectical relation-
ship between online feminist activism and offline social life.

Conclusion
In the midst of the hashtags’ stirring first twenty-four hours of viral diffusion, journalist Connie
Schultz (@ConnieSchultz) tweeted, “#whyistayed & #whyileft are stories of fear & isolation all
too familiar to generations of women who had no such forum. Hope in a hashtag.” Hope, in
this case, is created not only through digitally networked solidarity for otherwise alienated
individuals, but also through hashtag activism’s ability to circulate revised normative inter-
pretations of social phenomena, such as domestic violence, which in turn might produce
alternative responses to those phenomena, such as media coverage that more accurately
depicts the culpability of perpetrators and the realities domestic violence victims face. From
here, hope swells into material, sociopolitical change as a culture that validates, rather than
denies, victims takes shape. More media outlets adopt feminist frameworks for interpreting
domestic violence, more resources are made available to victims, more productive legisla-
tion is passed, and more survivors gain the confidence to seek support. While scholars and
activists must continue to reckon with the risks and limitations of hashtag activism—the
omnipresence of trolls, the overexposure of individuals, the barrier of digital access—the
explosion of hashtag feminism in recent years has evidenced social media’s unprecedented
capacity as political tools. A tweet can be about something as mundane as a user’s morning
cup of coffee, but when combined with the networked power of hashtags, the political fervor
of digital activists, and the discursive influence of collective storytelling, online personal
expressions can grow into online collective action.
Through a case study of #WhyIStayed, I have argued that hashtag feminism is a form of social
drama with all the elements of compelling storytelling. Just as in the case of good theater, hashtag
feminism’s ability to initiate sociopolitical change depends upon the many contingencies that
exist between dramatic actors and their audiences. The social drama of hashtag feminism unfolds
through a three-stage process, beginning with an initial breaching event that escalates to the level
of crisis, during which actors contest social meanings, and ending with a reintegration period,
 Feminist Media Studies   801

during which the movement’s interpretive framework is rejected, adopted, or revised. Not only
can hashtag feminism, through the adoption of feminist frameworks, result in material offline
change, but successful feminist hashtags become enduring frames of reference for interpreting
and responding to current and future social phenomena. In the age of social media, hashtag
protests like #WhyIStayed have overshadowed offline demonstrations and formal movement
organizations in the US, resulting in more intersectional and open feminist movements, whose
participants are not restricted by the potentially exclusionary membership practices of organi-
zations and whose voices are not filtered through institutional gatekeepers.
The narrative approach used here highlights the political nature of discursive activist
networks like the growing sphere of hashtag feminism by illustrating the conditions under
which online interactions can initiate offline sociopolitical change. Moving forward, schol-
arship on hashtag activism might perform discourse analyses of digital texts alongside eth-
nographically informed interviews with their authors, to better understand the motivations,
strategies, and outcomes of hashtag activism at both the individual and collective levels.
Above all, future research must grapple with the political implications of online speech and
the sociopolitical effects it produces, particularly when it exposes grievances and subjec-
tivities that the dominant discourse erases from view.

Note
1. 
Following the Association of Internet Researchers’ (2012) recommendations for ethical decision
making, I chose to replace users’  Twitter handles with pseudonyms and made minor alterations
to users’ word choices, such that they retain the same meaning but cannot be traced back to
the author through a Google search. While the tweets captured in my sample were publicly
available, AoIR encourages researchers to consider privacy contextually; #WhyIStayed users may
have consented to their tweets being publicly available on Twitter, but they have not consented
to publicizing their tweets and identities within other contexts, such as a research journal.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Guobin Yang for his generosity of time and spirit in helping me develop this
project as well as Anne Pomerantz, Victor Pickard, Sandra González-Bailón and the two anonymous
reviewers for their feedback on early drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Rosemary Clark is a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for
Communication. Her research traces how feminists in the United States have used traditional and
digital media as sites of resistance across the movement’s history. She has an MA in communication
from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in media and communication studies from Ursinus
College. E-mail: rclark@asc.upenn.edu.

ORCID
Rosemary Clark   http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5339-2800
802    R. Clark

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