-- Download How Feminist is Politics, Re-Spun? as PDF --

Politics, Re-Spun didn’t make it into the Spring 2012 landscape of Canadian feminist blogs. But that’s understandable, considering the scope of the research project: it was bound to miss a bunch. Granted we deal with lots of different topics that do and don’t intersect with feminist issues, as well as explicitly feminist issues.

Our writers also self-identify as feminist, which is great [and pretty much a requirement, I think]. But I think we’re easily a feminist blog. But are we feminist enough?  I don’t think so.

I think there is a lot of room for more explicitly feminist content, including from new/guest writers/editorialist/commentators.

But in reviewing the dozens of blogs listed in the landscape, I noticed a few things. I saw some amazing sites in there, ones I had never heard of or encountered in social media. So the blog list is extremely useful.

But I also noticed what Jarrah at Gender Focus noted:

• Blogs authored by multiple contributors are significantly more likely to remain active than blogs managed by one person (42% vs. 18%)
• Bloggers that explicitly identify as feminist, and who author a blog alone, tend to foster a higher level of interaction amongst readers

– from Mapping the Canadian Feminist

It looks like, at least on the surface, that there is a bit of a conundrum. Blogs with one author tend to have deeper interaction with readers, but those with multiple authors generally have a better chance of remaining active.

What’s common about these statistical observations is community. Social media is supposed to be about enriching community. That’s the locus of this communications paradigm.

And one way to enhance the depth of community is to be more mindful of the elements of that community. This is why I’m very happy that WAM! Vancouver and Candace Coulson embarked on this study.

Now the trick is to figure out how to make this an annual study so feminist discourse becomes more entrenched in the Canadian landscape.

Considering the assaults on women whipping around in Mairka lately, and likely in the future, Canada needs to step up its feminist narrative.

Download the report | Download the catalogue of Canadian blogs of feminist interest 

WAM! Vancouver invites bloggers, feminist advocates and members of the media to excerpt and to share information from the report, ensuring attribution to Coulson and WAM! Vancouver. Feel free also to print, make copies of and distribute the report as long as the content remains intact and unedited.

– from Exploring the Canadian Feminist Blogophere

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Stephen Elliott-Buckley

Post-partisan eco-socialist. at Politics, Re-Spun

Stephen Elliott-Buckley is a husband, father, professor, speaker, consultant, former suburban Vancouver high school English and Social Studies teacher who changed careers because the BC Liberal Party has been working hard to ruin public education. He has various English and Political Science degrees and has been writing political, social and economic editorials since November 2002. Stephen is in Twitter, Miro and iTunes, and the email thing, and at his website, dgiVista.org.

Latest posts by Stephen Elliott-Buckley (see all)

• Goodbye, Politics, Re-Spun! Hello, WePivot.net! - October 21, 2016
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