Investigating the nature and impact of social media campaigns that focus on the empowerment of Muslim women

This study aims to analyze the nature and impact of social media campaigns that focus on the empowerment of Muslim women. It clarifies key concepts involving women empowerment, Feminism, the status of Arab women, the notion of disempowerment, gender, media, stereotypes, social media campaigns, and activism. This paper tries to make a clear distinction between the terms “Feminism” and “Islamic Feminism” and the movements that have developed over the years. This study also presents reasons for the lack of woman empowerment due to religious, social and political reasons. Moreover, it presents a clear definition between “old” and “new” media, and how these two may affect the perception of the global society. Concerning new media, this paper provides several examples of social media campaigns. After these concepts have been clarified, the paper addresses the research question by tackling it with both qualitative and quantitative methods of research. The qualitative method consists in two interviews made to two well-known activists in the field of women rights in the Arab world. The quantitative method instead, includes surveys from a sample of over three hundred people which was exposed to video-based social media campaigns. In both cases, interesting results were obtained. The nature of social media campaigns related to Muslim women empowerment is the spread of knowledge regarding this theme. Social media campaigns tend in fact to spread knowledge to reach a change both in a social and legislative way. The impact that the proposed social media campaigns have on the studied sample instead, is reflected by the realization of Muslim women condition, resulting in a possible change in perception and change in attitude after video-exposure. Visuals, music and words in the video campaigns seemed to have more importance for viewers than the actual message. Thus, a general consideration towards these elements could be important for the outcome of a social media campaign focused on the theme of Muslim women. This study does not want to generalize results, but simply wants to have a clearer insight on this theme.