The evolution of digital media platforms has significantly transformed the way feminist discourse, advocacy, and storytelling are communicated across audiences. The rise of social media platforms has created new spaces for sharing feminist narratives, raising awareness and creating connections between various feminist organisations and digital communities. Storytelling is a powerful method for communicating with audiences. Stories that have an emotional connection (emotion and vulnerability) engage audiences in much greater numbers than any other kind of content.
One of the most important elements of communicating digitally, as well as in the creation of a brand identity, is authenticity. Existing scholarship suggests that authenticity in digital spaces is often constructed through personal storytelling, emotional expression, and perceived transparency, which together foster stronger relational connections between content creators and audiences (Audrezet, De Kerviler, & Moulard, 2020).
Within feminist digital platforms, these dynamics play an important role as they often use personal experiences in order to frame larger societal issues and create opportunities for collective dialogue. Content that evokes emotional resonance is more likely to generate interaction through likes, comments, and shares, thereby increasing its reach within digital networks (Davenport & Beck, 2001; Berger & Milkman, 2012).
Consequently, vulnerability-based storytelling may serve both as a means of self-expression and as a strategically communicative means of affecting the patterns of engagement among audiences. Many researchers have investigated communication between influencers, but most available research focuses on commercial influencers and brands as opposed to feminist digital platforms.
Feminist media platforms typically curate multiple types of narratives that include both personal and emotional stories, in addition to advocacy and informational pieces. Limited prior research has compared how storytelling based on the concept of vulnerability performs in relation to informational content within the overall feminist digital communication strategies used by feminists.
This article seeks to address this gap by examining the role of vulnerability-based storytelling in feminist digital platform posts and analysing how audiences engage with such content. Specifically, the study aims to identify patterns in storytelling strategies and compare levels of audience engagement between vulnerability-based narratives and informational feminist content.
Theories on Feminist Based Storytelling
1) Digital Self-Presentation & Authenticity
Authenticity is critical to understanding communication and participation within digital media environments. Audience members frequently view personal narratives and emotionally expressive visuals as more authentic and relatable, creating stronger connections with the audience and building trust. Authenticity in digital communication can be seen as being more of a performance constructed through the norms of the platforms used to communicate and the expectations of the audience.
Empirical studies on influencer marketing have shown the effectiveness of incorporating personal stories and vulnerability when trying to look credible and build through parasocial relationships with audiences (Audrezet, De Kerviler, & Moulard, 2020). This type of interaction can lead to increased levels of audience interaction and loyalty, therefore making authenticity an essential component of any digital communication strategy.
2) Engagement in an Attention Economy (H3)
Digital platforms exist within a framework referred to by academics as an attention economy, with audience attention to resources being considered rare and engagement levels of content creating visibility on the platform. Types of content that create an emotional response are shared much more than content that does not evoke an emotional response, and therefore get greater visibility in social networks. Research on the emotional impact of online content shows that narratives that create an emotional charge generate more engagement than narratives that are simply informationally driven (Berger & Milkman, 2012).
3) Vulnerability-Based Storytelling
The use of stories told with emotion has a significant impact on how digital content is shared and how audiences engage with online communication. In this regard, storytelling has been used for some time as an effective means of creating emotional ties between the storyteller and their audience. Many stories told through the lens of vulnerability contain personal accounts or reflections and personal experiences that enable audiences to relate to larger societal issues through a personalised lens.
Many studies have explored or reported on the relationship between influencers' and brands' authenticity and the use of vulnerability in their communications; however, fewer studies have examined the role of vulnerability in digital advocacy, and feminist platforms that offer both storytelling combined with activism and educational/ informational content, creating unique communicative dynamics that are currently under-researched.
Theoretical Framework
The theoretical foundations for this study are multidisciplinary; conceptually, we have examined the notions of digital authenticity, the attention economy, affective publics and self-presentation theory. Collectively, these models help to explain how vulnerabilities and storytelling about those vulnerabilities are constructed and how an audience can be engaged on feminist digital platforms.
Digital Authenticity and Self-Presentation
Understanding how people communicate/ express themselves digitally relies heavily on our understanding of what constitutes authenticity. In terms of social media, we do not see authenticity as an intrinsic quality but rather as an act of constructing an identity through the expectations of others and the norms of social media platforms (Marwick, 2015). People/ organisations strategically curate content to present themselves as "authentic"/"relatable" or "transparent" to build trust and emotional connections with other users.
Specifically, he noted that people generally attempt to influence how they are perceived by performing a particular identity during their interactions with others within various settings. The performance aspect of identity is magnified within digital spaces, as content creators are intentionally creating a narrative that meets users' expectations for sincerity and openness (i.e. authentic). Therefore, vulnerability storytelling can be viewed as a method of communicating authenticity while at the same time creating a more engaged audience.
Digital Platforms Are Focused on Attention
The framework of the attention economy demonstrates that digital platforms work upon the premise that people have limited amounts of attention available and thus attention is a valuable resource (Davenport & Beck, 2001). Another major aspect of the attention economy framework is the way that algorithmic amplification of content occurs for attention-seeking content. If a piece of content captures the attention of an audience and retains their attention through some type of notation (e.g. Likes, Comments), it is considered to have ample attention and will typically have an increased ranking among other types of content through amplification.
Berger and Milkman (2012) discuss how emotionally arousing content has a higher likelihood of producing engagement in the form of sharing and, therefore, will typically receive the most amplification and distribution when determining the growth potential of reports or posts. In digital feminist platforms, for example, using vulnerability-based storytelling elicits strong emotions from audiences, which results in large amounts of story sharing and increases the reach and visibility of those stories. As such, the performance of emotionally based stories consistently outperforms informational content in terms of engagement metrics.
Affective publics describe the way that people produce emotional responses within shared networked communities. In digital feminist contexts, vulnerability-based storytelling produces emotional responses from users which help create affective publics through the development of empathy, common experiences, and a sense of group identity.
Through this understanding of affective publics, engagement metrics can be interpreted as either indicators of engagement or indicators of social connection based on emotional alignment with the content of the digital feminist platform.
Being responsive online - through likes, comments and shares - is how we express our support for someone (solidarity), show that we see value in them (validation), and take part in the discussions that impact us all (participation). These concepts are especially useful when trying to explain why stories based on real lived experiences (for example, someone's trauma in their past or their ongoing struggles with their identity) will more often get a greater response from their audience.
Vulnerability as a Communication Strategy
Even though vulnerability is most typically related to emotionally expressing your feelings, the overall concept of vulnerability will be discussed as a strategic communication tool within digital media environments; thus far we see this in influencer culture and branded authenticity where vulnerability can be used to help create relatability and credibility by using the power of the narrative as a deliberate choice.
When applied to feminist digital platforms, there are two ways that vulnerability-based storytelling can be used. On one side, this type of storytelling creates a place for people to share their personal experiences while working towards advocating for social issues; on the other side, storytelling according to the logic of digital platforms (i.e., creating content that will generate an emotional connection) usually leads to more views and comments. This further demonstrates the interplay between authenticity and strategy regarding communication through digital platforms.
The Integration of Theories
Collectively, these theories represent a strong base from which to study how vulnerability is created and perceived in feminist digital storytelling. Authenticity and self-presentation inform how vulnerability is created and perceived; the attention economy informs how that content is distributed; and affective publics inform how audiences emotionally connect to and engage with narrative vulnerability.
This study looks at vulnerability through these frameworks and examines how it is used both as a personal expression and as a method of being systematically constructed and strategically employed through digital communication. Through using this framework, we will develop a deeper understanding of how people engage with a story through the different forms of storytelling practices and how feminist digital platforms navigate the intersection between authenticity, advocacy, and visibility.
Contradictions found
The existing literature on authenticity, emotional storytelling, and engagement in digital communication has significant research gaps and limitations remaining in the field. The limited amount of published research on multiple-voice curated content on feminist digital platforms is one major shortcoming.
Almost all published studies involve analysis of one endorsed influencer and/or commercially branded products; there has been little or no direct comparison between the emotional engagement of audiences in the categories of such vulnerability-based stories and other types of informational feminist content. Furthermore, there is a lack of empirical research conducted on feminist digital platforms beyond North America and Western Europe.
As a result, many of the digital feminist spaces operating in various countries have never been included in an academic study of any kind, and thus the information regarding their content, genre, and style, and audience behaviours is severely lacking. The proposed study aims to address this research gap by investigating how emotional storytelling through vulnerability is manifested on feminist digital platforms as well as how audiences engage with this content compared to other types of feminist content.
The way forward
This article sought to address this gap by examining the role of vulnerability-based storytelling in feminist digital platform posts and analysing how audiences engage with such content. During my research I observed the strategic benefits of vulnerability based storytelling not only adds equity value to an organisation's brand but also brings together marketing strategies with a broader impact on society, creating a more complete and responsible approach to digital engagement overall.
.-Hridya Sharma