Gender identity, everyday politics, and social media: Indonesian female millennials’ social media activism
Article

This study aims to investigate how the female millennial generation engages in the expression of everyday politics on social media. Millennials are often perceived as disinterested in political matters; however, it is argued that they possess unique characteristics that shape the way they articulate their political preferences. By advancing previous research on gender, social media, and political resistance, this study fills a gap in the existing literature, as previous studies primarily focus on women’s involvement in political resistance on social media without specifically examining millennials, particularly females, and their utilization of social media for expressing their political preferences.
To conduct this investigation, a multimodal discourse analysis method was employed, analyzing posts on Twitter and Instagram that articulate political expressions by female millennial protesters against unjust government policies. The findings reveal that female millennials exhibit a distinctive attitude when expressing their political preferences. There exists an interplay between gender identity and politics, manifested through everyday life political narratives. For instance, female millennials employ the use of makeup as an analogy to symbolize their political standpoint. Additionally, they informally frame political issues. Social media platforms offer support by enabling female millennials to share images and videos that amplify the narrative of everyday life politics.