Conference Program

Digital platforms have become central sites of informal socialisation, shaping contemporary understandings of gender, power, and gender-based violence (Banet-Weiser, 2018). While online communities are often framed as empowering spaces for women, they can also function as environments where sexist stereotypes are reformulated and normalised (Gill, 2007). This study examines the Reddit community Female Dating Strategy (FDS) as a digital site in which stereotypes about women and men are simultaneously challenged and reproduced. The study combines digital ethnography (Sumial and Tikka, 2020) with qualitative content analysis of the FDS forum and its 500-page Handbook. The Handbook was coded using NVivo, allowing for the identification of recurrent discursive patterns, normative categories, and evaluative hierarchies. Particular attention was paid to the construction of femininity and masculinity through classifications such as “High Value Woman” and “Low Value Man”, as well as to representations of gender-based violence, relational risk, and emotional self-regulation. The analysis shows that FDS contests male entitlement and certain forms of gender-based exploitation; however, it also promotes rigid gender binaries, essentialised representations of male behaviour, and prescriptive models of female worth based on beauty, emotional control, and strategic heterosexuality. In doing so, the community contributes to the circulation of polarised and simplified narratives about gender relations, reinforcing stereotypes even within discourses of empowerment. An intersectional lens (Crenshaw, 1991) reveals how these constructions are shaped by classed, racialised, and heteronormative assumptions that marginalise non-conforming identities. At the same time, the study acknowledges its methodological limitations: while digital ethnography and platform-based analysis are crucial for understanding online discourse, they cannot fully capture how these narratives are internalised, negotiated, or resisted offline. Future research should therefore integrate interviews, focus groups, and the triangulation of online and offline data to explore how such representations influence everyday practices and relational expectations (Evans and Lankford, 2024). The study argues that digital communities such as FDS function as powerful informal agents of gender socialisation, influencing how young women and men understand equality, violence, and relational norms. Recognising these ambivalent dynamics is essential for developing critical media education strategies, beginning in schools and extending across media ecosystems, aimed at fostering reflexive engagement with online gender narratives and promoting more inclusive and democratic cultures (Gius, 2023).