Global digital media and the challenges of care: Feminism, ecology, and public health

When the pandemic hit Western Europe and North America in the first half of 2020, it instantly generated multiple debates among scholars, including the ones that focused their research on digital communications and representations on the one hand and transfeminisms and the politics of care on the other. In the last 4 years, a plethora of volumes, interviews, essays, special issues, and manifestos have been published, addressing the complex interrelations between gender relations during the pandemic and its aftermath from philosophical, social, and cultural perspectives. This special issue on Global Digital Media and the Challenges of Care: Feminism, Ecology, and Public Health arose from the need to explore the specific intersection among gender and technological asymmetries during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we were interested in addressing the digital narratives of this experience from transfeminist and queer perspectives, considering the constant intertwining of public and private produced by social distancing and the problematic aspects generated by its spectacularization and hegemonic discourses. The call focused on gender and technology relations in these specific circumstances: most data show the difficult access for women or minoritised people to digital technologies and, therefore, their potentially undetected exposure to violence and discrimination (UN Women, 2021). At the same time, articulating gender and technologies also means addressing the multiple digital practices by transfeminist activists on a national and global level, including the artistic expressions that sometimes circulated freely through the web. Moreover, our call produced papers addressing the complex representation of the consequences of the pandemic and the profound changes and challenges in the everyday lives of women, LGBTQIA+ people, and minoritised subjects worldwide.