# 8M women’s strikes in Spain: following the unprecedented social mobilization through twitter

#8M WOMEN’S STRIKES IN SPAIN: FOLLOWING THE UNPRECEDENTED SOCIAL MOBILIZATION THROUGH TWITTER Nahia Idoiaga Mondragon(1), Naiara Berasategi Sancho(2), & Maitane Belasko Txertudi(2) (1) Department of Evolutionary and Educational Psychology, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Spain (2) Department Didactics and School Organisation, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Spain. Nahia Idoiaga Mondragon: [email protected]; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-03458570 Naiara Berasategi Sancho: [email protected]; https://orcid.org/0000-00031775-3431 Maitane Belasko Txertudi: [email protected]; https://orcid.org/0000-00029711-2169 The first general women’s strikes to demand gender equality in Spain took place on March 8, 2018 and 2019. Both calls were an amazing success, becoming world references for feminism. This research investigates how the strikes were dealt with through Twitter by a Collective Symbolic Coping (CSC) process. Discourses on Twitter were analyzed on both years, 4,384 tweets were selected and their content was analyzed by lexical analysis. The results from 2018 indicated the CSC phases of 1)awareness; 2)divergence, where feminist demands and the role of men in the strike were debated; and 3)convergence, where the success of the strike was highlighted. However, in 2019 the feminists on Twitter were forced to cope with a great deal of trolling against them and the strike. This trolling was maintained in the awareness and divergence phases, making it Idoiaga Mondragon, N., Berasategi Sancho, N., Beloki Arizti, N., & Belasko Txertudi, M. (2021). #8M women’s strikes in Spain: following the unprecedented social mobilization through twitter. Journal of Gender Studies, 31(5), 639–653. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Gender Studies on 15 Mar 2021, available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2021.1881461. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. difficult to reach a convergent discourse regarding the success of the strike. Moreover, the results also demonstrated that there was no reference hashtag in the strikes. It is concluded that discourse on social networks has become a key factor in feminist social mobilizations and that this feminist digital activism will be critical in the continued dissemination of the claims for gender equality in Spain. Keywords: collective symbolic coping; digital activism; feminism; social mobilization; social psychology; trolling; Twitter. Introduction In Spain, on March 8, 2018, the feminist movement called, for the first time, a women´s strike. Under the slogan 'If we stop, the world stops' it was not a typical day of strike action since not only were the women asked to not go to work, but also to refrain from carrying out other activities such as care work, attending classes, or buying/consuming anything. In fact, they were asked to not carry out any of their daily tasks, either paid or unpaid. Thus, the strike was not only focused on the professional or work sphere but also on family and social matters, and as anchored in a growing consciousness of the state of inequality in which women live (García, Alabao, & Pérez, 2018). The demands of the strike took shape in terms of workloads, precarious jobs (salary gap, glass ceiling), responsibility for care, family conciliation and in the sexualization and objectification of women’s bodies, which is a cause of violence against women (García, Alabao, & Pérez, 2018). It is true that, depending on the main unions in each region, in some places, women stopped for a few hours whilst in others, they engaged in a full day of strike action. Be that as it may, the response was colossal, with the participation of more than 6 million women (La Vanguardia, 2018). Demonstrations of around one million people were carried out in Madrid; 600,000 in Barcelona and more than 130,000 in Bilbao (Grodira, Borrás, Cela, & Albin 2018). And, perhaps, even more importantly, women took over the entire public sphere (Campillo, 2018). Both the media (national and international) and the public, were surprised by this success, which was unexpected and unforeseen, since unlike the feminist movement in the USA and other Anglo-Saxon countries, the Spanish feminist movement is barely institutionalized and lacks a significant structure, funding, and full-time representatives (Campillo, 2018). The strike became a trending issue and all political parties had to take a position on the feminist strike, which contributed to making it an event of national importance. The Conservatives, who ruled the country in 2018, were the only ones to oppose the strike at first but even they adjusted their position by appearing with the purple ribbon on March 8 (García, Alabao, & Pérez, 2018). In 2019, the feminist movement again called an employment, consumption, and care works strike. This time, the call was mostly for a 24-hour general strike. The follow-up to the strike was even more extensive than the previous year, making Spain a world reference point for the 8M protests. The movements of that year were characterized by a push among the young people, particularly students, who made the demonstrations visible (Araüna, Tortajada, & Figueras-Maz, 2019). These movements were also characterized by the support of progressive parties that were governing in Spain in 2019 (for example of the 17 ministers, the 11 women ministers went on strike, which set an historical record) and the opposition of conservative political parties, with a new ultra-right party launching particularly harsh attacks against the strike and the feminist movement (Gomez, 2019). Literature Review In this paper, public knowledge regarding the 8th March Feminist Strikes in Spain will be analyzed according to the theory of Collective Symbolic Coping (CSC) (Wagner, Kronberger, & Seifert, 2002). This theory explains how the group gives meaning to novel situations that threaten the established social order, as in the case of these strikes. CSC emphasizes that the social communication about a new issue — such as those that emerge in social networks like Twitter — allows people to face the challenge that this novelty poses (Author, et al. 2019; Orr, Sagi, & Bar-On, 2000; Wagner, 1998). In fact, social network communication offers us a naturalistic setting, since on these platforms opinions are openly and spontaneously discussed in real time (Stubbs-Richardson, Rader, & Cosby, 2018). Moreover, networks such as Twitter show societal patterns (Baer, 2016) and also allow individuals to influence others in a readily available public setting (Westerman, Spence, & Van Der Heide, 2014). Further, through this mainstream medium news can be reframed for public consumption (Murthy, 2010; Westerman, Spence, & Van Der Heide, 2014). This CSC process, however, must comply with certain phases if it is to reframe social representations (Wagner, Kronberger, & Seifert, 2002). These phases are; (1) Awareness, that is, the event must be considered important for society; (2) Divergence, where different interpretations of the event emerge, creating ambiguity and confusion; (3) Convergence, where the group reaches a pact to build a new interpretation that is accepted by all; and (4) Normalization, where the explanation of the new event is integrated into common knowledge and thus becomes familiar. Moreover, both academics and the press have pointed out that part of the success of these 8M Feminist Strikes lies in their historical and communicative contextualization. In other words, in the broad cycle of social mobilization at a national and transnational level that has occurred in recent years and in the use of digital space as a catalyst for collective actions (Campillo, 2018; Cardoso, Boudreau, & Carvalho, 2013; Sosa, Galarza, & Castro-Martinez, 2019; Kyriakidou & Olivas-Osuna, 2017; Sanchez, 2018). At a national level, that is, in Spain, the cycle of protests began in 2011 with the 15M movement, which managed to channel the social unrest created by the worsening economic crisis and austerity policies. These protests were, in a sense, the starting point for making feminist strikes possible (Campillo, 2018; Cebrerio, 2018; Galdón, 2018; Sosa, Galarza, & Castro-Martinez, 2019). This is because firstly, they contributed towards the organization of feminist activists, claiming from the 15M that "the revolution would be feminist or it wouldn't be" (Galdón, 2018; Garcia-Grenzner, 2014), and secondly, because this protest also made it possible to manage social heterogeneity under an open-source logic driven by young "digital natives" that are particularly visible and active through social networks (Galdón, 2018). In addition, another milestone for feminist mobilization at the national level was the gang rape known as "La Manada" that occurred in 2016 (Cebrerio, 2018). With great media repercussions, this case lead to a wave of feminist support and protests, not only in the streets but also (and particularly) on social networks such as Twitter. These protests generated, on the one hand, a social network for mobilization and, on the other, a social conscience about violence against women and the rape culture, which were key factors that triggered the call for the feminist strikes (Campillo, 2018; García, Alabao, & Pérez 2018; Author, et al. 2019). Indeed, at the transnational level, social networks have been crucial to the participative and collective actions that reclaim social and political change, such as, for instance, in the uprisings of Occupy Wall Street (in 2011), the Umbrella Movement (in 2014) or the Yellow vests movement (in 2018) (Bennett, Segerberg, & Walker, 2014; Tye, Leong, Tan, Barney Tan, & Hooi, 2018; Tremayne, 2014). Thus, activist groups — most of these using social media — have played a crucial role as key actors or influencers that have served to deepen public discourse and calls for collective action (Xiong, Cho, & Boatwright, 2019; Locke, Lawthom, & Lyons, 2018). In the same vein, feminist demands, movements, and protests have also been transformed, influenced, and shaped by digital technology and the rise of online communication platforms (Bertrand, 2018; Dikwal-Bot, 2019; Xiong, Cho, & Boatwright, 2019). Through social networks, feminist movements and activists can accelerate the exchange of ideas, help participants to establish priorities, and can identify the issues and concerns that are of the most prominence in contemporary feminism (Crossley, 2015). Moreover, digital platforms have a wider reach, facilitating more open engagement with and promotion of feminism and feminist ideas (Crossley, 2015). Within feminist digital activism, the feminist hashtags are the most commonly used method to build collective consciousness and to articulate a social protest that creates communities of feminist conversations within the digital arena (Barker-Plummer & Barker-Plummer, 2017; Berridge & Portwood-Stacer, 2015; Xiong, Cho, & Boatwright, 2019). Hashtag campaigns are accessible to a larger audience, immediate and easy to track, and encourage a collective identity, sense of support, and empathy (Turley & Fisher, 2018; Kavada, 2015). Consequently, successful feminist hashtag campaigns have been carried out and studied all over the world, such as, for example, #YesAllWomen (Barker-Plummer & Barker-Plummer, 2017; Rodino-Colocino, 2014; Thrift, 2014) or #MeToo (Karlsson, 2019; Mendes, Ringrose, & Keller, 2018; RodinoColocino, 2018; Tambe, 2018) among others. However, it is worth noting that feminist digital activism also suffers from intense gender trolling and online harassment (Sadowski, 2016; Phillips, 2015). These trolls often spread misogynist attacks against successful feminist campaigns and even against particular feminists (Jane, 2016; Mendes, Ringrose, & Keller,2018; Powell & Henry, 2017). Their goal is to disrupt the feminist community and to make visible the presence of anti-feminism and sexism on social media, just as they attempt to do in social life (Drüeke & Zobl, 2016). The retrospectives that have been carried out on the digital feminist practice in Spain place its conception at the end of the 1990s and beginning of 2000 with the creation of portals such as E-Leusis.net or Mujeres en Red (Nuñez, 2008). However, in those beginnings there was a debate on how to approach feminist activism online, or by situating the problems of feminism in a new visible space such as the Internet or by moving the utopian spaces devised by cyber feminism closer to the social reality of women, betting on their self-empowerment. Nevertheless, that first Spanish cyberpraxis revealed a persistent desire to inform the virtual world of female agency and subjectivity (Fernandez, Corredor, & Santín, 2011). Two decades later, feminist digital activism in Spain is a complex issue. It must be assumed that although in Spain access to technology seems to be equal, women represent 51% of Facebook users, 68% on Instagram and are a slight minority on Twitter, men still have a greater role and influence (Merchán, 2014). In fact, it has been found that women represent only 17% of influential blogs, and the only topics with a majority of women are Gender, Babies, Beauty, Labor, Fashion and Television (Merchán, 2014). In the rest, three out of four topics, men predominate. Likewise, 92% of the people considered influential on the Internet by the establishment are men (Merchán, 2014). The most important reasons that currently limit the projection of women in the digital sphere of Spain may be the masculinization of the most popular areas, the informal power networks, the lack of empowerment that limits the emergence of an "authorized voice" and that women are more judged, insulted, threatened, and trolled when they stand out in public life (Pikara, 2020). In fact, sexist harassment on the Internet is very present among Spanish women digital communicators, although the management can vary from ignoring it to confronting to it, passing through a lot of intermediate ways (Burgos & Martinez, 2013; Remon & Medina-Bravo, 2019). As a consequence, various feminist tweeters of reference in Spain have ended up abandoning Twitter because of the intense trolling (Pikara, 2020). In addition, another form of systematic attack that many of these communicators experience in Spain is censorship (García, 2020; Pikara, 2020). However, facing all these obstacles, the number of feminist activists, journalists, artists, singers, thinkers, etc. active on the Internet is increasing in Spain and some of their principal battlefields are fatness, sexuality, violence, menstruation, empowerment or humor (Burgos & Martinez, 2013; Nuñez-Puente, Fernández, & Rubira 2014; NuñezPuente, Vazquez, & Fernandez, 2016; Momoitio, 2013; Pineiro-Otero & MartinezRolan,2016; Ramirez, 2020; Zurbano, Cabreja, & Sánchez-Ramos, 2020). In fact, in Spanish feminist cyber-activism four predominant uses are identified: dissemination of calls, organization of actions, agenda building and self-expression (Sánchez-Duarte & Fernández-Romero, 2017; Sosa, Galarza, & Castro-Martinez, 2019). In line of those uses the essence of social cyber-feminism in Spain is advocacy and mobilization, seeking that link between the networks and the streets. The first reference point for feminist cyber-activism in Spain was the World March of Women (Boix, 2006). Likewise, other important axis in which the mobilizations have been organized, replicated and spread through the internet are the struggle for the decriminalization of abortion (Fernandez & Marcos, 2015; Perez, 2014), the protests for the case of "La Manada" mentioned above (Campillo, 2018; García, Alabao, & Pérez 2018; Author, et al. 2019) and finally the 8th March 8 protests where online and offline action were mobilized in an unprecedented way (Bernal-Triviño & Sanz-Martos, 2020; Campillo, 2018; Fernandez, 2019; Galarza, Castro-Martinez, & Sosa 2019; Sosa, Galarza, & Castro-Martinez, 2019). Thus, the main objective of this study is to analyze the discourse on Twitter regarding the 8th March 2018 and 2019 strikes in Spain in order to understand how these social protests have been dealt with through social media via a collective symbolic coping process. We therefore argue that Twitter could reflect social representations of current issues, particularly with regard to how society reacts to high impact events that threaten the established social order, as in the case of the Spanish feminist strikes. What is more, Twitter can also capture modes of participation equivalent to those analyzed in classic political literature (Theocharis, Lowe, van Deth, & García, 2013). In so doing we will attempt to identify the main elements that could explain how people have symbolically constructed and engaged with the strike each year and investigate the possible differences between the two years. In fact, it is expected that the CSC process on the strike of 2018 will influence the strike of 2019, both in the call to action and the debate of the main claims, and also in the increase of a gender trolling movement against the strike. In addition, the use of hashtags during the coverage of these strikes will also be analyzed in order to identify what patterns they follow. Design support to the #feminazi strike! #Iamnotgoing8m #stopfeminazis! (X2= 300.82)”. The Queen's support for the strike did not please the tweeters either “Queen Leticia will support the 8-M feminist strike. That day she will not go to the hairdresser's nor will she touch her nose. It is to be thanked. #SpainNotYourPasserel (X2= 287.56)”. On the day of the strike two types of tweets also emerged: those who support the strike and those who want to troll it. In this case, the tweets supporting the strike carry a greater weight, as seen in “Class 2: The Feminist Strike” (31.09%) with tweets such as “Women's time! As women, we join the feminist strike 8m! Let´s go to the feminist strike! #feminisstriket8m, #nothingstopsus8m #sorority (X2= 236.50)”. The counterpoint is set by those who were against the strike “Class4: Against the strike” (4.97%), especially twitter users related to far-right political parties (like Vox): “In #Vox we support women and men 365 days a year so we will not join the feminist strike of March 8 that denigrates women by treating them as weak and defenseless people #Donotspeakonbehalfofme #feminazi (X2= 329.04)”; “Go to work and not be homogenized by this #feminazi totalitarian movement! #Idon'tstop! These feminists have never helped me absolutely in anything! (X2= 286.99)”. Finally, after March 8, there was a debate about whom or what kind of people supported the strike. In other words, since the success of the strike was unquestionable, the focus was more on the type of person who supported it, as observable in “Class 1: Who went to the strike?” 30.71%. Here some of the most important tweets: “The strike has been followed only by snot and some of them are working! spokespersons, politicians, hooded and demagogic! (X2= 316.69)”; “The feminist wave conquered the streets on #8m! People who go on strike don't have to be snot just like the people who are workers aren't necessarily responsible adults so your comments qualify you by themselves! (X2= 298.95)”; “Half the people didn't make it to arrive to their workplaces or were left out by picketing. OK. But it's not ethically or morally acceptable! Strikes should be for serious problems affecting a large number of people not on the whim of four girls promoted by the media! (X2= 254.75)”. Based on the importance of hashtags in Twitter discourse, their use was more deeply analyzed. The results revealed that, in 2018, the significant pre-strike hashtags were the call to strike, #Tothefeministstrike (X2= 40.86), #Thejournalistsstop (X2= 30.45), #Feministstrike8m (X2= 27.74), #8mfeministstrike (X2= 17.56) or to debate the claims of #Feminism (X2= 26.42). Those of March 8 served to to reaffirm participation in the strike by #Istop (X2= 875.67) whilst those after praised what the strike had achieved for the feminist movement #feministrevolution (X2= 34.52) and also shared the images of the mass demonstrations #Demostration8m (X2= 21.85). . However, in 2019 there was a shift in the use of the hashtags. On the one hand, there were significant hashtags before and during the 8th of March to call the strike, such as, #tofeministstrike2019 (X2= 166.43), #Iwillstop8m (X2= 100.87), #Feministstrike8m (X2= 12.38), #Tothefeministstrike (X2= 10.98), #Feminism (X2= 10.28), #Nothingstopsus8m (X2= 10.28). Even that on March 8 more generic hashtags were also used such as #Happywoman'sday (X2= 10.28) or #Internationalwomensday (X2= 10.27). On the other hand, hashtags to convey non-participation in the strike were used with much more force than the previous year, such as #Idon’tstop (X2= 167.95). However, even more aggressive was the use of hashtags to troll the feminist movement, comparing feminists to Nazis with the term #feminazi (X2= 167.95), or #stopfeminazi (X2= 32.25), and claiming that the intention of the feminists is to impose their discourse: #don´tspeakonbehalfofme (X2= 108.9), #Don'tspeakforme (X2= 87.69). Finally, the hashtag #Vox (X2= 57.28), (the ultra-right party that managed to gain entry into the institutions in 2019) is also linked to all the other anti-feminist hashtags. Discussion The objective of this study was to understand the social meaning attached to Spanish women´s strikes and to analyze if there were any changes in the way of coping with this from the first call to the second. Following the discursive patterns of Twitter in the 2018 strike, we have been able to observe three phases of the CSC. To begin with, in the days before the strike there was a phase of awareness in which the strike was called, emphasizing both the different collectives that joined it (e.g., journalists, university professors, students, and factory workers) and the fields (work, consumption, and care) that it affected, highlighting its legitimacy (Bernal-Triviño, & Sanz-Martos, 2020; Campillo, 2019; Sosa, Galarza, & Castro-Martinez, 2019). This awareness phase had different objectives such as the dissemination of calls, organization of actions or agenda building (SánchezDuarte & Fernández-Romero, 2017). It is true, however, that from the time that the strike was called, a phase of divergence can be observed in which several key aspects of the strike are discussed. The role of men in the strike was particularly polemic, since, on the one hand, some men were outraged because the feminist movement "dared" to propose to them what to do that day. The domestic and care duties, and the possibility that men carried these out on that day, were particularly controversial in this debate (García, Alabao, & Pérez, 2018; Ruiz Franco, 2018). On the other hand, other men, framed in their progressive convictions, claimed their right to strike without understanding that the point of the women's strike was to make visible the fact that if women stopped, the system would collapse (Campillo, 2019; García, Alabao, & Pérez, 2018). Finally, from March 8th onwards, a phase of convergence emerged where the resounding success of the strike was agreed. The small number of Tweets on March 8th might seem a little puzzling, but this may be because many twitter users also extended the strike to include the use of the networks on that day, as stated in the tweet, “I stop at 8M: no work, no care, no consumption. I have also decided to strike on social networks and stop filling them with content. I will take my camera and mobile to the demonstration and the 9M will share it. That day we have to be in the street”. Even so, one of the most prominent and visible achievements of the strike was that it managed to stop the main television programs, and it was particularly viral on Twitter that all morning shows had to be cancelled (Bernal-Triviño, & Sanz-Martos, 2020; Sosa, Galarza, & Castro-Martinez, 2019). It is true that other studies about the CSC process have pointed out that reaching the convergence phase entails a longer period of time (Author, et al. 2019; Wagner, Kronberger, & Seifert, 2002). However, in this case, it is legitimate to reach this phase earlier, since we are talking about a specific event that lasted for one day (at that time it was not known that it was going to be repeated the following year). In 2019 the treatment of the strike changed radically on Twitter. Not on the part of the feminist movement, who followed a similar scheme to disseminate the calls, organize the actions and to create awareness by becoming part of the political and media agenda. But in the trolling that emerged during all phases of the strike. The aggressive and anti-strike discourse tried to monopolize the virtual space before, during and after the strike and tried to attack both the feminist movement and politicians, public people, media or anonymous people who defend it. This new way of coping with the strike and the social movement could have two underlying causes. The first could be the success of the feminist strike of the previous year, agreed in the 2018 CSC process, and the second could be the new Spanish sociopolitical context, where progressive parties had reached the government, expelling the conservatives. Therefore, the trolling may have been intended to harm both the feminist movement and the progressive government that supported it. Furthermore, following the outline of the CSC, this movement tried to create a phase of very aggressive divergence to try to prevent a convergence on the success of the strike as in the previous year. In fact, since before the strike, the fact that the government's official webpages were tinted purple triggered a large number of aggressive tweets. They even managed to persuade the Guardia Civil account to recede and remove the purple background. However, the greatest instances of aggressiveness appeared on the very day of the strike where there were tweets comparing the women's movement to the Nazis and accusing them of wanting to impose totalitarian thinking on all women (de Santos, 2019). These tweets, framed within the “Men’s Rights Activism” (Ging, 2017), which is also a form of ‘mediated misogyny’ (Vickery & Everbach, 2018), were closely linked to the ideas of the conservative parties, particularly those of the ultra-right and even their hashtag (#vox). In fact, this party follows a very concrete strategy (inspired by the social network campaigns of Trump and Bolsonaro) to visualize and viralize its presence on the networks through an extreme use of trolling (Rubio 2019; Viejo and Alonso 2018). Finally, after March 8, and without being able to question the great success of the strike, they tried to disqualify the women who took part in it by trolling against feminists. Through this technique, the trolls attempted to avoid again the convergence success speech that emerged the previous year. Thus, it is observable that aside from trolling as a strictly leisurely endeavor (Lopez, Muldoon, & McKeown, 2018), in 2019 a very active campaign of trolling and counter-information against the strike was articulated on Twitter, being this the most notable difference between the discourse of the two calls. The use of hashtags also highlights the difference between the two years, as in 2019 emerged typical troll hashtags that intended to disrupt interactions, aggravate discursive partners and lure the min to fruitless argumentation (Coles & West, 2016), as already noted in the results. In addition, another interesting aspect in the analysis of the hashtags is that there was no dominant hashtag for the call or coverture of the strikes in any of the years. This could have hindered the ability to raise awareness of the issue, encourage debate, affiliate individuals with a community, and integrate resources from the Internet via social media (Bonilla & Rosa, 2015; Yang, 2016; Xiong, Cho, & Boatwright, 2019). In other words, a referent hashtag could have benefited the indexing of the strike on social media (Bonilla & Rosa, 2015), becoming an expression of the public discourse beyond Twitter and propelling connective actions (Barker-Plummer & Barker-Plummer, 2017; Wang, Liu, & Gao, 2016). In addition, to "band together" through a reference hashtag could also promote shielding, that is to say, an active resistance and defense of feminist digital activism to counterbalance anti-feminist and misogynistic trolling rhetoric on Twitter (Lopez, Muldoon, & McKeown, 2018). Finally, we should also reflect on what the 8th March strikes have brought to digital activism in Spain. Firstly, the predominant uses that cyber-feminism has historically had in Spain (Sanchez-Duarte & Fernandez-Rimero, 2017) have been clearly reflected in our results. To begin with, it is clear that one of the main objectives of the analyzed discourses was the dissemination of the 8th March strikes. Although previous studies have suggested that the dissemination of calls follows a pattern recognized with few elements of innovation (Sanchez-Duarte & Fernandez-Romero, 2017), in this case both our results and other adjacent research (Fernandez, 2019) point that there have been interesting levels of autonomy, self-organization and horizontality. In fact, it seems that the contemporary feminist cyber-activism in Spain allow to spread feminist thought in a diverse way and to reach beyond those already convinced (PineiroOtero & Martinez-Rolan, 2016; Sánchez-Duarte & Fernández-Romero, 2017; Zurbano, Cabreja & Sánchez-Ramos, 2020). Likewise, the organization of the actions has also been transformed, as a consequence of the commitment of the feminist network to articulate platforms that aimed to synthesize the synergies of the online and offline (Nuñez, Fernandez & Rubira, 2014) that were so evident during the 8th March strikes. We must assume that the forms of activism have changed, "the banners are drawn in Photoshop, the assemblies are made by Skype and the manifestos are written by many hands through Google Docs" (Pikara, 2020, p.135). In other words, new technologies promote the creation of more horizontal and participatory political spaces, but the resistances that feminism finds in the street are also present in the networks as evidenced in the 2019 strike. Furthermore, the analyzed discourse has also highlighted the influence of networks in building awareness and fighting against exclusions from the political and media agendas. In fact, the visibility of the influence of the strikes in the media sphere has been one of the greatest achievements of these strikes as reflected in our results (Bernal-Triviño & Sanz-Martos, 2020; Galarza, Castro-Martinez, & Sosa 2019; Sosa, Galarza, & Castro-Martinez, 2019). Finally, this study has highlighted the self-expressive possibilities of the feminist digital discourse and its potential for transforming individual opinions into effective strategies for action (Sanchez-Duarte & Fernandez-Romero, 2017). In fact, several authors have pointed out that the feminist contents that work best on the Internet are those that are written in the first person and that politicize daily experiences in which anyone can feel identified (Gas, 2019; Keller, Mendes, & Ringrose, 2018). Therefore it seems evident that social networks have become a reference space for the Spanish feminist movement, generating a continuum between conventional and online feminist activism. Indeed, even our results suggest that the Twitter discourse enhances the sense of community, democratizes the dissemination and gives visibility, it should be considered whether this digital space is conceived as a support or as a basis for such actions (Van-Laer & Van-Aelst, 2010). Likewise, in future research it would also be interesting to analyze to what extent the role of social networks is being overvalued, and community work underestimated, when explaining the success of the 8th March feminist strikes in Spain. In essence, the success of the Spanish feminist strikes, both offline and online, is indisputable. Moreover, these strikes are also clear examples of the impact of digital technologies on transforming collective action and social mobilization with an opensource discourse spread by the social networks. 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A hierarchical clustering dendrogram of tweets of the 2018 feminist women´s strike, with the most frequent words and the words with the strongest association X2(1), p < 0,001. Figure 2. A hierarchical clustering dendrogram of tweets of the 2019 feminist women´s strike, with the most frequent words and the words with the strongest association X2(1), p < 0,001. Figure 3. Visual Abstract