Activist public relations in digital public space during the pandemic: ethnographic study of the Portuguese International Feminist Strike 2021

Activists across the globe are employing digital media to cooperate on universal causes through hybrid dynamic processes—local–global, offline–online and personal–social— taking advantage of the potential of an unparalleled growing network environment in which new communication tolls are being used and created by activist groups and public relations practitioners worldwide. From a public relations critical perspective, this article investigates how the Portuguese organization of the “Online Demonstration of the International Feminist Strike 2021,” which took place on March 8 (International Women’s Day), fits the description of activist public relations toward social change, including both protest and dissent activities. The strike was planned by a collective platform of activists concerned with maintaining civic participation and mobilization in a context of social crisis and prophylactic isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through an ethnographic study conducted with UMAR (a Portuguese feminist organization founded in 1976), the article explores how activists function as intercultural intermediaries. Inspired by the initiatives of international activist groups, the campaign to promote the International Feminist Strike—#IfWeStopTheWorldStops—sought to apply creative methods for the active engagement of new publics. These activists were producers of social meanings, interfering in the power relations that are generated in the public space. They used instruments such as the creation of specific online events, the endorsement of public figures, a specific website, a demonstration kit that invited people to carry out various offline activities to be shared later on digital platforms, media relations techniques, language adaptations and other social mobilization efforts.