Glocalized voices in Assault Police : A model of communing affiliation and affective positioning

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1. Introduction

Sexuality is a power-laden domain shaped by institutions like media, which exert authority over its meaning/interpretation. Sexual-violence against women is especially pervasive in societies with deeply-entrenched cultural norms, social attitudes, gender inequality, and permissive legal systems (Loney-Howes 2019), where many cases go unreported, due to societal stigma (Marzouk &Vanderveen 2022). Building on third-wave feminism’s embrace of technology, the fourth-wave leverages digital platforms for activism, emphasizing consciousness-raising and challenging systemic inequalities (Blevins 2018). This consciousness-raising involves expressing feelings, sharing lived experiences and reinforcing others’ stories as part of feminist identity performance (Gleeson & Turner 2019:54). By fostering discussions online, feminists empower interactants to advocate against sexual-violence and gender-based oppression in personal/public spheres (Loney-Howes et al. 2021). ‘Breaking the silence’ and ‘speaking-out’ are key anti-rape strategies that educate society about the personal and social consequences of sexual-violence (Alcoff 2018). Loney-Howes (2018) argues that to foster social change, speaking-out must challenge the political, legal, and sociocultural barriers that limit public awareness, enabling more survivor voices to be heard on social media. The #MeToo movement, a hallmark of the fourth wave, originated in the global North in 2006 to support survivors, especially women of colour, addressing issues of harassment, assault, and power dynamics across different contexts.

Rooted in the anti-rape movement of second-wave feminism (1970s–1990s), #MeToo emerged in October 2017 as a global survivor-centric movement that combats sexual-violence and supports those affected by harassment and abuse (Brittain 2023, Loney-Howes 2019). Ghazal (2021) argues that #MeToo has empowered millions by sharing narratives of sexual abuse, using empathy and solidarity to advocate for meaningful social, cultural and institutional change. Fileborn and Loney-Howes (2019) define sexual-violence as “an incredibly polarizing subject,” with survivors often facing skepticism and blame (p.1). This lack of support in the face of pervasive ‘rape culture^[1]‘ prompted the rise of #MeToo to fill a much-required lacuna to address sexual-violence (Loney-Howes 2018, Fileborn & Loney-Howes 2019). Founded by activist Tarana Burke and propelled to global prominence by actress Alyssa Milano’s viral tweet², #MeToo connects survivors and fosters solidarity, turning personal trauma into a political movement (Ringrose & Mendes 2018).

As a digital, networked phenomenon, #MeToo facilitates widespread participation and connectivity, challenging societal norms and structures that sustain silence around sexual-violence on national and international scales (Ringrose & Mendes 2018). In its first year, the movement held over 200 high-profile men accountable for allegations of sexual misconduct, shifting the conversation from individual blame to systemic power dynamics (Fileborn & Loney-Howes 2019). This movement emphasizes a call for accountability, challenging power dynamics that enable misconduct and advocating justice for survivors. #MeToo has since driven cultural and legislative change worldwide, bringing critical attention to issues of consent, sexual-violence and accountability (Ringrose & Mendes 2018).

Social media platforms, including Instagram^*, have become important spaces for consciousness-raising (Keller et al. 2018), enabling women to build social and political networks/positions to drive social action and political change. Gleeson and Turner (2019) suggest that hashtags, such as #AnaKaman, #BeenRapedNeverReported, #WhyWomenDon’tReport and #YesAllWomen have become contemporary consciousness-raising practices that are searchable, quantifiable and contagious (Zappavigna & Martin 2018). These hashtags offer recognition, solidarity and a voice to individuals who have experienced sexual-violence, particularly addressing victim-blaming (Ringrose & Mendes 2018).

#MeToo is a complex phenomenon that involves “multiple causes, discourses, articulations and ways of responding” to contemporary sexuality-related issues and interpersonal relations (Cover 2019: 301). Engrained in digital media’s ‘call-out’ culture, it provides a platform for victim-actors to articulate their grievances and explore what constitutes violations of personal spaces and dignity. #MeToo broadens resistance to sexism and patriarchy, engaging individuals previously disengaged from feminism (Mendes et al. 2019: 237). Through sharing personal experiences, #MeToo sheds light on sexism in online/offline spaces, uniting diverse voices, often marginalized, into a community (Keller et al. 2018).

Engaging in political discourse through social media, particularly when sharing personal experiences, carries the risks of taking stances on social issues (Bilá & Ivanova 2020, Zappavigna 2019). While it provides an opportunity to build ambient affiliations with other SVVS, it also exposes them to public scrutiny (Alcoff 2018). #MeToo has been criticized for its association with ‘cancel culture,’ though founder Burke maintains its goal is to address pain, not vilify individuals. Scholars (e.g. Haire et al. 2019 have critiqued #MeToo’s potential for political/personal exploitation. Others (Alcoff 2018, Mendes et al. 2019) highlight concerns about intersectionality, noting that #MeToo’s support often favors white women with social capital.

The global perspective of #MeToo, which focuses on empowering victims/survivors and fostering international collaboration through practice-sharing, has led to concrete actions regarding speaking-out and showing solidarity (Fileborn & Loney-Howes 2019). Technology’s ‘demotic turn’ has democratized public discourse, enabling ordinary people to challenge/reinforce dominant ideologies (Bou-Franch & Blitvich 2014: 229, Bilá & Ivanova 2020, Eslami et al. 2023), highlighting the significance of investigating digital practices. However, much of #MeToo’s disruptive potentials/limits has not been fully examined, particularly regarding who can “speak and be heard, what constitutes sexual-violence, whose experiences are included and perceived as worthy of redress” (Fileborn & Loney-Howes 2019: 5). Additionally, the marginalization of women based on ethnicity, class, sexuality and/or colour is often disregarded in regions such as the global South, particularly in Egypt (Ryan 2019).

Given the lack of research focusing on Arab women’s voices (with exceptions, Keller et al. 2018, Ghazal 2021), this study examines #MeToo’s affective-positioning and digital discourse, focusing on the economy of digital speaking-out, affiliation-building and consciousness-raising as represented in Assault Police (AP). It offers to fill the gap of understanding how linguistic strategies and multimodal resources—such as language choice, affective stance, visual imagery and intertextual references—mediate the complex interplay between global feminist discourse and local cultural values, shaping a unique form of glocalized feminist activism in Egyptian AP. Despite the growth of digital feminist activism scholarship and identity construction in Western contexts (Leontovich 2017, Mendes, Ringrose & Keller 2018, Eslami et al. 2023), there has been little exploration of how affective positioning and communal affiliation are linguistically and multimodally constructed within digital feminist activism in non-Western contexts. There are few studies, if any, that examine Arabs’ semiotic identity and how Arab feminist initiatives like Egypt’s AP navigate the intersection of global and local discourses in the global South.

The current study analyzes how these multimodal resources mediate the relationship between global feminist ideals of MeToo and local socio-cultural values, thus constructing a form of glocalized digital activism (Roudometof 2016). It offers empirical data from the Middle East, given the alarming statistics on sexual-violence against women in Egypt (cf. Thomson Reuters Foundation 2017, UN Women reports). This study employs a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) approach to analyze digital posts from July 2020 to December 2023, investigating how various affiliation strategies establish and negotiate value-and-feeling-centered community bonds. By examining AP posts, this study aims to examine how linguistic and multimodal resources construct and communicate affective positioning and communal affiliation in digital feminist activism, particularly in contexts shaped by both local (Egyptian) and global (glocal) influences. It should contribute to a deeper understanding of social semiosis and shed light on the glocal understanding of #MeToo. Methodologically, it expands the analytic powers of the communing affiliation model.

In doing so, the following research questions are investigated:

1. How does AP affectively-discursively construct and enact the social semiotic identity of the Egyptian female SVVSs in their posts?
   – What affectual tools does AP draw upon to encode and perform the semiotic identity of Egyptian SVVSs?

2. How does AP interactively forge social bonds and ambient networks of communing affiliation in their posts?
   – What affectual tools does AP draw upon to forge a communion of feelings-and-values around sexual-violence in Egypt?

2. Theoretical framework

Discourse, as social meaning-making, involves the semiotic, discursive and affective resources (e.g., Alba-Juez & Larina 2018, Mackenzie & Alba-Juez 2019, Ponton 2016, Zappettini et al. 2021). Wetherell (2012) emphasizes how discourse amplifies affect, making it influential and facilitating its spread. Drawing on a feminist perspective that rejects the binary division between emotional/rational and ideational/material (Wetherell 2012, Ahmed 2014), this study views affect and emotions as intertwined, challenging the gendered binary-logic that frames affect as mobile, impersonal and masculinized, while emotions are seen as contained, feminized, and personal (Ahäll 2018). As Westberg (2021) suggests, affect is relational, shaping shared experiences and actively constructing collective identities and connections through discourse.

This study adopts a feminist social semiotic approach to examine the Egyptian perspective on #MeToo regarding sexual-violence as a means for understanding how people construct and interpret ideological positions and attitudinal stances on social media within a non-Western context. By integrating social semiotics with feminism in this digital context, this study examines how people deploy linguistic strategies and resources to navigate their experiences and negotiate their relationships. Jones (2020: 19) argues that interactants express their social positions through the acts of ‘seeing’ and ‘being seen.’ Drawing on social semiotics (Hodge & Kress 1988) and systemic functional linguistics (SFL) (Halliday 1978), language, among other modes, serves as a (dynamic) social semiotic resource for creating meaning in specific contexts. Halliday and Matthiessen (2014: 19–31) explain that these resources are shaped by their relations and potentials in representing, interacting and organizing communication. Language negotiates feelings, values and knowledge, aligning participants into communities within cultures and  social groups (cf. Martin 2010, Etaywe & Zappavigna 2023). Comprehending the shared, contested, or negotiated nature of these elements in interactions is crucial for interpreting the formation and negotiation of social alignments (Etaywe & Zappavigna 2023), which in turn shapes individuals (semiotic) identities (Martin 2010). Evaluations reflect participants’ opinions and values, aiding in organizing discourse and maintaining relationships (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014, Martin 2017).

Grounded in SFL, this study utilizes Zappavigna’s ‘communing affiliation’ and coupling as its analytical framework. According to Knight (2010), affiliation is defined as the discursive negotiation of communal identity within discourse. Knight’s affiliation model (2010) is based on ‘communal identification,’ a social semiotic process, where interactants form social bonds by coupling attitudinal and ideational resources (p.43). Interactants mobilize semiotic resources to affiliate with others, negotiate communal identities, and construe degrees of the shared-self (Knight 2010: 217). Knight’s model outlines three bonding strategies: (1) communing (shared bonds), (2) laughing (bonding through humor) and (3) condemning (rejecting potential bonds). While Knight’s (2010, 2013) model focuses on ‘dialogic affiliation’ in direct interactions, Zappavigna’s ‘communing model’ extends this to ‘ambient affiliation’ in social media (Zappavigna 2011, 2014, 2018, Zappavigna & Martin 2018, Etaywe & Zappavign 2023). In digital domains, ambient affiliation investigates bonding through value-sharing and identity-aligning, which is characterized by multiparty, overlapping, temporally ambiguous, and sometimes incomplete interactions (Zappavigna 201: 801, 2019).

Digital discourse analysis explores how multimodal resources enact identities, activities and ideologies in the digital world (Ponton 2016, Salama 2023). Ambient affiliation has been applied to various topics, such as motherhood, celebrity and YouTube medical consultations (Zappavigna 2014, Makki & Zappavigna 2022, Wang & Luo 2023). Zappavigna’s communing affiliation framework (Zappavigna 2018, Zappavigna & Martin 2018) explains how values are positioned as  socially alignable through CONVOKING, FINESSING and PROMOTING  a coupling without direct dialogue. CONVOKING musters a community around  a coupling (MARSHALING), while FINESSING positions it in relation to other couplings/stances/values, EMBELLISHING vs. DISTILLING the range of perspectives. PROMOTING emphasizes interpersonal coupling through resources that modify its degree/scope (FOSTERING vs. MODULATING).

Following Zappavigna (2011, 2018, 2021), this study focuses on affective positioning in digital narratives of sexual-violence, exploring how victim-survivor identities and connections are created through ambient interactions. Ambient affiliation allows participants to negotiate feelings, values and knowledge without spatial/temporal constraints, fostering emotional and value-centered affiliations (Zappavigna, 2011). Online posts enact a specific identity that resonates with others’ experiences, allowing them to rally around common emotions, stances and/or knowledge (Zappavigna 2011, Leontovich 2017, Eslami et al. 2023). This fosters the potential to cultivate value-and-feeling-centered affiliations and community bonds (Martin 2017).

To investigate the realization of affiliations, this study applies linguistic evaluative coupling as an SFL construct (cf. Halliday 1978). Coupling, as introduced by Martin (2000) and extended by Zappavigna (2011), examines textual relations involving the temporal relation of with to create social semiotic units of bonds (cf. Stenglin 2008). Martin (2000) defines couplings as the fusion of “ideational meanings and appraisal” (p.164), which Martin et al. (2013) expanded to include meanings along a cline of instantiations across strata, metafunctions and modalities (p.469). These couplings blend experiential meanings and appraisal to construct communal identities (Knight 2010). Evaluative coupling has been used as an analytical unit in various contexts, from casual conversation (Knight 2013) to social media (Zappavigna 2018), providing a framework for identifying linguistic resources that forge and negotiate social semiotic bonds.

The ideational component represents sequences of ‘activities, the people and things involved in them, and their associated places and qualities,’ evoking cultural attitudes (Knight 2013). Within the interpersonal metafunction, appraisal evaluates feelings and values expressed in AP’s posts, serving as a resource for negotiating solidarity and fostering affiliation. Appraisal helps align audiences with specific feelings and values (Martin 2004). Aligning with and bonding around specific feelings-and value-positions is a complex process that involves a range of shared feelings, leading to diverse communities with distinct memberships, from universal communality to specific alignments (Martin 2004). Drawing on appraisal, the ATTITUDE system categorizes expressions of empathy/emotion (affect), ethical assessment (judgement) and evaluation based on preferences/aesthetics (appreciation) (Martin 2004: 329, Martin & White 2005: 42).

Informed by a sociocultural perspective, this study views identity as a ‘fluid and evolving,’ indexed through diverse semiotic resources (Hafner 2015:98). Identity is understood as a dynamic, continuous performance of being a certain kind of person, in a given context (Eslami et al. 2023, Leontovich 2017). To examine how victim-survivor identity is co-constructed and framed, positioning theory (Davies & Harré 1990) is used as an interpretive lens. Davies and Harré (1990) explains positioning as:

the discursive process whereby selves are located in conversations as observably and subjectively coherent participants in jointly produced story lines. There can be interactive positioning in which what one person says positions another. And there can be reflexive positioning in which one positions oneself.

 In this sense, interactants “make available a range of subject positions for themselves and their conversational partners and these positions are understood according to cultural ‘storylines’” (Hafner 2015:100). These positions are negotiable, allowing interactants to either accept them to build a shared narrative or challenge them by introducing alternative narratives.

3. Methodology and methods

As globalization blurs traditional boundaries between regions and cultural groups (e.g., Bilá & Ivanova 2020), issues like sexual-violence have gained transnational attention. In Egypt, the #MeToo movement, embodied by the verified Instagram^* platform AP with 310K followers (@assaultpolice 2023), plays a key role in addressing sexual-violence and amplifying survivors’ voices (Marzouk & Vanderveen 2022). While AP shares similar mediums and goals with the broader MeToo movement, it is deeply rooted in Egypt’s unique history of activism against sexual-harassment that includes initiatives like Harassmap and #AnaKaman (Hunt 2020).

Launched in July 2020 during Ahmed Bassam Zaki³‘s sexual-assault case,  AP focuses on raising awareness about rape culture, providing educational resources and guiding survivors toward therapy and legal help. Founded by Nadine Ashraf,⁴ AP challenges the normalization of sexual-violence in Egypt, framing these issues beyond ‘uncomfortable situations’ and sparking cultural shifts (Khairat 20 September 2020). Many Egyptian women have endured behaviours falling within the spectrum of sexual-violence, making AP’s advocacy critical (Marzouk & Vanderveen 2022). AP’s impact extends beyond social media, influencing families, educational institutions, and government policies, leading to tangible changes and legal amendments. Leveraging digital feminist practices, AP fosters knowledge-sharing, builds supportive communities, and empowers resistance against oppression, aligning with collective struggles (Mendes et al. 2019).

 This study adopts a qualitative approach to analyze AP’s content using systemic functional discourse analysis, exploring how posts within the Egyptian #MeToo stream forge digital alignments. This study focuses on how AP shares victims’/survivors’ experiences (104 Posts+16 highlight stories) to raise awareness and drive cultural change. Posts were selected based on their prominence, recurrence and impact on interactants, who are conceptualized as socially-bound semiotic agents, shaping social networks and identities. Most of the posts feature digital images, narratives, and design centered on sexual-violence, using content and design to inform and evoke emotional responses.

The analysis combines appraisal and coupling to understand the ideological and affective/evaluative positioning associated with sexual-violence as presented in AP. The data includes textual (narratives and hashtags) and visual (images and design) elements, all analyzed as multimodal utterances. After obtaining informed consents from the official page owner/manager, two applied linguistics researchers coded the data in multiple rounds to ensure validity and reliability. The analysis follows a four-step model: identifying communicative patterns (couplings of attitude+ideation), determining multimodal realizations, examining how these couplings shape victims’/survivors’ identities and positionality, and reflecting on Egyptian digital feminism.

4. Findings and analysis

This study explores the semiotic resources at the discourse semantic stratum, aiming to uncover the interpersonal phenomena at the contextual level. The data involves 104 posts, covering eight cases, including individual, gang and marital rape; sexual-assault; gender-based violence; and raising awareness about sexual-violence. Table 1 illustrates ABZ case and awareness posts make up the majority (70/104) and have received the highest engagement (likes/comments). Due to space constraints, the analysis focuses on these two cases.

 Table 1. AP’s cases and posts

N.B. Post(s)=P(s)

Figure 1 illustrates how AP uses (30Ps) about ABZ (an alleged ‘serial rapist’) to establish (12Ps), maintain (10Ps) and promote (8Ps) communal feelings, enacting social alignment and forging social bonds. AP mobilizes a community against sexual-violence by encouraging ABZ’s victims/survivors (‘150 more sexual harassment allegations’) to come forward and hold him accountable. Twelve posts frame the case and express evaluative attitudes [Judgement: Propriety: immoral +Appreciation: triggers an aversive Reaction], detailing ABZ’s background, crimes, and how he blackmailed his victims without consequences. The posts (P1+P6+P11-13+P15+P22-26+P28) establish ABZ’s case, muster a community around anti-sexual predation, motivate more victims/survivors to speak-out through assuring anonymity and security, sharing testimonies, warning against silence (allowing punishment escape, abuse others), and celebrating the movement’s international recognition. Through ABZ’s case, AP CONVOKES a community that supports victims/survivors and condemns all sexual-violence forms, including verbal/physical harassment and public masturbation that occur in enabling spaces/bodies (Fig.1).

Figure 2 displays how AP uses semiotic resources in P1 to CONVOKE an ambient community against sexual predation. Through coupling, AP portrays ABZ as ‘A SEXUAL PREDATOR’ with [(-ve)Judgement: Propriety=immoral +([(-ve)Normality=perverted +(-ve)appreciation: Reaction=aversive impact]. ABZ ‘harassed underage, 50 girls were shocked...had uncomfortable experiences...blackmailed victims...faced NO consequences.’ By inscribing ABZ as ‘a sexual predator,’ P1 CONVOKES a community/network against ABZ and assigns him clear responsibility for inflicting serious damage to many victims, using active verbs and modulating strong adjectives to highlight the severity and range of his actions. P1 employs interrogative words like ‘who’, ‘how’ to challenge society’s complacency towards sexual-violence, promoting collective action to gather evidence against him. It heteroglossically positions ABZ’s immoral propriety as a condemnation, juxtaposing it with society’s normalized complacency. To maintain FINESS, P1 deploys contractive resources to emphasize unity (‘Together, we can gather large database of evidence’) and contrast it with societal failures (‘evidence mysteriously disappeared’). It PROMOTES the intensity, severity, extent and proximity of ABZ’s actions through numerical references and impactful language, fostering social bonds and urging condemnation.

Figure 1. Communing Affiliation in ABZ’s case (Abuser-focused posts)

Visually, P1 constructs ABZ as a looming threat with a confrontational gaze, signaling urgency to CONVOKE am ambient community primed to eliminate this encroaching threat. A low-angle close-up with a downward demand gaze, neutrally tightened lips and upward chin constructs his insolent, intimidating, and hostile demeanor, rallying opposition. His image, placed at the bottom-right corner, establishes him (story anchor: ideation) as an urgent and attention-worthy threat (FINESS). The use of bold font-face, large font-size, and capitalization further emphasizes the intensity, extent, and gravity of his actions, while centralizing his name and colour choices (blue for alleged vs. red for conviction) guide the narrative (PROMOTE). 

Figure 2. ABZ’s P1

Figure 3 illustrates how P11 rallies a community of willing-to-testify victims/survivors ready to ‘ACT WITH LAWYERS AGAINST’ the predator (CONVOKE). The post couples bravery and tenacity with willingness to testify to specify the attributes of this community using attitudinal elaboration [(+ve)Judgement: Tenacity=brave=willing-to-testify], emphasizing collective action and unity. P11 encourages victims to connect via email (reportabz@gmail.com), assuring anonymity and security. It fosters inclusion and unity by using inclusive language and modality like ‘we,’ modal verbs, adverbs and phrases such as ‘We HAVE to all take action together,’ prompting urgency, necessity and a united stand. P11 invokes FINESS to instil immediate action by positioning the coupling of [(-ve)Judgement: Tenacity=cowardly= not willing-to-testify]. It uses a fronted adverb of time (‘NOW IS THE TIME TO COME FORWARD’) to create an urgency for immediate action to prevent the predator from harming future victims. P11 uses attitudinal projection as a contractive resource to create an obligation for immediate action by warning against inaction (‘WE HAVE TO STOP HIM FROM DOING THIS TO OTHER GIRLS IN THE FUTURE’). It reassures those willing-to-testify by offering support and anonymity, while warning of the consequences of inaction using a reversed if-structure (‘they WILL let him go free if women don’t start coming forward’) and (‘DO NOT EMAIL IF YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO COME FORWARD AND TESTIFY’).

P11 CONVOKES a well-knitted community by symbolizing unity with an image of hand-holding arms in a circular shape, which represents unity (firm-gripping hands), diversity (multicolour arms), and strength (encircling ‘STRONGER TOGETHER’ as a cry motto CAPSED). Typographical enhancements and conditional statements further PROMOTE solidarity, urgency of action, and adherence to the guidelines through the use of CAPS, imperatives with polarity, and conditional structures (if-then-else). 

Figure 3. ABZ’s P11

Figure 4 illustrates how P22 uses [(-ve)judgement: Veracity=manipulative +(-ve) appreciation: Reaction/social valuation=insufficient efficaciousness] to rally an ambient community around the ongoing pursuit of justice against ABZ’s predatory actions (CONVOKE). While acknowledging ABZ’s confession as progress, it emphasizes the need for continued action. The post encourages victims/survivors to come forward, highlighting support and empowerment while conveying demand for action and urgency through contractive resources and imperatives like ‘not too late to come forward’ and ‘come forward’ (FINESS). P22 uses a question-answer structure to discuss the significance of coming forward and emphasize the importance of speaking out. It contrasts ABZ’s limited confession (‘threatening & blackmailing’) with the more serious accusations from (‘MORE THAN’) 10 victims. It amplifies support through quantifiable measures (‘160,000 people’) and ensures constancy of protection (consistency of process/FOCUS) and robustness of empowerment (intensity/strength of process/FORCE) as in (‘we’ll be with you every step,’ ‘law amended,’ ‘we’re making history’ (PROMOTE).

P22 motivates interactants with the slogan ‘the fight is NOT OVER,’ reinforcing the ongoing struggle. Building on the fight motif, it CONVOKES a network using attitudinal elaboration through [(+ve) Judgement: Tenacity=brave=coming forward]. The prominent MeToo logo in the bottom-left corner symbolizes unwavering support (established as Given) and solidarity, whereas the email address in the bottom-right corner invites further action, suggesting a new avenue for potential action (FINESS). P22 uses typographical strategies to emphasize key elements: a large, bold, sans-serif font for the central fight motif to evoke a spirit of resistance; an italicized decorative-serif font of small letters to encourage the urgency of action; and formal monospaced medium-sized small caps to convey the limited gains achieved. A small, italicized decorative-serif font renders the email invitation in the bottom-left corner friendly and open (PROMOTE). 

Figure 4. ABZ’s P22

AP FINESSES its community-building efforts through ten additional posts (P2-5+P7-10+P14+P18), offering varied perspectives on sexual-violence while maintaining ABZ’s image as a ‘serial rapist.’ These posts compare condemnation and resentment with societal complacency and acquiescence, drawing on a mix of factual and anecdotal evidence (audio recordings, chat transcripts, digital narratives and testimonies) to position ABZ as a perpetrator, constructing a compelling argument through truth-functional semantics. The ten posts underscore the victims’/survivors’ credibility, promoting positive support and empowerment for them using [(+ve)appreciation: Reaction=Social-valuation, (+ve)judgement: Veracity], while simultaneously denouncing ABZ’s actions [(-ve)judgement: Propriety]. The evidence includes various media and experience attributes that involve (non-)Egyptian victims/survivors of different age groups (minors, adults) and contexts (social media, parties, educational institutions).

Figure 5 illustrates how P2 CONVOKES a community against ABZ’s predatory behaviour, focusing on his blackmailing of victims. P2 emphasizes the ethical violations and negative impact of ABZ’s actions through explicit condemnations [(-ve)appreciation: Reaction +(-ve)Judgement: Propriety=immoral], evoking disgust and outrage. The post quantifies ABZ’s recidivism and stresses the importantance of the issue (PROMOTE), reinforcing ABZ’s determination to reoffend [(-ve)Judgement: Tenacity=recidivism] with high-evidentiality recordings to counter any skepticism about victim testimony (FINESS). P2 engages with interactants through the imperative ‘Swipe,’ emphasizing the possibility of re-offending, as in (‘one of his victims’). 

Figure 5. ABZ’s P2

P2 establishes ABZ as an offender, ascribing criminality to his name and actions through the use of red to signify the severity of his offenses (CONVOKE). The prominent configuration of headlines and recordings emphasizes the gravity of the situation and counters potential skepticism (PROMOTE). The centralized large-sized recording icon (offense-tracking record) instils the evidence prominence, occupying substantial space of the frame vs. potential allegations of false victims to realize FINESS, distilling possible perspectives.

Figure 6 showcases P5, which provides compelling factual evidence—a victim-survivor’s harrowing testimony of rape. P5 forges an ambient community (CONVOKE) to condemn ABZ’s actions using [(-ve)Judgement: Propriety=immoral=rape +(-ve)appreciation: Social-valuation=unfavorable effects+ Reaction=shock=disgust]. It emphasizes the victim’s suffering and uses passive verbs and modulated strong adjectives to evoke negative Judgement and appreciation. While assigning rape responsibility to ABZ, it attributes intensified suffrage and physical debilitation to victims/survivors (‘he raped me...I suffered...cracked my lower bones...couldn’t walk’), which intensifies the social disapproval toward ABZ. P5 highlights the extensive impact of ABZ’s actions, fostering a collective response through comparative quantifiers. It underscores the scale, severity and widespread nature of ABZ’s offenses, PROMOTING the quantity (‘more than 100 girls provided evidence...MORE RAPE VICTIMS...’), intensity (‘serial predator...well educated...connected, yet none stopped him...to turn into PREDATOR...RAPIST...’) and extent (spatial distribution ‘online or real-life...IN prestigious institutions’) of ABZ’s offenses.

P5 deploys hashtags (#abz #المتحرش _احمد_ بسام_ زكي) to mobilize opposition against ABZ (CONVOKE) and situates the survivor’s testimony for scrutiny. It urges victims/survivors to speak out to prevent others from becoming ‘predators’ or ‘rapists.’ By featuring ABZ’s image in the center with unsettling expressions (an offer gaze and a sarcastic smile) alongside the survivor’s testimony in the bottom-right corner⁵ (factual contractive resources of Attribution—new information for consideration), P5 fosters diverse perspectives on ABZ’s crimes (FINESS). Typographical enhancements, such as large bold CAPS and image-size adjustments PROMOTE the gravity of the situation, juxtaposing ABZ’s large-image with the victims’/survivors’ medium-size chatboxes. 

Figure 6. ABZ’s P5

Figure 7 illustrates how P3 introduces the ‘7^th confirmed sexual-assault victim’ as credible evidence, attributing [(+ve)Judgement: Veracity=truthfulness] to the author-victim, emphasizing the growing community of survivors. It describes the narrative as ‘chilling’ and ‘painful to read’ to ascribe atrocity to ABZ [(-ve)Judgement: Propriety=immoral] and resilience yet distress to victims/survivors [(+ve)Judgement: Tenacity=distressed]. P3 CONVOKES an ambient community of victims-survivors ready to share their stories and promises justice to those who speak-out, emphasizing bravery and certainty through using a coupling of [(+ve)Judgement: Tenacity= victims/survivors who ‘submit their stories’]. P3 uses attitudinal elaboration and enhancement strategies to FINESS the victims’/survivors’ position by emphasizing their exceptional bravery (adverb +adjective) and reaffirming their commitment to justice ‘WILL get justice’ (modal with high certainty). P3 highlights dedication to justice by using CAPS in ‘WILL’(PROMOTE).

P3 positions ABZ as a dangerous offender, employing red, centralized top-position headlines to elicit aversion towards him and empathy towards survivors using [(-ve)appreciation: Reaction=aversion vs. (+ve)appreciation: Reaction=empathy to survivors] (CONVOKE). The vertical layout compresses distressing details, prompting interactants to share the author’s intersubjective stance on inspecting—evaluating this evidence (FINESS). The narrative’s columnar structure indicates the compression of the experience’s distressful details, intensifying their impact (amount, extent) and PROMOTING empathy (proximal threat). 

Figure 7. ABZ’s P3

In posts P16-17, P19-21, and P27-30, AP contrasts the responses of legal, social, and educational forces/institutions to sexual-violence, ranging from enablers to supporters of survivors. It highlights a spectrum of accountability, from complacency to vigilance, assigning negative judgement to enablers and positive reinforcement to those who support survivors. AP PROMOTES the urgency of addressing sexual-violence by focusing on its severity and impact, distinguishing between true-victims (speak-out vs. silenced), false-victims (examined—revoked) and (alleged vs. confirmed) harassers. It shows how responses range from proactive action to reluctance or inaction across institutions, advocacy groups, and bystanders (wo/men).

In figure 8, P20 condemns educational institutions that enable  sexual-harassment, labeling them as unethical and apathetic using  [+(-ve)Judgement: Propriety=unethical=apathetic +(-ve)appreciation: Reaction/impact] (CONVOKE). P20 portrays these enabling institutions as dismissive, ‘silencing victims’, while emphasizing the vulnerability and emotional susceptibility to ‘young girls’ and ‘concerned boys’ who ‘united’ against them, prompting interactants to align with potential student-victims. It couples an isomorphic structure with counterproductive outcomes of ‘we presented... vs. ‘we were met...’, juxtaposing these institutions’ negligence with the victims’ efforts and plight. Using strong/diminutive adjectives and adverbs such as (‘huge role, little urgency, ultimately brushed off’), P20 PROMOTES the severity and extent of the institutions’ negligence, highlighting how this large number ‘20 or 30’ of vulnerable ‘young girls’ and ‘concerned boys’ ‘united’ with evidence, only to be ‘ignored.’ P20 uses interrogative structures with ‘how’ as a contractive resource (‘how educational institutions enabled harassment...how ABZ got away...?’) to challenge the institutions’ role in enabling ABZ’s predatory behaviour, fostering a collective rejection of such an enabling role (FINESS). 

Figure 8. ABZ’s P20

P20 mobilizes an ambient community against ‘educational institutions enabling sexual-harassment’ by highlighting their facilitative role (CONVOKE). It deploys identical font-style, CAPS, and placement to align these institutions with the harasser, while varying font-sizes and colours (medium-blue for institutions, large-red for harassment) indicate their connection to the predation crimes using consonant—dissonant designs. By juxtaposing ABZ’s smiling image with the students’ efforts, P20 prompts interactants to reflect on the institutions’ complicity (FINESS). Typographical enhancement like boldface, italics and quotation marks PROMOTE the disappointment of student-victims and the apathetic institutional response through [(-ve)appreciation: Reaction: Quality=affectual response].

Figure 9 illustrates how P16 forges a coalition of responsive institutions  that oppose ‘sexual-misconduct,’ portraying them as ethical and  commendable [(+ve)judgement: Propriety=ethical +(+ve)appreciation: Social-valuation=responsive] (CONVOKE). It uses powerful language (intensified adverbs +strong adjectives) to ascribe positive social-sanction and appreciation to their swift actions in expelling ABZ and conducting thorough investigations, encouraging others to follow this model. P16 highlights the EU Business School’s response as exemplary to set the standard. By discussing a case with presumably false allegations, navigates the complexities of evidence and underscores the unwavering determination of these institutions to combat sexual-harassment, hinging on evidence’s veracity—falsehood (FINESS). It uses concession and continuity adverbs (‘nevertheless, still’) to PROMOTE the institutions’ tenacity to block sexual-harassment. 

Figure 9. ABZ’s P16

The EU Business School’s statement is configured on the left side for evaluation and alignment, while a gratitude note and the school’s commendable actions are positioned on the right side to showcase it as a celebrated model for emulatation (CONVOKE). P16 uses green for the school’s title/logo and red for the harassment issue to underscore the importance of swift, ethical responses in handling sexual-harassment (FINESS). It PROMOTES the gratitude note to emphasize its intended affectual-impact, displaying it prominantly in a large sans-serif font to make it legible and relatable. Conversely, the densely-compacted small serif font conveys meticulousness and formality in the statement letter.

Figure 10. ABZ’s P30

Figure 10 displays P30’s formal announcement of ABZ’s sentence for sexual-assault, which aims to rally support around this credible verdict using [(+ve)Judgement: Veracity=credible= ABZ’s sentence +[(-ve)appreciation: Social-valuation=efficaciousness] (CONVOKE). The announcement strategy encourages more victims/survivors to come forward to ensure a crime-proportionate sentence, expressing concern over the sentence’s adequacy in proportion to the crimes’ frequency and severity (FINESS). By emphasizing the limited number of confirmed victims in a salient position (at the end of the statement), P30 suggests more testimonies are needed to achieve proportional justice (PROMOTE).

P30 CONVOKES a community’s memory of ABZ’s crimes through visual coherence, using his image from P2 in the background of the sentence announcement to encourage reflection on the adequacy of the punishment. The green text, with intensified CAPS and boldface, PROMOTES optimism about the impact of victims’/survivors’ speaking-out. However, ABZ’s defiant image (cf.P2) serves as a stark reminder of the ongoing threat posed by harassers, including ABZ, urging victims/survivors to come forward to prevent further harm.

Figure 11 illustrates how AP deploys 40 posts to establish (14Ps), maintain (12Ps), and promote (14Ps) communion feelings to combat sexual-violence. It forges social bonds around speaking-out, seeking/receiving support, and addressing cultural issues that sustain violence and enable harassers. AP creates a safe space where victims/survivors can confidently share their experiences, valuing them as credible and deserving support rather than blame, while simultaneously holding harassers accountable through the use of [(+ve)judgement: Veracity=credible +(+ve)appreciation: Social-valuation/worthiness= attention-worthy]. It unites people across various demographics—age, gender, social class and language—to believe in, support and empower victims/survivors, aiming to educate and change cultural attitudes that perpetuate sexual-violence (warding off illiteracy, manipulation and mis/disinformation, enhancing victims/survivors’ personal repertoire with adequate/relevant knowledge vs. the normalizing cultural reservoir).

Figure 11. Communing affiliation in Raising Awareness (Abused-centered posts)

Figure 12 displays six digital narratives from victims of different genders, ages and backgrounds, highlighting the severity and frequency of harassment. P31 CONVOKES this diverse community, offering a safe space for victims to share their stories and counter the myth that harassment is limited to specific genders or attire using [(+ve)appreciation: Social-valuation=victims/survivors narrate their stories safely]. P31 refutes the myth that seductive clothing triggers harassment and restricts it to young women, highlighting that anyone can be a victim through repeated structures like ("I am + different gender/age/background/ social class/experience," "I was harassed/raped..." and "I still feel..."). These narratives adopt an anti-blaming stance (FINESSES) to create continuity and coherence among diverse experiences. Slide A states, ‘I am a boy, 6 times, from childhood;’ B says, ‘I am a man...got raped...touched many times in subways;’ C highlights, ‘I still remember the ugly details;’ D mentions, ‘I am a young girl, didn’t understand, never got justice served;’ E recounts, ‘my mother sealed my lips ...;’ F narrates, ‘I wear nikab, he sneaked with his hands ... I was speechless...’ The narratives use descriptive language, including adjectives (integers, many, ugly, worst, young, speechless, shock) and adverb adjuncts of time and manner (until, still, even, hard), to foreground the severity, frequency and commonality of these incidents, fostering empathy and challenging victim-blaming (PROMOTE). They foreground the assault’s severity, multiplicity and duration using typographical enhancement (red lines) to mark certain key phrases.

Caption “Tell your stories. ART BY NADA ELIAN stories @nadaelian” N.B. All photos have underlines in red as posts’ original enhancement.

Through digital visuals, P31 portrays six victims-narrators. Slides A and B exemplify male-victims of different ages and experiences: a young schoolboy harassed repeatedly, and an adult male who was verbally abused and raped at twelve. Slides C and D feature female-victims from diverse social backgrounds and harassment-experiences: a schoolgirl harassed and beaten, and a woman as assaulted at seven. Slides E and F display modest women, one of whom was silenced by her mother after being harassed. To CONVOKE a supportive community of credible victims/survivors, most slides use close, eye-level frontal-shots with a demand gaze, while slide B uses an oblique offer-gaze to show empowerment through self-retaliation, suggesting an exemplary model. The visuals engage interactants by negotiating traditional reactions (support/protect vs. blame/shame) and offering victims/survivors with relatable depictions as contractive resources (FINESS). P31 intensifies awareness of assault severity, extent and distribution by using red underlines to emphasize specific lexical items that highlight the frequency, age and reaction of victims and society, such as helplessness, shock, fear, silencing, and lack of compassion (PROMOTE). 

Figure 12. Speak-out P31

Figure 13 illustrates how P36 explicitly CONVOKES an ambient community to break the silence that enables sexual-harassers, emphasizing the power of speaking-out through [(+ve)appreciation: Social-valuation=exposing harassers]. To commune an affiliation around speaking-out, it uses attitudinal elaboration strategies (conjunction ‘when’) to specify and condition that ‘our voices are louder’ only when ‘we speak together’ (CONVOKE). It promotes collective action through inclusive language (‘our,’ ‘us,’ ‘we’) and encourages immediate story sharing, using imperatives and hashtags to establish demand and urgency.  Directly addressing victims/survivors using second person, P36 asserts the importance of their voices to combat sexual-violence, stating (‘our voices...louder...together...your story matters’) using [+ve Social-valuation] to ward off silence (FINESS). It emphasizes the intensity, urgency, extent, and distribution of sexual-violence by employing adverbs of time+ adjectives, as in (‘it’s finally a nationwide concern’). It employs the exclamation mark sign (!) after ‘TO SPEAK OUT!’ to PROMOTE urgency and action. 

Figure 13. Speak-out P36

Through emotive language and visual design, P36 highlights the urgency and intensity of sexual-violence issues, urging communal action. It encourages sharing stories via #hashtags to break the silence (CONVOKE). The visual configuration of SEXUAL VIOLENCE’ and ‘#endthesilence’ at the opposite ends of the frame symbolizes the dichotomy between silence and speaking-out (upframe vs. downframe), featuring them with the same colour and font-size (FINESS). P36 strategically uses hashtags and visual design to underscore the importance of communal action and position speaking-out as essential, urgent and impactful. Red framing establishes the critical nature of the situation, prompting action from victims/survivors (PROMOTE).

Figure 14 presents how P44 challenges misconceptions about rape and sexual-harassment. It musters a community misinformed and disinformed about sexual-harassers, consent and victims’ responsibility using [(-ve)judgement: Veracity=inaccurate=widespread mis/disinformation about sexual-harassment], rallying for re-education while rejecting misguided attitudes (CONVOKES)  while rejecting unreasoned attitudes (FINESS). Slides B/E use  interrogative punctuation and contrasting scenarios to offer new  perspectives on rape/rapists, misconceived consent and responsibility.   

Figure 14. Raise Awareness P44

For example, Slide D employs statistical data and contrast-coordinating conjunctions to highlight prevalent misconceptions of abusers, consent and responsibility, suggesting an exigent need for rectification of understanding, feeling, and thus acting/doing (FINESS). Slides C/D/E employ a question-answer structure (‘Why?—Because...,’ ‘What makes people think?—What if ...”) to juxtapose old beliefs with evidence-backed insights. Slide B introduces the term ‘GRAPE’ (portmanteau) to foster cultural shift (FINESS), while Slide E uses repetitive phrases ‘What if I/We’ to expose societal biases that blame victims (PROMOTE).

P44 uses graphical elements to CONVOKE a mis/disinformed ambient community who misses ‘the twist’ with a positive attitude. Slides B/C showcase cartoonish characters, such as Kyle, who are warmly depicted through smiles, opens arms and close-frontal shots, inviting interactants to reconsider perspectives through proximity, relatability and engagement (cf. slides A/B/C). Speech bubbles, dialogue-structure and vibrant, fancy font-faces and colours invoke dialogism and friendliness, encouraging new understandings while rejecting outdated beliefs (FINESS). Arrows and geometric shapes in Slides C/D reinforce new perspectives and relationships, contrasting with the depiction of longstanding misconceptions. P44 deploys different colours (shades of purple-pink), font-type, -face, and-size to foreground the long-standing misconceptions, making them salient and thus amendable. While conclusive findings are represented in black to characterize their veracity and stability, debatable propositions are depicted in pink to signify their potential for change (PROMOTE).Top of FormBottom of Form

Figure 15 illustrates how P86 advocates for children’s sexual education to prevent violence, focusing on parents eager to learn and educate their children. It CONVOKES an ambient community focused on bridging the gap in sexual literacy, highlighting Egyptian parents’ [(-ve)judgement: Capacity=lack of sexual-literacy +(+ve)Tenacity=determination to pursue/provide +(+ve)appreciation: Social-valuation=efficaciousness=protectiveness]. Through imperative language and contrasting beliefs, P86 urges parents to take an active role in their children’s sexual education. Slides A—D use nine imperative verbs and structures to convey directive force of advice, such as (‘educate..., be, give, talk, encourage, don’t blame, believe, reassure and have basic conversations’), to instil a sense of obligation and urgency and reposition parents ideologically. It couples positive sexual education as protective with avoidance as inappropriate through [(+ve)appreciation: Social-valuation=useful=protective] vs. [+(-ve)appreciation: Social-valuation=inappropriate]. Slide E debunks the misconception that sexual education encourages deviance. Instead, it presents sexual education as essential health knowledge, refuting the misconception that it encourages deviance through [(-ve)judgement: Normality=challenging cultural norms]. In doing so, it employs mitigating phrases like (‘just gives the opportunity to reinforce important health-based knowledge’) (FINESS). Slides A—D use clauses of reason, purpose and explanation along with conjunctions and conditional-structures to instil new beliefs and attitudes. To realize this, it uses a mix of adjectives (‘primary educator, healthy boundaries, uncomfortable, physical touching) and adverbs (‘constantly learning, safely, accurately complain’) that extend, elaborate, or specify and emphasize the extent, continuity and urgency of ideational and evaluative meanings, reinforcing the importance of age-appropriate education. The use of boldface emphasizes parental responsibility for reforming sexual education practices, advocating for age-sensitive learning (PROMOTE). 

Figure 15. Raise Awareness P 86

Slides E-F employ vibrant orange and symbolic imagery to evoke warning, protection and healing, urging parents to embrace sexual education for themselves and their children (CONVOKE). Slide E configures a hand-holding a flower on the post’s right-corner to signify new life/beginnings, in contrast to the lack of prior sexual education (FINESS). Slide F juxtaposes green leaves on an orange background to instil hope in children’s safety, highlighting the causal link between education and protection through white bold text, suggesting the method’s efficacy.

Figure 16 demonstrates how P50 engages men in preventing sexual-harassment through [(+ve)judgement: Tenacity=resolute= men can prevent harassment +(+ve)appreciation: Social-valuation=efficaciousness]. To CONVOKE this ambient community, slides A and E employ gender-inclusive language (pronouns: ‘we, you, everyone’), adjectives (‘all’) and directives (suggestions: using if-structure +directive) to foster men’s active involvement in combating harassment. Slide E uses vocative expressions to call upon (‘everyman’), emphasizing collective responsibility for ending harassment in Egypt. Slides B—D use a combination of if-structures and directives in various harassment scenarios to reframe men’s attitudes towards harassment, encouraging a transition from passive to proactive stances (FINESS). Slide E uses a mix of modals and adverbs to PROMOTE the coupling [(+ve)appreciation: Social-valuation=efficaciousness= men’s actions to stop sexual-harassment]. It emphasizes the urgency and intensity of their responsibility using obligation modals ‘need’+ ‘you/your help’ intensified with proximity (‘right now’, 99% of kinswomen), extent—distribution (‘99%...everyday...in public space’) and amplified with degree (‘you can...listen to men more’). Slide A stresses the societal impact of harassment, challenging the notion that it is solely a women’s issue through [(+ve)judgement: Capacity=power/ability + (+ve)appreciation: Social-valuation=acceptable], while rejecting [+(-ve)appreciation: Reaction=value/indifferent=a women’s issue]. It uses the conjunctive adverb (‘however’) to prompt a shift in attitudes and, potentially, actions (FINESS). Slide A uses strong language (adjectives and adverbs) to PROMOTE men’s degree of inclusion (‘all men, all aware’), level of responsibility (‘actively interfere...’) and extent of impact (‘deeply affects’).

Slide A uses hashtags (#catchtheharasser #اقفش­_ متحرش) and colour contrast to marshal an ambient community of men who are willing to take collective action against harassment (CONVOKE). Slide A creates brightness and contrast by juxtaposing a red-white foreground against a navy-blue background, symbolizing danger and caution in red against power and authority in navy-blue, thereby encouraging immediate response. The Arabic and English mix reflects inclusivity and the strategic negotiation of diverse perspectives (FINESS). The white hashtag #اقفش¬_متحرش PROMOTES collective anti-harassment efforts, while the red text on a navy-blue background emphasizes men’s role in prevention, evoking the authority of collective power. Slides B-D introduce a new anti-harassment approach, contrasting preventive-actions in (white) with harassment situations in (red). Slide E reinforces urgency through cautionary red, which serves as a warning, signaling the need for men to intervene and end bystander culture.

Figure 16. Culture-based issues P50

Figure 17 demonstrates how P80 CONVOKES an ambient community against circumcision medicine, highlighting the immorality of the practice,  even when doctors perform it, using [(-ve)judgement: Propriety=immoral=distortive=circumcision medicine]. An imperative tone urges collective action via an electronic petition, condemning the distortion of genitalia through circumcision and using a contextual link to prompt participation in the cause. The adjunct comment adverb (‘unfortunately’) and the concessive subordinate clause (‘although’) emphasize the practice’s negative impact (FINESS). P80 asserts that circumcision, whether performed by doctors or not, is distortive and immoral using coupling FINESS [(-ve)judgement: Propriety], and the conjunctive ‘unlike.’ P80 uses a contextual link, ‘SIGN’, to direct interactants to engage with and commit to the cause on another page (PROMOTE). 

Figure 17. Culture-based issues P80

P80 uses an electronic petition as a community-building tool against circumcision medicine, symbolized by green to evoke renewal after discrimination (CONVOKE). A whole-part visual structure features female doctors negatively evaluating circumcision using yellow colour to inspire change (PROMOTE). A digital female-doctor character (Carrier) holds a sign denouncing medical circumcision (Possessive attributes), encouraging viewers to align with the cause and sign the petition to challenge misconceptions about its validity (FINESS).

5. Discussion

The study explored how cultural norms and power dynamics in the global South shape the portrayal of sexual-violence victims and perpetrators, offering a glocalized understanding of combating sexual-violence within digital feminist spaces (cf. Roudometof, 2016). The findings demonstrated how Egyptian digital posts mobilize communities against sexual-violence by employing affective strategies and semiotic resources to build solidarity and drive legal and institutional reforms (cf. Marzouk & Vanderveen 2021, Ringrose et al. 2018, Ryan 2019). While still being relevant to Egypt, this research highlighted how the local reception of #MeToo used evaluative couplings to negotiate interactive self-positioning (cf. Hafner 2015, Leontovich 2017, Eslami et al. 2023) and situate Egyptian SVVSs in a wider context of feminist activism.

Focusing on the under-researched area of Middle Eastern digital feminist activism, the study deconstructs how evaluative couplings create, sustain and negotiate value-and-feeling-centered community bonds around SVVSs. These ambient affiliations are forged in relation to evaluation, sharing, seeking support and negotiating stances (cf. Wang & Luo 2023). The results showed that AP employed emotional appeals combined with moral evaluations to construct the victims’ semiotic identity as credible, morally deserving empathy, and demanding justice, thereby challenging the victim-blaming narratives prevalent in gendered discourses and aligning survivors with values of truth and justice (cf. Loney-Howes 2018). This is achieved by emphasizing victims’ emotional distress, framing the pursuit of justice as moral, countering the stigmatization of victims, reframing victim-blaming narrative, condemning gendered injustice and calling for collective action/support for victims. These strategies created a shared affective positioning of solidarity, justice, and equality justice by consistently reframing shared emotions of pain, anger and hope. AP uses a multimodal approach to solidify the audience’s affective engagement, crafting a digital space where individuals feel emotionally and morally aligned with SVVSs (cf. Zappettini et al. 2021). It leverages linguistic features (inclusive/exclusive evaluative language, structural organization, coherence/cohesion), visual cues (photographs, graphics, videos), design elements (colour schemes, text/visual spatial configuration, affective repetition, hashtags) and cultural references (individual/collective stigmatized disclosures of lived experiences) as affectual tools that construct, restructure, and negotiate value-and-feeling-centered affiliations and community bonds, a power technology to create collective social change (cf. Zappettini et al. 2021). Finally, AP situates the Egyptian SVVSs in both local and global feminist contexts, positioning their activism within the broader scope of the global #MeToo movement while maintaining focus on culturally relevant issues and symbols.

Using appraisal and communing affiliation frameworks, the study revealed how AP’s posts combine ideation with judgement and appreciation to create evaluative couplings that evoke empathy and solidarity while encoding and enacting victims’/survivors’ semiotic identity (Zappavigna 2014, 2018). AP defines sexual-violence in the context of sexual-literacy, challenging normalized sociocultural norms/values to encourage speaking-out. It CONVOKES an ambient community where victims/survivors can speak-out, receive emotional, legal and psychological support, and are well-informed of verbal/physical sexual-violence. This reflects a broader attempt to shift societal attitudes toward sexual-violence and mobilize collective action against it. To foster community bonds, it leverages semiotic tools—digital imagery, design elements, blending of Arabic and English, code-switching, and colour-coded visuals. However, AP tends to adopt Western traditions to frame victims’/survivors’ experiences, using strategies such as code-switching to neutralize sensitivity and circumvent cultural restrictions, alongside globally-aware visual designs and left-side orientation to embrace modernity (cf. Marzouk & Vanderveen 2021).

AP positions SVVSs as credible, worthy and deserving of support, challenging the prevalent culture of victim-blaming and shame (cf. Zappettini et al. 2021). It promotes a discourse of empowerment and education, seeking to dismantle the enabling structures that perpetuate sexual-violence within Egyptian society (cf. using English expressions and Westcentric design to discuss taboos to neutralize sensitivity, circumvent cultural/religious restrictions, embrace modernity). Using FINESS, AP establishes how victims/survivors should act/speak-out rather than stay silent, how societies should react (provide support rather than blame) toward victims/survivors, and how social institutions should take actions to (‘educate, reform and inhibit/dismiss rather than enable and empower’) sexual-violence perpetrators.

AP characterizes a site of engagement that PROMOTES speaking-out by emphasizing survivors’ anonymity and safety to impede recurrence. It negatively appraises cultural-based normalized values by raising awareness against emotional manipulation, sexual-blackmail and cyberharassment. It uses strong language (adjectives and adverbs), interrogatives and directive structures to urge legal/social institutions to adopt proactive measures against sexual-violence.

While the study focused on a single Instagram page, the findings are representative of Egypt’s broader digital anti-sexual violence landscape. Future research could explore other digital platforms for feminist activism in other non-Western contexts. It could employ quantitative data analysis with a larger sample size and expand on non-verbal dimensions to gain deeper insights into how vulnerable communities (re)establish and enact social identities and practices within varying power dynamics.

6. Conclusions

The study addresses the gap in understanding how linguistic strategies—such as language choice, affective stance, visual imagery and semiotic design—mediate the complex interplay between global feminist discourse and local cultural values, shaping a distinct form of glocalized feminist activism in AP. It contributes to identity construction and attitudinal research by expanding the analytic powers of the communing affiliation while opening new avenues for semiotic identity construction and construal. It broadens the representation of victims to include diverse ages, genders, classes and social backgrounds, while depicting perpetrators as those exploiting societal, cultural, or institutional gaps through power, influence, or anonymity.

This study aimed to discuss how AP’s affective-discursive affiliation strategies foster communities around sexual-violence victims/survivors in digital spaces. It examined how affective positioning, mediated and enacted through digital media, shapes vulnerable online communities. The affordances of digital technologies, such as visibility and connectivity, play a critical role in facilitating collective social change in feminist activism. The findings have critical implications for combating sexual-violence in vulnerable non-Western communities through affective positioning strategies and semiotic resources. They highlight how digital tools like visuals, graphics, videos, narratives of lived experiences/evaluations and design elements such as colour schemes, coherence/cohesion, texts/visuals balance/structure in spaces and hashtags function as affectual tools to negotiate identities, promote solidarity, foster community and resist gendered norms in non-Western settings.

The local Egyptian #MeToo challenges gendered semiotic identities and inequalities in digital environments, examining the ambient force of affective positioning through the lens of networked-bonding affiliations. It demonstrates resistance against gendered norms and stereotypes and the harness of online spaces to promote feminist activism by facilitating empathy and solidarity. This study emphasizes the importance of bringing Arab women’s voices into global conversations on #MeToo, challenging criticisms of the movement’s limited inclusivity, featuring digital narratives of various genders, ages and social backgrounds, social classes and experiences including humble/privileged and modest/free victims/survivors. Ultimately, this research reshapes our understanding of the linguistic strategies used around the conversation of combating sexual-violence and driving social change in Egypt.

_{¹ Refers to social, cultural and political processes that condone violence against women but also blame victim-survivors if and when violence is perpetrated against them.}

_{² ‘If all women who have been sexually harassed wrote “me too” as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.’}

_{* It is recognized as an extremist organization and is banned in the territory of the Russian  Federation.}

_{³ A college student who was accused of being a sexual predator of women.}

_{⁴ A 25-year philosophy graduate who sparked Egypt's #MeToo by creating AP in 2017.}

_{⁵ Follows the Western conventions of left-right (given/new).}

About the authors

Reham El Shazly

Author for correspondence.
Email: rshazly@aast.edu
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3810-8434

Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at the College of Language and Communication at the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport, Cairo. She is an associate editor for Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression (Routledge). Her research interests center on multimodality, social semiotics, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, as well as interdisciplinary research work in social communication and artificial intelligence. Her most recent publications appeared in Visual Communication, Language and Intercultural Communication, Semiotica, Review of Cognitive Linguistics among others.

References