The Fembot Collective is an international collective of feminist media activists, artists, producers, and scholars that published the academic journal '' Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology''. Fembot has been a catalyst for multiple large scale feminist digital projects, providing the digital and social infrastructure for FemTechNet, publishing the podcast series Books Aren't Dead, and hosting collaborative hack-a-thons and

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

edit-a-thon An edit-a-thon (sometimes written editathon) is an event where some editors of online communities such as Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap (also known as a " mapathon"), and LocalWiki edit and improve a specific topic or type of content. The events typ ...

s with ''

Ms. Ms. (American English) or Ms (British English; normally , but also , or when unstressed)''Oxford English Dictionary'' online, Ms, ''n.2''. Etymology: "An orthographic and phonetic blend of Mrs ''n.1'' and miss ''n.2'' Compare mizz ''n.'' The pr ...

'' magazine. Although having been funded and supported by multiple institutions including School of Journalism and Communication and the

Center for the Study of Women in Society The Center for the Study of Women in Society (CSWS) at the University of Oregon in the United States supports feminist research, teaching, activism and creativity. Established in 1973, it is a non-profit partnership between the Associated Studen ...

at the

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a Public university, public research university in Eugene, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1876, the university is organized into nine colleges and schools and offers 420 undergraduate and gra ...

., Fembot is concentrated in the University of Maryland currently.

History

The Fembot Collective was initially developed at the University of Oregon, where it was originally a research interest group led by

Carol Stabile Carol Stabile is a professor in the department of Women's Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 2014, Stabile received an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship for her work on blacklisted (supposedly communist) and con ...

located in the Center for the Study of Women in Society. Officially founded in 2011, the group grew out of conversations about the use of

feminist ethics Feminist ethics is an approach to ethics that builds on the belief that traditionally ethical theorizing has undervalued and/or underappreciated women's moral experience, which is largely male-dominated, and it therefore chooses to reimagine ethi ...

to guide transformations in

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

and new media pedagogy that began as early as 2008. Early projects for Fembot included the short zine series ''Laundry Day'' edited by Carol Stabile and Chelsea Bullock, and a feminist works series that spotlighted new media artists and critics. Fembot launched its first issue of ''Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology'' in November 2012. FemBot Editathon LA 2015 1

Since 2015, Fembot has established a partnership with ''Ms.'' magazine around writing women academics, theorists, and athletes into Wikipedia. The organization is currently led by Carol Stabile.

''Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology''

''Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology'' is a feminist open access journal published in collaboration with the Fembot Collective. It has been housed at UO Libraries and now is administered through the University of Maryland. Notably, the journal challenges conventional academic journal practices by using an open peer review process. In 2014,

Gamergate Gamergate or GamerGate (GG) was a loosely organized online misogyny, misogynistic online harassment campaign motivated by a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture. It was conducted using the ...

supporters targeted ''Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology'' as a site of "feminist propaganda," arguing that "feminist scholars have used the journal as an outlet for propaganda, allowing them to avoid the peer review processes of traditional journals." In response, Fembot members and others created a bibliography of critical resources for studying the gendered dimensions of the Gamergate controversy, published by the International Communication Association.

References

{{authority control Feminist journals Media studies journals English-language journals