Toward a digital feminist support theory (DFST): Examining women's digital labor as support beyond conventional clinical spaces

With digital feminist support theory (DFST), we bring networked/digital feminism theorizing in conversation with digital/networked health communication theorizing on social support. DFST is a theoretical departure that should enable scholars to seriously and innovatively engage with the feminized labor of digital social support, which has largely gone unacknowledged (and not analyzed) in communication/media studies and in a neoliberal order. Using reflexive critical thematic analysis, we analyzed audience discussions on a) US news outlets ( CBS , ABC , FOX , CNN ) and The Diary of a CEO podcast following the removal of black-box warnings placed on menopause hormone therapy by the Food and Drug Administration, a United States national health agency, and b) four Instagram posts by renowned Black women medical practitioners and health experts, who specialize in Black women's health. With digital feminist support theory, we unpack the discursive nature of digital social support as feminized labor and show how menopause health experiences are visibilized and forms of solidarity enactments. By this intervention, we urge scholars, platform designers and owners, and health care providers to recognize and support the possible positioning of digital spaces as potential sites for feminist praxis.