Digital oral history of the silent generation: Instagram storytelling as a catalyst for feminist consciousness-raising in Türkiye

With the increasing prevalence of digital technologies, both storytelling and feminist activism have undergone significant transformations. Social media platforms, particularly Instagram, now serve as vital tools for creating feminist social memory and amplifying women's voices through digital storytelling. In this context, this research interrogates whether the dissemination of women's narratives on Instagram can make gender-related challenges publicly visible and how audiences respond to these narratives in the comment space. A review of current academic literature indicates that the nexus between digital storytelling on social media and gender has not been sufficiently explored. This study aims to bridge this scholarly gap by rendering visible the lived experiences of marginalized “Silent Generation” women within a society characterized by dominant patriarchal traditions. This study explores how the Instagram account @onlyherstory functions as a digital archive and activist platform by narrating the lived experiences of ordinary women in Türkiye. Employing a qualitative and descriptive thematic content analysis of the 100 posts with the highest engagement and the 29,487 comments made on them, the study examines the emotional and cognitive responses that the audience expressed in the comments. Emotional responses dominate the comments (97.6%), while a smaller share (19.8%) contains elaborated reflections in which commenters frame the hardships of these women as a matter of structural gender inequality. The findings suggest that digital oral history on Instagram makes the experiences of ordinary women publicly visible and opens a space for feminist consciousness-raising within an already engaged audience, whereas the comment data do not allow claims about change beyond the platform.