As US troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban regained control of the country, concerns about women's rights centered many discussions-including a focus on women's clothes. Through the lens of transnational feminism, this paper examines the viral Twitter campaign, #DoNotTouchMyClothes created by a member of the Afghan diaspora. Analysis of 1,443 tweets through critical discourse analysis reveals how Afghan women strategically use dress as discourse, engaging in struggles over meaning and control. Ultimately, findings illustrate tensions related to voice, diasporic activism, and transnational allyship.

This article investigates the politics of visibility and the limits of representation in the American sitcom, United States of Al-the first network television program to prominently feature an Afghan character. Employing textual analysis, this article analyzes the first season of the program, paying close attention to the development of the title character and storyline. In an attempt to combat the negative stereotypes of Afghans in American media by portraying an all-good person worthy of American acceptance, United States of Al ultimately reifies the very stereotypes it hopes to counter. Further, as the analysis illustrates, United States of Al makes visible Afghans to network programming, but suffers in its attempts to represent a deep and dynamic character. Uncovering how United States of Al -one of the first of its kind-portrays Afghans is critical to our understanding of how Afghans are represented in the American cultural imagination and the extent to which they may identify belongingness within mediated sites of identity negotiation. As attention from Afghanistan dissipates with the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country, interest in framing U.S. involvement in Afghanistan continues and this article provides one intervention to engage in more nuanced discussions of media visibility, representation, and power as it relates to Afghans and Afghanistan.

This article examines social media as a site for identity negotiation and community building among Roma in the Czech Republic. As Roma are continually denied authority over the construction of their identities, their Czech-ness, claim to physical spaces, and generally made to feel that they do not belong—both in the material and symbolic sense—this article examines how individual activists and community organizers utilize media as a resource to combat spatial alienation. This ethnographic study pays close attention to the cultivation of community through Facebook groups, the utilization of groups and event pages to organize, and the affordances and challenges of moving online efforts offline. At the same time, this article explores tensions and contradictions of these digital spaces that may involve issues like the lack of resources and the fragmentation of community—and of communal space—by such variables as age, language, and technological access and literacy. Ultimately, this article suggests that social media may embody both emotional and material places manifesting as additional/alternative places to negotiate identities and belonging for Roma in the Czech Republic. The findings of this research carry important implications for those with complicated relationships to home(lands), including geographically displaced people.

Romani people are often portrayed through long-enduring cultural stereotypes in media, perpetuating myths of criminality, nomadism, and deviance. Such representations have received extensive analysis; however, additional work is needed on the responses by communities to these portrayals, including developing more diverse representations for Roma. Using a political economic analysis that considers the structures and practices contributing to the exclusion of Romani voice within media in the Czech Republic, this article examines the production of media by Roma, for Roma, as a critical intervention into an exclusive media environment through interviews with key community organizers and observations of various gatherings. This article emphasizes the tensions and opportunities of minority media production, paying close attention to how organizers identify media as a critical site to articulate belonging, which works in tandem alongside other activist efforts. At the same time, this article addresses the challenges of the media production including resistance by mainstream media, financial barriers, and the possible reification of marginality by a production that exists outside of the mainstream purview.

Utilizing a political economic framework, this study investigates the development and expansion of independent media in Afghanistan, focusing on one of the largest private media companies in the country, Moby Group. The company's approach to producing media is tied to its complex location as a translocal/transnational media entity. The company serves a unique population and navigates complex relationships locally and globally (operating in an emerging democratic state negotiating neoliberal market imperatives). This paper argues American-backed development of state-independent media and the rise of private companies such as Moby Group are part of larger geopolitical practices that further U.S. interests and the neoliberal agenda globally.

In the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, Republican nominee Donald Trump vowed to bring troops home from Afghanistan. After the election, in August of 2017, newly elected President Trump, with advice from national security adviser McMaster, decided to keep troops in Afghanistan. It is reported that the President was convinced to keep troops in Afghanistan after shown a black and white photograph of Afghan women in miniskirts from the 1970s (Eberhardt, 2017; Rucker & Costa, 2017). These photographs, in juxtaposition with images of veiled women, however, play a specific role in how we think about Afghanistan and intervention. Examining media representations of Afghan women, we explore media coverage in The New York Times, through a thematic analysis of 286 articles beginning with the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 up to 2018. We focus on coverage of Afghan women over the span of 17 years, paying close attention to news coverage following the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, President Obama's direction to increase the number of military troops in the country, and President Trump's decision to keep troops in Afghanistan. This paper examines how Afghan women are presented in media coverage and how these representations contribute to larger discussions of intervention.

This study investigates the factors motivating women in Afghanistan to seek cosmetic surgery through qualitative in-depth interviews with 16 consumers of cosmetic surgery. Providing a discussion of contemporary life for women in Afghanistan during a time of social and political change, where many suggest women have more freedom and opportunities available to them following the fall of the Taliban and the US-led intervention, this study explores the extent to which post-feminist discourses of empowerment and choice are reflected in these experiences. While some have attributed the consumption of cosmetic surgery among Afghan women to newly granted freedom, this perspective presents cosmetic surgery as an individual choice rather than a response to the complex systems that promote limited beauty ideals. When challenged, this empowerment discourse dissolves to reveal the complexity of body-altering practices. The case of cosmetic surgery in Afghanistan comments on the complex global beauty economy through discussions of the post-feminist politics of choice, ethnic/class politics, and consumerism.

One Belt, One Road is a political and economic initiative developed by China to revive ancient trade routes in an effort to encourage international trade. One Belt, One Road will increase China’s economic reach but also promises to improve the political and economic standards of countries involved in the program. The initiative holds transformative opportunities for Afghanistan, as the country continues to experience political and economic instability. One Belt, One Road, though is met with differing perspectives, where critics of the initiative point toward China’s exploitative desires. Through content analysis of China’s People’s Daily and Global Times as well as Afghanistan’s Khaama Press, this article suggests China and Afghanistan’s involvement in the One Belt, One Road initiative is rooted in vastly different interests.

"The politics of being a woman: feminism, media and 21st century popular culture." Feminist Media Studies, 16(4), pp. 750–751