Constructing Female Victimhood: A Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis of Gendered Narratives in Pakistani Social Media (2025)

Abstract

This paper discusses how Pakistani social media spaces discursively construct women as victims in 2025 when there is greater exposure to gender-based violence and harassment on social media. Based on the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the study examines the influence of linguistic, and platform-based affordances in the fostering of representations of female victimhood on Twitter/X, Facebook, and Instagram. The sample used to analyze in terms of Fairclough three-dimensional framework involved 12 publicly available posts on high-profile incidents. The results indicate the repetitive discursive patterns such as prediction of women as passive victims of violence, avoidance of the perpetrators by use of passive structures, and use of emotive and moralizing words to support the discourses of vulnerability, honor, and blame. At the same time, there also appear counter-discourses that are resistant to patriarchal norms and feminist solidarity is organized. The paper identifies the importance of platform affordances in the mediation of such constructions and shows how digital discourse and the wider socio-cultural ideologies in Pakistan interact. The study advances the Critical Feminist Discourse Studies field and provides suggestions to gender-sensitive policy, digital media literacy, and control of online content.