This work, set within a project for a doctoral thesis, results from a controversy (Latour,
2008) that emerged along with the cyberfeminist movement during the 80s (Zafra, 2019), in which participation in digital environments and gender subjectivation intersect. With the boom of platform capitalism (Srnicek, 2018) and the transition towards the society of control (Deleuze, 2014), the participation – as social practice (Reckwitz, 2002; Shatzki et al., 2001) – of women and gender dissidents is simultaneously impaired and favoured in digital environments. It is impaired because digital environments operate as discursive machines subjected to gender power technologies (de Lauretis, 1989) that represent, propose and encourage these or those practices (Sibilia, 2008). And it is favoured because lines of flight are identified in the capitalist machinery (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980) when opportunities are created in these spaces to transform the mainstream discourse (Walker & Laughter, 2019), for associationism and to develop support and vindication networks (McInroy et al., 2019), or for the popularisation of debates around gender and feminism.
This is a controversy that simultaneously permeates two political and educational
challenges that are reflected in the 2030 Agenda (UN, 2020): (a) women’s relationship
with digital technologies, and (b) citizens’ participation based on values of sustainability and equity.
Along this line, it is pressing to decipher the controversy, which implies identifying and
understanding the gender marks (Connell & Pearse, 2018) developed in the social
practices of participation in digital environments, young girls and boys’ competences for critical participation, and who acts as educational reference, and how, in this literacy process.

To that end, this study has its foundations in three central theoretical themes:

(a) The interpretation of digital environments based on rhizome theory (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980). From this perspective, digital environments are constituted as a map or cartography formed by a heterogeneous, changing multiplicity of discourses, languages, devices, artefacts, subjectivities, etc., connected in nodes (Mackness et al., 2016) in which different forms of production and interaction (posts, likes, RTs, etc.) can be identified. Using this approach, actants’ experimentation (Latour, 2008), the forms of communication and participation that emerge, as well as their relationship constituted and constituent tensions of power and knowledge (Foucault, 1980), manifest rhizomatically (Walker & Laughter, 2019), according to the principles of connexion and heterogeneity, multiplicity, cartography-decal and allocating rupture (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980).

(b) Participation based on the practice paradigm. The act of participation is interpreted as a social practice, defined as forms of action repeated over time, in a space, which are identifiable as a unit and involve activities of the body and the mind, objects,
usages and other forms of knowledge that are at their basis, such as meanings, practical knowledge, emotions and motivations (Reckwitz, 2002). In the framework of social order, practices are connected with each other and form complex links, maps, in which social phenomena take root (Schatzki, 2017). And (c) gender as a regulatory fiction (de Lauretis, 1989), of a colonial nature (Connell & Pearse, 2018), operating as a device that links technologies of the self (Amigot & Pujal, 2009) that operate in the processes of power and knowledge of the becoming of a woman subject. It alludes to the subjectivity policy in a double sense: the construction of identities and the acquisition of subjectivities, which qualify or entitle one to exercise certain practices. It is seen in four dimensions: power, discourse, cathexis and production, consumption and accumulation (Connell & Pearse, 2018).

The study proposes an explanatory sequential mixed design consisting in the combination of techniques or quantitative and qualitative data, in two sequential phases (Creswell & Plano, 2018). The following was carried out in the first phase: (1) A systematic literature review following the PRISMA protocol (Page et al., 2020) at two levels (macro and micro). (a) At a macro level, a total of 1,399 results were extracted from the SCOPUS database [search equation: (“gender identity” OR “gender subjectivity”) AND (“social networks” OR “social media”) AND “participation”] and a bibliometric and text mining analysis was carried out (concurrence and evolution of keywords over time, concurrence of text in the title and the abstract, author coupling and co-citation), using the software Vos Viewer (van Eck & Waltman, 2010). (b) At a micro level, the number of databases was expanded and inclusion and exclusion criteria (language of publication, type of text and relevance to the topic) were applied, obtaining a total of 48 results, which were analysed using the software ATLAS.ti 9. And (2) social network analysis (Thelwall, 2018), mapping the current debate in the Spanish context on Twitter regarding gender identity, leaning on the hashtag #leytransya (#translawnow). Data were obtained using web scraping techniques, specifically the project Twint (https://github.com/twintproject/twint), attaining a sample of 12,552 tweets, 4,893 participating users, 71,114 retweets and 250,677 favourites. The evolution of the hashtag over time was analysed, sentiment analysis in tweets and content analysis (both quantitative [text mining] and qualitative [of the contents having the greatest impact]) were carried out, the hashtags that emerged in parallel to the hashtag under study were analysed, and the network of connexions between users and different forms of interaction were built, to identify the most influential nodes in the discussion. To do this, the free software R and the programming language Python were used. In the second phase, a case study (Simons, 2011) was undertaken with young teenagers from the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain, using a digital ethnography approach that combined observation techniques and interviews with the subjects and agents who participated in the immediate subjectivation and learning environments: peers, families and schools.

The results obtained so far evidence a smaller presence of education in academic production, contrasting with a high coincidence of the terms education, students and teachers in the general corpus. Some conceptual ambiguity was seen in the axes género (gender) and participación (participation). This was especially the case for participation, a term that is sometimes used to refer to different forms of interaction (Carpentier, 2011). The results of the systematic review reinforce the controversy, as they evidence the configuration of support networks and the participation of women and dissident persons with the capacity to have an impact on mainstream discourse, compared with the greater violence towards these people in digital environments and participation through normative subjectivities (display of economic capital, beauty, etc.). The network analysis conducted so far identified the following: an internationalist movement between the Spanish context and the Latin American context; the origin of the debate in the physical space, which is transferred to the digital space and becomes more intense around dates referring to political and legal milestones, and a positive trend of the sentiment analysis in absolute values, but whose polarity evidences a trend towards neutrality or negativity (X = 0.11, in a range of [–1,1]). To complete the first phase, we expect to identify the main approaches to the gender debate in these environments. In the second phase, we envisage similar results to those pointed out in studies on digital competence and critical literacy (Gewerc & Fraga-Varela, 2019): (a) the identification of digital environments as favourable environments for participating in the discussion on gender and developing learnings; (b) an inadequate intervention of the school for developing competences for critical thinking and critical, safe and equitable digital participation, and (c) the influence of families’ sociocultural capital on young girls and boys’ competence development.

Amigot,P., & Pujal,M. (2009). Una lectura del género como dispositivo de poder.Sociológica, 24(70), 115-9152. https://tinyurl.com/yd5qxcwe Carpentier,N. (2011). The concept of participation:If they have access and interact, do they really participate? Communication Management Quarterly/Časopis za upravljanje komuniciranjem,21, 13-36. Connell, R., & Pearse, R. (2018).Género desde una perspectiva global. Universitat de Valencia. Creswell,J.W. & Plano,V.L.(2018). Designing and conducting mixed methods research. Sage. de Lauretis,T. (1989). Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film and Fiction. Macmillan Press. Deleuze,G. (2014). Posdata a las sociedades de control. In C. Ferrer (Ed.), El lenguaje libertario (pp. 115-121). Utopía Libertaria. Deleuze,G., & Guattari,F. (1980). Mil mesetas:Capitalismo y esquizofrenia. Pre-Textos. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge.Pantheon. Gewerc,A., & Fraga-Varela,F. (2019).Competencia digital e inclusión social:Cuando las condiciones socioculturales se imponen. In A. Gewerc & E. Martínez-Piñeiro (Eds.), Competencia digital y preadolescencia:Los desafíos de la e-inclusión (pp. 21-42). Editorial Síntesis. Latour, B. (2008). Reensamblar lo social: Una introducción a la teoría del actor-red. Manantial. Mackness, J., Bell, F., & Funes, M. (2016). The rhizome: A problematic metaphor for teaching and learning in a MOOC. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 32(1), 78-91. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.2486 McInroy, L. B., McCloskey, R. J., Craig, S. L., & Eaton, A. D. (2019). LGBTQ+ youths’ community engagement and resource seeking online versus offline. Journal of Technology in Human Services, 37(4), 315-333. https://doi.org/10.1080/15228835.2019.1617823 Page, M. J., McKenzie, J. E., Bossuyt, P. M., Boutron, I., Hoffmann, T. C., Mulrow, C. D., et al. (2021). The PRISMA 2020 statement: An updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ, 372(71). https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n71 Reckwitz, A. (2002). Toward a theory of social practices: A development in culturalist theorizing. European Journal of Social Theory, 5(2), 243-263. Schatzki, T., Knorr Cetina, K., & von Savigny, E. (2001). The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. Routledge. Sibilia, P. (2008). La intimidad como espectáculo. Fondo de Cultura Económica. Simons, H. (2011). El estudio de caso: Teoría y práctica. Ediciones Morata. Srnicek, N. (2018). Capitalismo de plataformas.Caja Negra. Thelwall, M. (2018). Social media analytics for YouTube comments:potential and limitations. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 21(3), 303-316. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2017.1381821 UN. (2020). The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals. https://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/70/1&Lang=E van Eck, N.J. & Waltman, L. (2010). Software survey:VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping. Scientometrics, 84, 523–538. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0146-3 Walker, P., & Laughter, J. (2019). Shoaling rhizomes:A theoretical framework for understanding social media’s role in discourse and composition education. Computers and Composition. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2019.05.005 Zafra, R. (2019). Ciberfeminismo:De VNS Matrix a Laboria Cuboniks. Holobionte Ediciones.