Gendered Moral Regulation in Azerbaijani Instagram News Discussions: A Matrix of Domination Analysis

Abstract

Public social media discussions make gender norms visible through the ways users allocate responsibility and define respectable conduct. This study examined how women’s responsibility, respectability, autonomy, and social obligations were constructed and contested in selected Azerbaijani Instagram news discussions. A qualitative comparative multiple-case design combined directed qualitative content analysis with inductive extension. The closed corpus comprised 98 public comments about three events. The first concerned the release of a female blogger after a road-accident court case. The second concerned a taxi driver’s unwanted advances toward a married passenger. The third concerned authorities’ prevention of the attempted marriage of a 16-year-old girl. Coding linked descriptive meanings and justificatory repertoires to gender-norm orientation and, conservatively, to domains of the Matrix of Domination. In the retained taxi comments, female self-regulation was sometimes made a condition of safety and respectability, while counter-comments framed politeness as self-protection. Motherhood both protected and disciplined the blogger, although most retained Arzu comments concerned legal accountability, celebrity privilege, and media attention. All 22 retained earlymarriage comments opposed the attempted marriage; the discussion included appeals to childhood, education, protection, and development. These findings describe how gendered moral regulation varied across the selected posts and their retained responses. The Arzu case illustrates the value of identifying when gender is less salient than other forms of accountability.