Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

Spring 4-22-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

April 2026

Department

Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies

College Granting Degree

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

Department Granting Degree

Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

J. Lotus Seeley

Abstract

This thesis examines how child marriage is represented and morally negotiated on the official Facebook page of UNICEF Bangladesh. Drawing on transnational and Third World feminist critiques of development, it uses feminist content and discourse analysis to analyze twenty-five campaign posts and 2,677 comments (May–July 2025) to trace patterns of representation and moral reasoning. The analysis identifies three dominant representational patterns: child marriage as a rural girls’ issue, rural girls as constrained and victimized, and education as a universal solution, collectively producing a homogenized image of vulnerable girlhood. Two clusters of moral discourse emerge: pro–child marriage (privileging religious morality, critiquing intervention, and policing communal loyalty) and anti–child marriage (framing ignorance, rights-based protection, neoliberal empowerment, and selective defense of Islam). Across both clusters, protection operates as a shared but contested moral vocabulary through which legitimacy and authority are negotiated, revealing digital advocacy as a site of moral ordering rather than simple message transmission.

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