| Abstract [eng] |
The fairness of gender representation in media remains a strong concern in contemporary public debate and isvisible in scholarship. This paper presents a case study examining a spontaneous social phenomenon that unfolded on 16July 2025, during a Coldplay concert, when the romantic relationship between a male company CEO and a female head ofhuman resources—colleagues of comparable social, marital, and professional backgrounds—was unexpectedly revealed inpublic. The event, entirely unplanned and unmediated, rapidly went viral, generating vast amounts of user-generatedcontent (UGC) and embedding itself into popular culture. Due to its exceptional virality and enduring cultural resonance, itcan be regarded as a historical moment in the post-digital sphere, exemplifying how gendered narratives are constructed,amplified, and memorialised online. This study employs a quantitative content analysis of Instagram posts related to theevent, complemented by qualitative reflections that illuminate underlying attitudes and symbolic gender framings. Thismixed approach enables both the systematic mapping of engagement patterns and the interpretive understanding of howusers ascribe meaning and moral value to male and female figures in comparable circumstances. Findings show that,despite the protagonists’ similar social and professional standing, gendered asymmetries persist in public perception. Themale figure was frequently represented through narratives of leadership, charisma, and professional success, while thefemale counterpart was disproportionately subjected to moral judgment, emotional stereotyping, and scrutiny of personalintegrity. The study concludes that spontaneous viral events such as this offer unique insight into unfiltered digitalstorytelling, revealing how collective narratives of gender continue to reproduce structural inequalities even in seeminglyorganic contexts. As part of a broader research project on storytelling for gender equality, this paper contributes tounderstanding how viral, unscripted events both reflect and shape contemporary gender discourse in online culture. |
